Defence of Dogs. 
43 
As lazy, sleepy, and as idle as a dog ; 
But why dost thou compare thee to a dog, 
In that for which all men despise a dog ? 
I will compare thee better to a dog: 
Thou art as fair and comely as a dog, 
Thou art as true and honest as a dog, 
Thou art as kind and liberal as a dog, 
Thou art as wise and valiant as a dog.” 
(. Marlowe’s Works , ed. Cunningham, p. 265.) 
In the play by Thomas Nash, Bummer's Last Will and 
Testament , printed in the year 1600, Orion , the hunter, 
thus answers a tirade of Autumn against his hounds:— 
“ A tedious discourse built on no ground, 
A silly fancy. Autumn, hast thou told, 
Which no philosophy doth warrantise, 
No old-received poetry confirms. 
I will not grace thee by refuting thee; 
Yet, in a jest, since thou rail’st so ’gainst dogs, 
]’ll speak a word or two in their defence. 
That creature’s best that comes most near to men ; 
That dogs of all come nearest, thus I prove: 
First, they excel us in all outward sense, 
Which no one of experience will deny : 
They hear, they smell, they see better than we. 
To come to speech, they have it questionless, 
Although we understand them not so well, 
They bark as good old Saxon as may be, 
And that in more variety than we. 
For they have one voice when they are in chase: 
Another when they wrangle for their meat: 
Another when we beat them out of doors.” 
( Dodsley’s Old Plays , ed. Hazlitt, vol. 8.) 
Dogs seem to have been sufficiently plentiful in 
number and variety in England at this period. Fyues 
Morrison, in his Itinerary , writing about 1591, tells us:— 
“ England hath much more dogges, as well for the severall kinds as 
the number of each kind, then any other territorie of like compasse in 
the world, not onely little dogges for beauty, but hunting and water- 
dogges, whereof the bloudhounds and some other have admirable 
qualities.” (Ed. 1617, p. 148.) 
