314 'The Poets' Beasts. 



"whelp." "A fierce Hibernian whelp" is, in Hurdis, 

 curiously enough, a metaphor for a Scotchman, and " wanton 

 whelp that loves to gnaw," in Davenant for disease. Now, 

 seeing that man has given the young of a dog its name, 

 it is an illustration of human unfairness to arbitrarily attach 

 to the word any disagreeable significance. But whether 

 we call them puppies or whelps the result is much the 

 same to the animal. 



Poetical proverbs and metaphors, all harping on the 

 worst points of the dog, are very numerous ; and as curious 

 as any, to my mind, are Watt's well-known lines, " Let dogs 

 delight to bark and bite, for God hath made them so^' in 

 which he throws the responsibility for the dog's implacable 

 ferocity upon an inscrutable Providence. " He that lies 

 with the dogs riseth with the fleas" (Herbert); "dog in 

 office, set to bark all beggars from the door " (Hood) ; " the 

 miserable pack that ever howl against fallen greatness" 

 (Rogers) ; " two-legged dogs still pawing on the peers " 

 (Pitt) ; " he can snap as well as whine " (Pope) ; " in 

 every country dogs bite," and " look not for musk in a 

 dog's kennel " (Herbert) ; " it is an houndes kynde, to 

 bark upon a man behynde " (Gower). Avarice is a dog- 

 madness (Young) ; Russians are "the dogs of Moscow," 

 " Jews the curs of Nazareth " (Byron) ; " Malice is a cursed 

 cur " (Pope). The Furies, like clinging crime, in Shelley, 

 "track all things tliat weep and bleed and live, as lean 

 dogs pursue through wood, and lake some struck and 

 sobbing fawn." Spaniards, in Phineas Fletcher, are "curres 

 whelpt in Spain " — the laws of murder (Mallet) ; the meanly 

 envious, that " ever howl against fallen greatness " (Rogers). 

 Quarles likens the prayers of an unrepentant man to the 

 howling of a dog, and associates dogs and devils in a 

 curious way — 



" Depart like dogs, with devils take your lot, 

 Depart like devils, for I know ye not ; 



