2 14 ^/^"^ Poets Beasts. 



worth ; for, gorgeously attired in splendid armour, and 

 rendered still more conspicuous by the royal diadem which 

 surmounted his helmet, Richard rode upon a milk-white 

 charger superbly caparisoned and attended by his body- 

 guards, displaying the banner of England and innumerable 

 pennons glittering with the silver boar. After his death, 

 Richard's body was placed across his war steed "like a 

 hogue calf," the head and arms hanging on one side of 

 the horse and the legs on the other side, and was thus 

 disposed behind his pursuivant-at-arms, Blanc Sanglier, he 

 wearing the silver boar upon his coat, and carried back 

 to Leicester in trophy of the morning's victory. 



The poetical boar is a very fine presentment of the 

 noble brute in Nature. It is " the mighty boar," " bristled," 

 " tusked," and foaming. " Fierce as forest boar " is a con- 

 stantly recurring simile in verse, and its " headlong rush " 

 through the brake, a familiar figure. But Spenser makes 

 the quaint error of supposing that boars eat camels — 



"He shortly met the tiger and the boar, 

 Which with the simple camel raged sore 

 In bitter words, seeking to take occasion 

 Upon his fleshy corpse to make invasion." 



And so err all those poets who make it carnivorous. 

 " Throw me to the wild boar " to be devoured is as absurd 

 in Heber as '* the boars that roar through the woods " of 

 Ossian. 



Perhaps the good bishop had in his mind that episode 

 in the Seven Champions of Christendom, where St. James 

 of Spain goes a-hunting with Neburazadan, the King of 

 Jerusalem, and by the slaying of a great man-eating boar 

 wins the Hebrew's daughter. He found it, we are told, 

 lying in its mossy den, gnawing the mangled joints of 

 some passenger whom it had murdered as he travelled 

 through the forest. It was of wonderful length and size, 



