CHANTICLEER. 
151 
its clarion voice and hostile spirit and brilliant 
courage; it is Gallus hanJciva degenerate, with 
dulled brains and blunted spurs, and its hoarse 
crow is a barbarous chant. 
And far away at the other end, startling in its 
suddenness and impetuosity, was a trisyllabic crow, 
so brief, piercing, and emphatic, that it could only 
have proceeded from that peppery uppish little bird 
the bantam. And of the three syllables, the last, 
which should be the longest, was the shortest, 
** short and sharp like the shrill swallow's cry," or 
perhaps even more like the shrieky bark of an 
enraged cur; not a reveille and silvern morning 
song in one, as a crow should be, but a challenge 
and a defiance, wounding the sense like a spur, 
and suggesting the bustle and fury of the cockpit. 
If this style of crowing was known to Milton, it 
is perhaps accountable for the one bad couplet in 
the " Allegro 
While the cock with lively din 
Scatters the rear of darkness thin. 
Some one has said that every line in that incom- 
parable poem brings at least one distinct picture 
vividly before the mind's eye. The picture the 
first line of the couplet I have quoted suggests to 
my mind is not of crowing Chanticleer at all, but 
of a stalwart, bare-armed, blowsy-faced woman, 
vigorously beating on a tin pan with a stick ; but 
