The Beard- Blown Goat. 257 



Thus the goat starts, as it were, with a beard "to the 

 good" — 



" Hung high in air the hoaij goat reclined. 

 His streaming beard the spoit of every wind." 



What a delightful confusion of mental pictures the couplet 

 innocently conjures up — Rogers' Swiss mountaineers — Keaf 3 

 discrowned Titans — the Last Minstrel. Put any other word 

 in the place of " goat ' and see the effect. " Hung high in 

 air the hoary god reclined/' &c. Lo ! Saturn overlooking 

 the conflict that shook the Elder Divinities out of the 

 heavens. Try "prince" instead of "goat," and we have 

 doomed Saul lying stretched upon the mountain side, his 

 eyes, ominous of to-morrow's woe, scanning the hosts of 

 Philistia as they darken the spurs of Gilboa. Change it 

 for "chief," or "sage," or "bard," and the effect of the 

 couplet remains the same. 



It is the beard that does it. Dignity is insej)arable from 

 it — when it is long enough to " stream," and the owner is 

 in repose. "The old romantic goat, his white beard low- 

 waving." Here Coleridge has the vignette complete. 



Not that the goat's beard, as such, is in itself a reverend 

 svTnboL On the contrary, if it is transplanted from the 

 animal's chin to any other, it carries with it those scarcely- 

 admira'ole significances which the folk-lore of ail nations 

 has attached to the he-goat. " Mad and careless, hot and 

 vain," is the poets' summing-up of the male animal, and 

 Spenser tells us how — 



" The blossoms of lust to bad do begin. 

 And spring forth rankly under his chin." 



Satyrs and all sorts of misbehaving persons, even Apollyon 

 himself, cohircinate therein, and in the "Beasts' Confes- 

 sion " of Swift we read how — 



" The goal advanced with decent pace, 

 And first excused his youthful face ; 



