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THE FKIEND OF MAN
AND HIS FKIENDS,-
THE POETS.
J".
FBANGES POWEB COBBE.
" The Almightj' who gave the dog to be the companion of our pleasures
and our toils, hath invested him with a natui'e noble and incapable of deceit.
He forgets neither friend nor foe, remembers with accuracy both benefit and
injury. He hath a share of man's intelligence, but no share of man's falsehood.
You may bribe an assassin to slay a man, or a witness to take away his life
by a false accusation, but you cannot make a dog tear his benefactor."— .Sir
Walter Scott.
LONDON :
GEORGE BELL & SONS,
4, York Street, Covent Garden.
1
Printed by PEWTRESS & Co.,
Steam Printin/j Works,
28, Little Queen Street, London, W.C.
To THE Memory of
My dear Dog
85SS7-4
CONTENTS
Chapter
Page
1. Poets the True Seers.
What
They See in
Dogs
7
2. Dogs in Ancient Egypt
..
13
3. IN Ancient Persia
..
... 23
4. in Ancient India
... 29
5. IN JUD-EA
..
35
6. IN Greece
..
41
7. IN Rome
.il
PART
II.
8. The Dog in Islam ...
9. IN Scandinavia, &;c.
10. IN Italy
11. IN England, from Chaucer to Byron
12. Dogs as Defenders
13. AS Friends and Comforters
14. as Victims
15. The Death of Dogs
16. Hopes for Dogs
59
65
71
75
89
111
125
133
141
APPENDIX.
A. Lenormant on Ancient Egyptian Dogs
C German Poems on Dogs
lol
155
THE FKIEND OF MAN;
AND HIS FEIENDS-THE POETS.
PAKT I.
Wht %ntunt maxlh.
CHAPTER I .—INTROD UCTOEY.
'E are told by Evolutionists that the human eye
is an organ which, — like the too celebrated little
negress, — was not "made" but " growed."
Eyes were once, I understand, only the
thinner and more sensitive membranes of a part of the
heads of those primaeval creatures of whom we are told —
" Boneless and eyeless they wallowed, in depths of
unsearchable seas.
Blindly were caught or were swallowed, half sentient
of hunger and ease;"
before the fortunate epoch when
" In the day's high meridian, the hour of the fulness of time
Came forth the Elect, — the Ascidiau, from the conflict
of sea and of slime."
B 2
O THE FEIEND OF MAN.
Then, milleniums later, came the big horny eyes of the
ichthyosaur ; and so on at last to those far-seeing optics
of modern man, those lovely orbs of modern woman,
wherein, as Shelley tells us,
" whoso gazes.
Faints, entangled in their mazes ; "
a very long way indeed from the jelly-fish and the
ichthyosaurus. Now, assuming this pedigree of eyes to
be historical, Ave may profitably compare those dim,
pristine organs of our invertebrate progenitors with
our own : and say that, as the one is to the other,
so are the mental eyes of the million, ("mostly fools")
matched with those of the few mortals who have been
endowed with the glorious insight of the Poet. The
Poet is named the " Creator," but is he not, surely,
much more the Perceiver ? AVhile other men pass along
thejroad^ between the cradle and the grave as if in a
dull November fog, he traverses it in an April day
of sunshine and showers, wherein every tree and blade
of grass glitters in the light, every bird carols on the
bough, every cloud which sweeps over the blue Heaven
brings emotion. Compared with the obtuse perceptions
wherewith we, creatures of common clay, behold the pomp
of Nature and the lot of Man, he looks on all things
with an eagle's eye, and sees even the homely English
landscape as in the clear radiance of an Italian day, when
" Earth shines out like an emerald set
In the diamond atmosphere."
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 9
As one who was herself a real poet, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning says : —
" The poet hath the child's sight iu his breast,
And sees all neiv. What oftenest he has viewed
He views with the first glory."
