DOGS AND DOG LOVERS 227 



it goes deeper however, for it shows that men as 

 well as dogs are dominated by instinctive night 

 fears which unite them by a most ancient and 

 enduring bond. Riquet sa^'s : "A la tombee de la 

 nuit des puissances malfaisantes rodent autour de 

 la maison," a fact obvious to all children. There 

 is (No. XII.) an admirable comic prayer to his master 

 beginning, " O mon maitre Bergeret, dieu de 

 carnage, je t 'adore." But it seems to me to miss 

 the true flavour of doggishness. 



Professor A. C. Bradley ^ strives to show that 

 Shakespeare "did not care for dogs." His opinion 

 is worthy of respect, and all the more that he seems 

 to be a dog lover himself. At least, so I interpret 

 what he says of Shakespeare: "To all that he loved 

 most in men he was blind in dogs, and then we call 

 him universal 1 " " What is significant," he says, 

 "is the absence of sympathic allusion to the 

 characteristic virtues of dogs, and the abundance 

 of allusions of an insulting kind." 



I had always imagined that the description of 

 the hounds in "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" 

 was written by one who liked dogs as individuals, 

 not merely as a picturesque piece of hunting 

 apparatus. But Professor Bradley's contrary 

 opinion is probably the sounder. In the same way 

 I think that the passage in " Lear," "Tray, Blanche, 

 and Sweetheart," etc., could only have been 

 written by one who understood the shock which 

 the httle dogs' behaviour gave the King. On 

 the other hand, I agree that Shakespeare does 



* Oxford Lectures cm Poetry, 1909, pp. 340, 341. 



