344 l^^^i^ Poets' Beasts. 



into a tailor's shop. Nor do I ask to have that nursery 

 rhyme abolished which makes the tailors go forth to attack 

 a snail, but retire defeated on seeing her horns. 



Yet, when I think of all the valiant tailors of story, I 

 hesitate to believe that four-and-twenty of the trade should 

 have been panic-stricken at the spectacle of an enraged 

 snail. What shall we say of that Snip of Basle who kissed 

 the dragon-princess? It is true that, the worst accom- 

 plished, he turned and fled, leaving his victory incomplete. 

 Not so much, perhaps, as a Hercules or a Sir Gavvain would 

 have done ; yet how many heroes had failed before the 

 tailor succeeded ! Then, again, there was that other who 

 passed the night with a bear, and won the princess ; that 

 other who slew seven at a blow, and lived himself to be a 

 king; that brave journeyman whom De Quincey has made 

 immortal for his courage. In many other ways they have 

 been distinguished, these knights of the needle, from the 

 father of Thumbling to that tailor of Yarrow who beat Mr. 

 Tickler hollow at backgammon. Who was it charitably 

 mended the bean, and who that sewed up the ship that was 

 smashed on the rocks ? Oriental story is full of tailors of 

 consequence. Remember that one who befriended Prince 

 Amgiad when he fell among the fire-worshippers, and him 

 that took in the poor hunchback who choked with a fish- 

 bone. Was not Aladdin himself the son of Mustapha the 

 tailor? — and a right good father he was, dying at last out 

 of sheer grief at Aladdin's scapegrace ways. In the great 

 Mosque at Mecca there is a Tailors' Gate. 



But there is no need to accumulate such testimonies to 

 the worth of the cross-legged craft — and not more use. For 

 it has got into our system — into the British Constitution, 

 in fact — that it takes nine tailors to make one man, and 

 the equation will never probably be abandoned. So after 

 this digression let me return to Barry Cornwall and his mad 

 cat and its nine lives. 