These things being so, he who desires to form a
judgment of any object in Nature, or of any action
or passion of man, ought to go in the first instance
to the Poets, and learn what they have taught and felt
concerning it. As Joubert said of them, " lis doivent
etre la grande etude du philosophe qui veut connaltre
I'homme."" They will show their subject to him from
difi'erent sides, in different, perhaps even opposite,
aspects, even as the same landscape appeared to Crabbe's
traveller — bright when his own mood was gay, and
dreary and dismal when he was desponding. But they will
each and always, (if they be true poets) show something
more than he could perceive with his own unaided vision ;
and if he think fit to correct their views later by the help
of Science, he will know something further and deeper about
the matter in question than Science alone could ever have
taught him. By no means must he reverse the process and go
to Science first and Poetry last. As well dissect a woman in
the dead-house, and attempt afterwards to paint her portrait.
To carry out this principle into one small department of
observation, I intend in the following pages to examine
(so far as my limited erudition may permit) the thoughts
of Poets concerning Dogs.
10 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
There is just now in the world, if I do not mistake,
something like a conspiracy, (having its headquarters
between the foci of the Rue d'Ulm in Paris, and the
Brown Institute in London), to make our poor canine
friends dreaded, disliked and despised. I shall not dwell
on this disagreeable phase of human ingratitude, but
begin at once to show that if men of Science, blinded
over their microscopes, see in Landseer's " Member of
the Humane Society," and in " Grey Friar's Bobby "
only so much bone and tissue " valuable for purposes
of research," the Poets, who resemble for lucid vision
the " young-eyed cherubim," behold in those humble
forms, Courage, Patience, Faithfulness unto death and after
death, — qualities than which the loftiest soul, enthroned in
the "human form divine" hath none nobler. It is to
despise thoic to despise the dog who manifests them ; —
and this is exactly what, (it is to be feared) these wise
fools and foolish wise men are doing at this day.''
Let us begin at the beginning. What are the earliest
literary and artistic traces of the relationship between dog
and man ?•{■ We may pursue them in the following chapters.
* In a recent paper whicli attracted some notice, on the
Great Bog Superstition, the writer, with infinite simj^licity, saj's
" The dog's affection for his master, the anxiety to ho con-
stantly with and to be noticed and caressed by him, the
impatience at his absence, and grief at his loss, and the courage
to defend him and his house and his belongings from strangers —
this affection of which we are accustomed to think so highly,
regarding it as something unicjue in Nature, is in reality a very
THE FKIEND OF MAN. 11
S7iiall and very low thing ; and by ' low ' is here meant common
ill tlie animal world, for it exists in a great many, probably in
a majority, of Mammalian brains. Nor is it confined to jMani-
malians," etc.— Macmillan' s Magazine, April, 1889.
So, in the scale of Science, the fact that Love and Fidelity
are "common" in Nature (God be praised! so they are), makes
them " small " and " low." Only something which affords
scope for the zoologist's iuquisitiveness as an exception to the
Divine order of Nature may be '"great" or "high." This
•attack on dogs reminds us of Schopenhauer's biting epigram : —
" Wundern darf es mich nicht dass Manche die Hunde verleuiudeii
Demi es beschamet zu oftleider den Menschen der Hund."
t I am indebted for the following Egyptian lore to the great
kindness of Miss Amelia B. Edwards, Hon. Sec. of the valuable
Egyjjt Exploration Society. Also in the course of this little work,
I shall be largely aided by the quotations most kindly given me by
Mr. W. Rawnsley, of Park Hill School, Lyndhurst ; Rev. Philip
Wicksteed, Mrs. de Morgan, Mrs. H. R. Haweis, Mrs. Owen Wister,
Madame Lembcke, of Copenhagen, and Mdlle. Giesse of Weilburg.
Some spirited translations from the German are by Miss Monica
Mangan, and for many of the less known American pieces I am
indebted to a charming little volume. Voices for the Speechless, —
Selections by Abraham Firth. Boston : Houghton and Miflin. 1886.
1 vol., Crown 8vo., p. 373,
CHAPTER IL
THE DOG IX AXCIEXT EGYPT.
fy\^ GYPT affords proof positive from her Monuments
E^^^^Drf^N tliat in remotest ages the Dog was th« friend and
companion of Kings, both in the chase and at
home. The information which follows is
extracted from a paper by Dr. Borde, published in the
Transactions of the Biblical Arc7t(Vo(officaI Societi/, Vol. IV.,
on the Tablet of King Antefaa II. (or, according to Maspero,
Enty IV.), who reigned about 3800 B.C.
