292 The Poets Beasts. 



with Spenser, perhaps a favourite sport. His sympathy is 

 always with the bull, as in the following — 



" Like a wylde bull, that, being at a bay, 

 Is bayted of a mastiffe, and a hound, 

 And a curre-dog, that doe him sharp assay 

 On every side, and beat about him round ; 

 But most that curre, barking with bitter sownd, 

 And creeping still behinde, doth him incomber. 

 That, in his chauffe, he digs the trampled ground, 

 And threats his horns, and bellows like the thonder : 

 So did that squire his foes disperse and drive asonder." 



The bullock is, in the poets, very properly the type 

 of headstrong, unmanageable youth, without the mature 

 dignity of the bull, but a sufficient measure of dangerous 

 potentiality. 



Oxen are "sluggish," "stubborn," "dull, '"'toiling," "moyl- 

 ing," "tired," "patient," "willing," "slowpaced," "faint." 



" The slow team 

 Of steers, reluctant pressing on the yoke, 

 With down-sunk forehead and depending tongue, 

 With winding shoulders and slow-pacing foot, 

 Pants." 



Hurdis wrote this from the life, or he could never have 

 used the word "winding " for that laboured circular working 

 of the fore-legs. Yet what noble upstanding brutes the 

 oxen of the East are, and how admirably they look trotting 

 along an Indian road to the rhythmic tinkling of their bells, 

 with the crimson-canopied carriage behind them. 



One great poet called the cow " the milky mother," a 

 phrase that does not sound so well in English as in Latin, 

 but five or six adopt it from him. She is a ponderous, 

 lethargic, slow-footed personage, but benevolent and tran- 

 quil. I'hose who live in the country may not be of the 

 same opinion, for many milky mothers are very awkward 

 to meet — • 



