292 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



one of the most horrible forms of cruelty practised on animals, 

 had a book in the press entitled " The Friend of Man and his 

 Friends, the Poets." Reading my unsigned paper in the 

 Magazine, she picked up her pen in a noble rage to add some 

 words to her Introduction, in which she hurled at me certain 

 sayings of Schopenhauer describing man as a very contemptible 

 creature when compared with the dog, and also saying that the 

 writer of the article was " worse than a vivisectionist." 



This struck me as a bit thick, seeing that a vivisectionist had 

 always been to her the most damnable being in the universe. 

 One or two of my friends, who knew I had written the article, 

 then remonstrated with the lady for using such expressions of 

 one who, though tactless and somewhat brutal, was also a 

 lover of all the creatures, and didn't like to hear so much praise 

 of the dog at the expense of the other animals. The result was 

 that she smoothed her ruffled plumes and sent her regrets and 

 a promise to excise the obnoxious passage in her preface in the 

 next edition. 



Of course it doesn't matter two straws whether she ever 

 had the opportunity of doing so or not : the best part of the 

 story is still to come — ^the funny part, and a wise word which, 

 though laughingly spoken, may yet do good. 



The lady's book in the meantime had fallen by chance into 

 the hands of Andrew Lang, and as it was just the sort of thing 

 to delight him, he made it the subject of one of his most charm- 

 ingly amusing leaders in the Daily News of that time. In 

 this article, after the usual pleasant word for the book and its 

 author, he deals with the subject of the dog and man's feeling 

 for it in ancient and modern times, and of the great length to 

 which it has been carried recently, and concludes with a passage 

 which I must quote in full, as I don't think this article ever 

 reappeared among his Lost Leaders, and it is worth preserving 

 for the sake of its Andrew Langishness, as well as of its moral. 

 After quoting some of the most notable sayings in praise of the 

 dog, he concludes : 



" There is perhaps some slight danger of reaction against 

 all this, and Miss Cobbe seems to have anticipated it in a 

 sharp attack on a writer hostile to dogs. This writer, as 

 though in his turn anticipating the coming worship of the dog, 

 has expressed himself with considerable force against the 

 ' great dog superstition,' and has gone so far as to characterise 