The Tablet is from the King's tomb near Thebes ; and
represents him as if addressing a god. He is accom-
panied by four dogs, three in front of him one above
another, and the fourth between his legs. Each dog has
a collar round his neck. The first dog is called " The
(Ion Bahahtia, that is to saij Mahut." The name is
accompanied by the determinative of a gazelle, and
means the leucoryx, or white antelope. The dog has
pendant ears, and resembles a fox-hound. Dogs of
the same kind, and white, are said to be found in
Nubia to the present day. They also appear as tributes
of Easley (Ethiopia) to Thothmes III., and Barneses II. ,
and are depicted in the tomb of Bekmasa, at Thebes.
14 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
There can be do doubt that this clog was a kind of
hound, and used for purposes of hunting. This is the
dog mentioned in the " Abbot " papyrus as the one by which
the tablet of the King was distinguished. It was probably
the most celebrated of the King's dogs, and by its name
and peculiarity enabled the tomb to be at once recognised.'''
The second dog bears the name of "Abakaru." It has
a pointed nose, upright ears, and curled tail. It is the
oldest kind of dog seen on the monuments, appearing at
the time of Cheops of the IVth dynasty, and called by some
the Khufu dog. In the tombs of that period he appears
as a house-dog attached to his master's chair, and there
is one under the chair of an officer of the Xllth dynasty.
Another is seen at the foot of an officer of the
IVth dynasty, who goes out with it to the fields. Similar
dogs are constantly seen in the tombs of the Old Empire,
and were used in small packs, as many as four being
represented, held by leashes round the neck. According
to Youatt it is a dog not unlike the old Talbot-houud.
* In the exaniiuatiun made in tlie lOtli year of Raiiieses IX.
of the tombs violated by robbers, one of the principal tombs
investigated was that of Autefaa of the Xlth dynasty. The
passage reads : —
" The tomb of the King of Upper Egypt, Son of the Sun,
Autefaa the Living, which is North of the temple of Amen-
hotep I. the Living, of tlic forecourt. His tomb placed in it is
damaged. Its tablet is placed before it. There is a figure of the
King, standing on the tablet, with his dog between his legs, it is
called Bahakaa. Examined on tliat day, it was found uninjured."
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 15
The third clog is a kind of mastiff, and was probably-
used for the chase of larger animals, as it has a large
collar of coiled rope about its neck to protect it from
their claws. It is not represented so early as the
lYth dynasty, and was probably an Indian or Ethiopian
dog. It resembles in type the large hounds seen in the
Assyrian sculptures. It does not appear to have been
used as a house-dog.
The fourth dog closely resembles the Dalmatian hound,
and has feminine indications to its name. It is rarely, if
ever, represented in hunting scenes and was not indigenous.
That Antefaa (Entef) was attached to the chase is
evident, for the dogs are all varieties of hounds used for
that purpose by the Egyptians. At the time of Cheops,
an officer, named Anten, held, among other employ-
ments, that of " Xem iiw," or " Xerp me,'" with the
determinative of a man holding a dog. It may be
intended to express " Master of Hounds."
I beg to call attention to the fact that these Pharaonic
dogs, of nearly sixty centuries ago, had each a name of
his own; — a name considered to be important enough to
be engraved on his royal master's magnificent tomb.
Only a creature to whom a certain value is attached, and
whose personality is recognised, is ever given a name.
To this day among the Ostiaks no woman has risen to
such importance as to possess one ; but is politely
referred to, when it is necessary to call or allude to
16 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
her, as " Old One,'" or " Black One," or " Short One,"
as the case may be. In England few people trouble them-
selves to find a name for the "harmless, necessarj'
cat"; and in Wales the sheep dogs, whose name is
legion, are all " Motts " or " Scotts " or " Perros," just
as their masters are all Joneses or Williams, or
Roberts.'''
