Some Pods Dogs. 309 



" I care not whether east or north, 

 So I no more may find thee ; 

 The angry Muse thus sings thee forth, 

 And claps the gate behind thee. " 



To measure the real worth of a dog's attachment, the 

 true value of its friendship, we have only to take any one 

 of the poets' desperate assertions that the dog they deplore 

 was their " only " friend. Thus Byron — 



" Ye who perchance behold this simple urn 

 Pass on — it honours none you wish to mourn ; 

 To mark a friend's remains these stones arise, 

 I never knew but one — and here he lies." 



Now, what is the effect of this stanza on the mind ? Does 

 it exalt the worth of a dog's fidelity ? or does it not rather 

 fill the reader with an indignant pity for the man who in 

 all this world of men and women says he could find, or 

 keep, no better friend than a dog? Sympathy is of so 

 subtle a cr}'stal that it shivers to pieces at the first drop of 

 cynicism, and so, instead of admiring Byron's dog the more, 

 I feel inclined to admire the dog's master the less. 



By his own showing, too, the poet was barely honest 

 to his one friend — 



" Perchance my dog will whine in vain 

 Till fed by stranger hands ; 

 But long ere I come back again, 

 He'd tear me where he stands " — 



and there is either gross injustice in this verse or false sen- 

 timent in the other. And each is alike disagreeable and 

 unjust 



Meanwhile, the beauty of the dog's fidelity remains unim- 

 paired, and when the same poet (in his terrific dream of 

 " Darkness ") pays the tribute of his verse to the hound 

 faithful even to death, he commands a universal sympathy — 



