142 The Poets Beasts. 



" Behold the castle-bearing elephant 

 That wants no bulk, nor doth his greatness want 

 An equal strength. Behold his massy bones 

 Like bars of iron ; like congealed stones 

 His knotty sinews are ; him have I made, 

 And given him natural weapons for his aid. 

 High mountains bear his food, the shady boughs 

 His cover are, great rivers are his troughs, 

 Whose deep carouses would to standers-by 

 Seem at a watering to drain Jordan dry. 

 What skilful huntsman can with strength outdare him ? 

 Or with what engines can a man ensnare him ? " 



So speaks Job Militant; and after Quarles many poets 

 refer to the " elephant endorsed with towers," the ** castled 

 elephant," the " towered elephant," and so forth, omitting 

 to remember how those same swine which they so much 

 reproach and ridicule once wrought havoc in the " embattled 

 front of elephants proud-turreted." The story is a simple 

 one, and better perhaps in the original English. Alexander, 

 invading India, was told that elephants were terrified at 

 pigs, and finding opposed to him a formidable array of 

 " olyphauntes berynge castelles of trees on theyr bakkes 

 and knyghtes in ye castelles for ye batayle," the great 

 Emathian ordered up a drove of swine to the front of his 

 army, and the " jarrynge of ye pygges " upset the olyphauntes 

 altogether, for we read that they began "to fie eche one 

 and keste down ye castelles and slewe ye knyghtes. By this 

 meane Alysaundre had ye vyctorie." 



It is a creature of colossal bulk, yet it is the most gently 

 docile of man's servants ; indeed, almost of creatures. 



" Calm amidst scenes of havoc, in his own 

 Huge strength impregnable, the elephant 

 Offended none ; but led his quiet life 

 Among liis old contemporary trees," 



Though of vast strength, it is curiously sensitive to small 

 annoyances. It detests the squeaking of mice. Mosquitoes 