In view of this parsimony of nomenclature how weighty
is the evidence in favour of the high importance at the
Court of Egypt five thousand years ago, of the Dogs
named " Bahakaa " and " Abakaru " ! f
Thus, if the ancient Egyptians did not, so far as we
know, compose actual Poems on Dogs, they at least valued
* A dog introduced by chance into tlic country from England,
and still allowed to bear the name of " Nelson," was, in conse-
quence, so remarkable, that his master, (whom we m:iy safely call
Mr. Jones), was generally spoken of in the neighbourhood as
" Mr. Jones-Xelson," just as other Mr. Joneses were known as
" Mr. Jones-Cross-foxes " or " Mr. Jones-Blue-Lion " from hereditary
or other connections with public-houses bearing those names.
Quite recently the present writer having christened a pnppy
" Gwiwair," (AVelsh for "Squirrel" — pronounced "Wiwa") and
given it to a respectable Welsh family, who might have been
expected to accept thankfully a new Welsh name, — w-as informed a
week later that the puppy was " a great pet and so they had called
him ' Perro ' " — like at least forty thousand other dogs in the
Principality.
t In Lenormant's Animaiix DomCKtiquex in the Eecherches sur
riJistoire dcs Premidres CiviUsations, there is a long and elaborate
classification of all the different kinds of dogs which appear on the
THE FRIEND OF JIAN. 17
them exceedingly ; and immortalised them in art in their
imperishable sculptures. They further introduced one of
them at all events as a principal character into
a Romance which is a prose poem of the Arabian
XigJits order, included by M. Maspero in his Contcs
Ef/yptienncs, (Lea Littcratxires Populairc>>, Tome IV.),
assigning to it the date of the XXth dynasty or
about 1400 B.C. This tale which is called " The Pke-
DESTiNED Prince " begins (in the vein of so many
romances of the Eastern and Western "World) with a
King who has no son, but prays the gods to bestow
one upon him. So much interest attaches to a bit of
pure literature of such enormous antiquity in its original
simple form, and we may so nearly classifj^ this one, faute de
Egyptian moimments. '" Prehistoric inrestigatious," Leuormant
says, " have jji-oved the Dog to have been in every part of the
world, the first auinial made by Man his companion and servant,
and we need not therefore be surprised in sach an ancient centre
of civilisation as Egy^Jt, to see the Dog appear in the oldest
monuments, — that is to say at least uj) to 4000 B.C. The Dog,
as the domestic animal par eccellence, tilled already, even as he
does now, the role of habitual inmate and favom-ite of the house,
and the constant companion of the sportsman and the shepherd.
On these most ancient monuments we already find the portraits
of several varieties of dog cbaracteristically distinct, already
employed in different functions, and evidently bred with care on
purjjose for each use. The greater number of these varieties of
dogs represented on the Egyptian tombs exist still in that
country or in the neighbouring lands." M. Leuormant describes
at length each of these four breeds. — See Apjiendix A.
18 THE FRIEND OF MAN,
mieux, as the earliest Poem on a Dog, that I shall
quote M. Maspero's translation in extenso : —
" II y avait une fois un roi ;\ qui ne naissait pas
d'enfant mkle. Son coeur en fut tout attriste, et il
demancla un garcon aux Dieux de son temps. lis decre-
terent de lui en faire naitre un, . . . . Yoici que naquit
un enfant mi'ile. Quand les Hathors vinrent pour lui
destiner un destin, elles dn-ent, ' Qu'il meure par le
crocodile, on par le serpent, voire par le chien.' Quand
les gens qui etaient avec I'enfant I'entendirent, ils
I'allerent dire a 8a Majeste, qui en eut le coour tout
attriste. Sa Majeste lui fit construire une maison elevee
sur la montagne, garnie d'hommes et de toutes les
bonnes choses du logis du roi, car I'enfant n'en sortait
pas. Et quand I'enfant fut grand il monta sur la
terrasse de sa maison, et apergut un chien, qui marchait
derriere un homme qui cheminait stir la route. II dit
u son page, qui etait avec lui : ' Qu'estce que marche
derriere I'homme qui cheminc sur la route ? ' Le page
lui dit : ' C'est un chien ! ' L'enfant lui dit : ' Qu'on
ni'en apporte un tout pareil ! ' Le page alia le redire a
Sa Majeste, et Sa Majeste dit : ' Qu'on lui amene un
jeune chien couraut, de peur que son coeur ne s'afflige ! '
Et voici, on lui amene un chien."
