3 1 2 The Poets Beasts. 



Fast, fast, the silver creatures took the bait. 



And when they heaved and floundered on the rock 



In beauteous misery, a sudden pat 



Some shaggy pup would deal, then back away, 



At distance eye them with sagacious doubt, 



And shrink half-frightened from the slippery things." 



At play or at war, snarling over a bone, quarrelling over 

 a piece of meat, crouching under the lash, barking at pass- 

 ing beggars, barking at nothing, asleep, awaking, awake, 

 rolling in the grass or dust, eating, drinking, chasing cats, 

 dreaming of chasing cats, annoyed by flies, wistful, honest, 

 suspicious, confiding, fawning; big dogs beset by little ones, 

 "generous" hounds by curs of low degree; the poor man's 

 dog, the blind man's dog, the poacher's dog, the mad dog ; 

 — in each and all these phases we find the dog in poetry. 

 Indeed, there is no mood of temper, no circumstance of life 

 whatever, in which, in one poet or another, the animal 

 does not figure, from the puppy blind to the dog 

 cooked — 



" A kettle slung 



Between two poles upon a stick transverse 



Receives the morsel, flesh obscene of dog 



Or vermin, or at best of cock purloined 



From his accustomed perch." 



Yet of all terms of reproach, the whole world over, and 

 from time immemorial, none is comparable in frequency of 

 use or in its provocative potentialities on the individual 

 abused, to the name of our best friend. " Treacherous, 

 false, ungrateful dog ! " and so forth, could be multiplied 

 indefinitely from the poets if there were any need to go 

 beyond the streets for evidence to the ignominy of the name. 

 Spenser has (" Fairy Queen," Book vi. c. vi. 33) the phrase 

 "vile cowheard (.\o<gg(i" and in the next stanza "cowheard 

 feare." In stanza 26, however, we find "craven cowherd 

 knight " who in " cowardize doth delight." These spellings 

 occur in Johnson's edition, and, though I have not met 



