3IO The Poets Beasts. , 



" With a piteous and perpetual moan 



And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand 

 Which answered not with a caress — he died," 



Mary Howitt's lines — 



'* My mother is dead, and my father loves 

 His dogs far more than me," 



are within the facts, and so too is Tennyson's 



" He will hold thee when his passion shall have spent its moral force 

 Something better than his dog, something dearer than his horse. " 



Nothing, of course, can prevent a Cowper making even 

 a dog's friendship sometimes ridiculous, nor an Eliza Cook 

 arousing one's furious scorn with such a couplet as this — 



" Nor deem me impious if I say 

 That next to God I hold my hound." 



What a confession of faith — to worship God, and love her 

 dog better than her neighbour ! But where the poet does 

 not fall a victim to want of taste or to cheap cynicism, the 

 expression of affection for a worthy dog is always sure to 

 command a reasonable sympathy with the writer, if only for 

 the reason that the dog is one of man's finest triumphs. 



King Lear bemoans it as " the most unkindest cut of all," 

 that the dogs about his palace, " the little dogs and all," 

 should bark at him. How many men have said it in half 

 earnest that they place their hopes no higher than the 

 Red Indian who " in another life expects his dog, his bottle, 

 and his wife," and that they envy Tobit and Arjuna their 

 canine companions in heaven — 



" He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire, 

 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky. 

 His faithful dog shall bear him company." — Po/e. 



It forms a feature, therefore, of all the happiest aspects 

 of life, is an emblem of the security and tranquil domestic 