Grown up, the prince sends word to his father :
*' AUons, pourquoi ('tre comme les faineants? Puisque
je suis destine a trois destinees facheuses, n'agirai-je jamais
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 19
selon ma volonte ? Quant a Dien, qu'il agisse a sa
volonte ! " On ecoute tout ce qu'il disait, on lui donna
toute sorte d'armes ; on lui donna aussi son chien pour
le suivre, on le transporte a la cote orientale, on lui dit,
" Ah ! va ou tu desii-es ! "
So the Prince travelled incorinito, to Naharanna (northern
Syria) where the king of the country had an only child,
a daughter. " Or, lui ayant construit une maison dont les
70 fenetres etaient eloignees du sol de 70 coude'es, il se
fit amener tous les enfants des princes du pays de Khas
(la Palestine et la Coele-Syrie), et il leur dit, ' Celui qui
atteindra la fenetre de rna fille, elle lui sera donnee pour
femme ! '
The Prince of Egypt, still incognito, becomes very
friendly with these other young princes, and after many
days, "II dit aux princes: — 'Que faites vous done ici ? '
lis lui dirent : ' Nous passons notre temps a faire ceci :
nous nous envolons, et celui qui atteindra la fenetre de
la fille du prince de Naharanna, on la lui donnera pour
femme.' II leur dit, ' S'il vous plait je conjurerai les
dieux, et j'irai m'envoler avec vous.' " For some days
the prince watched their attempts, and the princess
watched him. At last — " Le prince s'en alia pour
s'envoler avec les enfants des chefs, et il atteignit la
fenetre de la fille du chef de Naharanna, elle le baisa, et
I'embrassa."
The king of Naharanna, being told of this success, is
angry when he learns that the successful candidate is not
20 THE FRIEND OF IMAN.
of royal blood, but the princess loves him, and threatens
to kill herself if he is not left to her.
" Or, apres les jours eurent passe la-clessus, le jeune
homme dit a sa femme, ' Je suis predestine a trois
destins : le crocodile, le serpent, ou le chien.' Elle lui
dit : ' Qu'on tue le chien qui t'appartient.' II lui dit,
* S'il te plait, je ne tuerai pas mon chien, que j'ai eleve
quand il etait petit ! ' Elle craignit pour son mari beau-
coup, beaucoup, et elle ne le laissa plus sortir seul
Et ou conduisit le prince vers la terre d'Egypte, pour
s'y promener a travers le paj's. Or voici le crocodile
du fleuve sortit, et il vint au milieu du bourg, ou
etait le prince. On I'enferma dans uu logis, oil il y avait
un geant. Le geant ne laissait point sortir le crocodile,
et quand le crocodile dormait, le geant sortit pour se
promener. Et quand le soleil se levait le geant rentra;t
dans le logis, et cela tons les jours, pendant uu inter-
valle d'un mois et deux jours.
" Et apres que les jours eurent passe la-dessus, le prince
resta pour so divertir dans sa maison. Quand la nuit
vint, le prince se concha sur sa natte et le sommeil
s'empai'a de ses membres Quand un serpent sortit
de son trou, pour mordre le prince voici sa femme etait
aupres de lui, mais non couchee. Alors les servantes
donnerent du lait au serpent ; il en but, il s'enivra, il
resta couche, le ventre en I'air, et la femme le fit
perir avec des coups de sa pique. On reveilla le mari,
qui fut saisi d'ctonuemcnt ; et elle lui dit : ' A^ois ! Ton
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 21
Dieu t'a donne un de tes sorts entre tes mains, il te
donnera les autres.'
" Et apres que les jours eurent passe la-dessus, le
prince sortit pour se promener dans le voisinage de son
domaine, et cotnme il ne sortait jamais seul, voici son
chien derriere lui. Son chien prit le champ pour pour-
suivre du gibier, et lui se mit a courir derriere son
chien. Quand il fat arrive au fleuve, il descendit vers
le bord du fleuve, a la suite de son chien, et alors sortit
le crocodile, et I'entraina vers I'endroit on etait le geant.
