326 The Poets Beasts. 



" Scent struck, 

 With lifted paw, stands stiffened." 



Gay has the cocker, " the roving spy," at the copse side. 



" Cool breathes the morning air, and winter's hand 

 Spreads wide her hoary mantle o'er the land ; 

 Now to the copse thy lesser spaniel take, 

 Teach him to range the ditch and force the brake ; 

 Not closest coverts can protect the game. 

 Hark ! the dog opens, take thy certain aim ; 

 The woodcock flutters ; now he wav'ring flies ! 

 The wood resounds : he wheels, he drops, he dies." 



In character the spaniel appears to be more feminine 

 than other dogs (though Cowley uses it as a simile for 

 death) and proverb has extended the resemblance into a 

 humility that women of spirit will hardly concede/ and 

 that is hardly creditable to the spaniel — " like a thorough 

 true-bred spaniel licks, the hand which cuffs him and the 

 foot which kicks " (Churchill). Nor indeed do the poets 

 carry it altogether to the credit of the spaniel that it should 

 be so eager to forgive — " the beaten spaniel's fondness not 

 so strange " as a woman's love that is abused, and that, in 

 spite of abuse, strengthens. " No sycophant although of 

 spaniel race," says Cowper of his fop. Its extreme docility, 

 again, affords many a contemptuous simile ; as in Pope, 



" So well-bred spaniels civilly delight 



In mumbling of the game they dare not bite." 



The sea, "spaniel-like with parasitic kiss," laps on the 

 shore. 



The *' baying beagle " is a general favourite, in spite of 

 the hare being its victim, and a score of poets are to be 

 found in the meet when puss is the game. To 



' " A woman, a spaniel, a walnut-tree. 



The more you beat them the better they be." 



