Some Harm/ess Beasts. 169 



and the pale threat'ning ghost moves as he moves, and, as 

 he flies, pursues." In a burst of sycophant solicitude he 

 implores royalty not to go too near the stag even though a 

 score of hounds are worrying it ; and when at last the stag 

 is at the point of death, and — 



" Beneath the weight of woe he grows distressed. 

 The tears run trickling down his hairy cheeks," 



the King "beholds his wretched plight, and tenderness 

 innate moves his great soul," and he orders off" the pack. 

 Upon which the poet — 



" Great Prince ! from thee what may tliy sabjects hope. 

 So kind and so beneficent to brutes, 

 O mercy, heav'nly bom ! " 



&c &C. But from reading Somerville it might be imagined 

 that he knew nothing of humaneness. 



In legendary allusions both the milk-white doe of fairy- 

 tale and the black roe of Oriental myth, as also .^sop's 

 stag, " a creature blameless, yet something vain," are to be 

 found, with here and there an enchanted hind that was 

 " hunted to his hurt " by some mythical knight or prince. 

 But, as I have said above, the poets seem too well satisfied 

 with the deer as it is in Nature to try to assist it to sympathy 

 and honour by the adventitious graces of tradition or the 

 exercise of a fanciful license. 



Yet deer enjoy remarkable prominence in myth and folk- 

 lore. In " elemental '"' symbolism, they appear as luminous, 

 variegated, or dark, according as the sky is ruddy, dappled, 

 or lowering, and they drag the chariots of the wind-fiends, 

 the spirits of the storm, and are the heralds of the elephant, 

 " the hurricane." And in foik-lore, how many a hero both 

 of East and West has the magic fawn, the milk-white doe, 

 that beautiful but dangerous quarry, or the enchanted hart 

 — " a creature that was current then, the hart with golden 



