158 The Poets Beasts. 



" More famous long agone, than for the salmons leape, 

 For bevers Tivy was,^ in her strong banks that breii 

 What else no other brooke of Britaine nourished ; 

 Where nature, in the shape of this now-perisht beast, 

 His propertie did seeme t' have woundrouslie expre^i ; 

 Being bodied like a boat, with such a miglitie taile, 

 As serv'd him for a bridge, a helme, or for a saile." 



Several poets give the ermine a place. 



" I will disdain, and from your proffers fl)', 

 As from vile dirt the snowy ermine." 



Cowper here refers to a pretty fiction, still current, I find, 

 about this little creature, to the effect that it detests contact 

 with any impurity. 



There are some ants, which Sir John Lubbock knows all 

 about, that hate untidiness and "messes" so much, that if 

 you throw rubbish over their nests they all decamp pre- 

 cipitately. They absolutely refuse to live in a parish where 

 sanitation is not properly attended to. But the ermine 

 carries its aversion even further than this, for it prefers 

 death to dirt. 



" Better to die than be sullied." 



This was the motto on the ermine-device borne by kings 

 of Naples and of Castille. I'here was also a Breton " Order 

 of the Ermine," with t'ne same legend, and the device was 

 adopted by " La Reine Duchesse," Anne of Brittany, wife 

 of Charles VIII., and afterwards of Louis XII. These 

 words, " Pliitot 7uourir que souillcr^'' or " Malo mori quam 

 fcedari,^^ in the original, allude to the fancy that if an ermine 

 be encircled with mud it will fastidiously prefer capture 

 to crossing the dirty barrier. " It is of so pure a nature 

 that it will choose rather to be taken than defile its skin." 

 Trappers, therefore, were supposed to take advantage of 

 this suicidal cleanliness, and build walls of dirt round the 

 ermines, and so catch them ; but, it might well be added, 



' " Inter fluvios Cambria- . . . solus hie [ Teivi] castores Iiabct." 



