132 The Poets Beasts. 



and poets find them worse than ridiculous : they find them 

 every whit as bad as men. Says Goldsmith — 



" Of beasts it is confessed the ape 

 Comes nearest us in human shape ; 

 Like man, he imitates each fashion, 

 And malice is his ruling passion." 



And yet, when the monkey itself suggests that it is a man, 

 parrots and foxes are deputed to laugh down its pretensions. 

 Says one of the species, in Barry Cornwall — 



" For a monkey is much on a par with man. 



Tliere's a difference 



Pai-rot. Ho, ho ! I shall crack my sides. 

 Monkey. Though few see't till we sit side by side. 

 On the one hand a man has a longer nose, 

 And struts in clean linen wherever he goes ; 



But what has he like to the monkey's tail ? 



Parrot. Ho ! ho ! ho ! ho ! " 



And again in Spenser's delightful " Mother Hubberd's 

 Tale," when the fox and ape rob the sleeping lion of his 

 sceptre, crown, and robe, and then fall to disputing as to 

 who should wear the regalia, the ape claims the preference 

 over its companion on the ground of its resemblance to 

 man. 



" Then too I am in person, in stature. 

 Most like a man, the lord of every creature." 



But the fox flouts it — 



" Where you claim yourself for outward shape 

 Most like a man, man is not like an ape 

 In his chief parts, that is, in wit and spirit." 



So in y^sop, when the ape, passing through a graveyard, 

 falls to deplorable weeping, its comrade, the donkey, asks 

 the reason for such immoderate melancholy, and at the 

 ape's reply that it always weeps thus when in the presence 



