THE SHOCK AND COMFORTER. 159 



No wonder that the eccentric preference which ladies give to 

 these unshapen and comparatively ignoble dogs, should have 

 elicited severe remarks from several writers. In the New 

 European Magazine (1822), a correspondent says, " When I meet 

 one of these pampered animals, waddling and wheezing its 

 panting way after its fashionable mistress, I am much perplexed 

 which to dislike most -, but as I venerate all petticoats, I usually 

 satisfy my spleen by disliking the dog instead of its mistress. 

 When I have seen a tall manly fellow, a lady's lacquey, hoisting 

 one of these white enormities under his arm, and dogging the 

 heels of his superior, I have felt indignation, that even a man 

 in a livery should be degraded to so vile and unmanly an office. 

 But when I have met some fair spinster, hugging one of these 

 obnoxious affection-stealers to her bosom, I have wished myself 

 bitten by a mad-dog, that I might run about the Parks and 

 other polite places, in an unsuspicious shape, and bite every 

 dog's tail that was to be caught dangling from the dexter bend 

 of a fair spinster's elbows, and thus inoculate those alien pro- 

 tegees with the dog- day variolus of death. The old fashion of 

 a following black boy, was a more human folly than the attend- 

 ance of a waddling and useless shock-dog." 



In a very scarce and valuable tract on English Dogges, their 

 diversities, names, natures, and properties, newly translated, by 

 Abraham Fleming, and published in 1576, it is observed that 

 " Use and custum hath intertained dogges of an outlandish 

 kinde; I meane Iseland dogges, curled and rough all over, 

 which by reason of the length of their heare, make showe 

 neither of face nor body, and yet these curs forsooth, because 

 they are so straunge are greatly set by, esteemed, taken up, and 

 made of many times in the roome of the spaniel- gentle or 

 comforter." 



Alluding to the fact of this kind of dog being better fed than 

 taught, Massinger, in his celebrated play of " The Picture" 

 says : 



" would I might lie 



Like a dog under her table, and serve for a footstool, 



