THE POETIC SPIRIT 181 



knocks (which don't matter), we succeed in giving 

 courage to better men. 



If I had not been a fool, or had not troubled my- 

 self with this serious question, it would have been 

 much pleasanter for me in my rambles at this end of 

 all the land, seeing that the inferior animals are so 

 very much simpler and more easy to read than men. 

 Those donkeys, for example, which I meet on the 

 moor, and their scarcely less intelligent friends the 

 jackdaws, I know them a hundred times better than I 

 can know any man even my own self. And the 

 house-dog too, who is supposed to be mentally more 

 like his masters than any other beast this dog who 

 watches my comings and goings out of the corners of 

 his eyes and who thinks himself wonderfully clever 

 when, knowing that I don't want him, he steals 

 secretly off an hour before I go out and meets me 

 (by chance) among the furze bushes a mile from 

 home do I not know every thought in his curly 

 black head, if his little mental trick of putting two 

 and two together can be called thought ? And the 

 gulls on the cliff do I not know just how they will 

 comport themselves ; how each bird will eye me 

 suspiciously, sideways, with one brilliant eye at a 

 time ; how they will rise and float and dwell on 

 the air, or sit on a rock with beaks to the wind do 

 I not know every word they will say in their herring- 

 gull language ? 



It is true they will now and then do a thing which 

 will come as a surprise. Here is an example an 

 incident I have just witnessed. All day the wind had 



