22O The Poets and Nature. 



noisome as he? Surely not. The dung-beetle, the snail, 

 and the fly are on their proper plane, and are cleanly, 

 industrious, and respectable. When a human being delights 

 to burrow and wallow in dirt, to beslime all he touches, to 

 deface and besmear the beautiful, he dishonours his own 

 reason, and becomes like something else which is itself 

 admirable, but for a man to resemble shameful. It is in 

 the act of resembling, and not the thing resembled, that the 

 shamefulness lies, and where reproach should fall. 



Monkeys are as good as men. And yet, when men behave 

 like monkeys, they deserve to be whipped out of human 

 society. Does this sound irreconcilable? To tell a man 

 that he is no better than an ape does not necessarily imply 

 that the ape is worse than he. It does not convey the 

 compliment that he is as nimble, as clever, as moral, as good 

 a husband and father as the ape. It simply means that his 

 behaviour does not seem to be controlled by human reason. 

 The ape gets none the worse from the man doing so. It 

 remains what it is, a very admirable wild animal. 



1. 3- 

 "Little fly, For I dance 



Thy summer's play And drink and sing, 



My thoughtless home Till some blind hand 



Has brush'd away. Brush my wing. 



2. 4. 

 Am not I If thought is life 



A fly like thee? And strength and health, 



Or art not thou And the want 



A man like me ? Of thought is death, 



5- 



Then am I 

 A happy fly, 

 If I live 

 Or if I toe." Blake. 



Or, to call a man "a regular toad " is really to say that he 

 is a remarkably sagacious, patient, hard-working, and very 



