;^T^S The Poets' Beasts. 



to-night ? " — and then comes darkness, and the cat is in the 

 garden or on the pantiles, sitting in moonstruck reverie or 

 sharing a most melancholy dialogue — 



" Or making gallantry in gutter-tiles, 

 And sporting in delightful faggot-piles ; 

 Or bolting out of bushes in the dark 

 (As ladies use at midnight in the park), 

 Or seeking in tall garrets and alcove 

 For assignations with affairs of love." — Butler. 



Dejected or elated, morose or amiable, distant or familiar, 

 acrimonious or conciliatory, alarmed or tranquil, dreadfully 

 awake or fast asleep — in a score of other tempers and 

 states of mind — puss reflects a corresponding variation in 

 the domestic barometer. It is the indicator of the fluctua- 

 tions of family emotions, and apparently without spontaneity 

 in its moods, without independence in its actions. Its 

 existence would seem to be wholly relative and magnetised. 

 It lives within the influence of perpetual attractions. The 

 joint roasting at the fire draws it to the hearth with just 

 the same mechanical regularity as the voice of the cats'- 

 meat-man does to the garden-gate. These are natural forces 

 which it seems powerless to resist. 



Now how is it that this little creature — the incarnation 

 of evasive vagrancy, one of the most hopeless of Bohemians, 

 as restless as the tides, and as fickle as the breeze, the 

 ancient symbol of the goddess of Liberty, whose amiabilities 

 are nearly all self-indulgence, and gratitudes self-interest — 

 has come to be regarded as the type of domesticity and 

 symbol of the hearth, where " the little Lares keep their 

 vigils round ? " 



" Thou payst also, I walke out like a cat ; 

 For who so wolde senge the cattes skin, 

 Than wol the cat wel dwellen in hire inn : 

 And if the cattes skin be sleke and gay, 

 She wol nat dwellen in hous half a day, 

 But forth she wol," 