Oelui-ci sortit, et sauva le prince, alors le crocodile, dit
au prince : ' Ah ! moi, je suis ton destin qui te
poursuit. Quoi que tu fasses, tu seras ramene sur nion
chemin, a moi, et au geant. Or, vois ! je vais te laisser
aller : si le . . . . tu sauras que mes enchantements ont
triomphe, et que le geant est tue, et si tu vois que le
geant est tue, tu verras ta mort.' Et quand la terre se fut
eclairee, et qu'un second jour fut, lorsque vint "
" La proph^tie du crocodile," says M. Maspero, " est trop
mutilee pour que je puisse en garantir le sens exact. On
devine seulement que le monstre pose a son adversaire une
dilemma fatal : ou le prince remplira une certaine condition,
et alors il vaincra le crocodile, ou il ne la remplira pas, et
alors ' il verra la mort.' La fin du recit n'est pas
difficile a restituer. Tous les lecteurs de contes la devinent.
Le prince triomphe du crocodile; mais le chien, dans
I'ardeur de la lutte, blesse mortellement son maitre, et
accomplit, sans le vouloir, la prediction des Hathors."
c
22 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
It is certainly curious to find in this piece of imagina-
tive literature (if we may not call it a philosophical
romance) a forestalling, by 31 centuries, of the leading
idea of Dr. Johnson's Rasselas ; namely, the sequestra-
tion of a Prince, in a Happy Valley among the
mountains of Abyssinia, (or thereabouts !). As there are
no mountains in Egypt, the old Egyptian novelist must
have imagined his King taking his son for safety far up
the Nile, and there leaving him in a paradisiacal seclusion
very similar to that of Johnson's hero.
The Greek historians fully recognised the importance
which the Egyptians attached to dogs. Diodorus, in the
delightful old classic cart-before-the-horse style of ex-
planation, refers the fact to the usefulness of certain
dogs who guided Isis when she sought for the body of
Osiris ; a myth obviously devised by a dog-loving nation,
Avhich would never have sprung up among dog-des-
pisers like the Jews. Plutarch, however, tells us that
the foolish beasts in later ages forfeited their religious
pretensions by committing the deadly sin of eating Apis
after Cambyses had slain that bovine deity. Other car-
nivorous animals, who had likewise enjoyed opportunities
for devouring the sacred veal, were too pious to touch
a morsel of it ; but the dogs unhappily succumbed to
the temptation, and thenceforth fell from their high
estate in the temples of Egypt.
CHAPTER III.
DOGS IN ANCIENT PERSIA.
'ASSING from the Egyptians to the Persians
of old we reach the cHmax of cynophily, —
indeed, I might say of cynolatria ; for the
position given to dogs in Mazdiesnan legis-
lation, the extravagant penalties assigned to the offences
of killing, starving, or even frightening them when with
young, obviously betray the survival in Zoroastrianism of
the same sort of mystic sentiment towards a particular
animal which we find exhibited by modern Hindoos
towards cows, and by, Red Indians towards the bear, the
eagle, or whatever creature is adopted by the tribe as its
Totem. The Poet, Law-giver, whosoever he was— Zara-
thrustra or another, — who composed the Vendidad portion
of the Zendavesta, was evidently imbued, not only with
tenderness and sympathy for dogs (of which he exhibits
pretty touches in describing, as we shall see, the
feelings of a dog who sees men eat and receives no
share of the feast), but also with a religious notion that
the Dog was the peculiar gift of Ahura-Mazda to man ;
c 2
24 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
designed by the Good Creator to be bis protector and
friend. It must be remembered that Zoroastrianism was
essentially a religion of Civilisation, especially insisting
on the merits of agriculture. The Dog, whose subju-
gation, as Cuvier remarks, is " the most complete and
most useful conquest that man has gained in the
animal world," — one " perhaps necessary for the estab-
lishment of the dominion of mankind over the whole
animal creation," — was naturally regarded by these early
apostles of "Culture" (in all senses) as an object, not
merely of affectionate care, but of respect. What the
Horse is to the Arab, the Dog was to the ancient Fire-
Worshipper, with something of mystery added perhaps
by the belief in the immortality of the Dog, who, after
death, was believed to go to the water and become a
Water-dog, — i.e., an Otter.
I can only give a brief resume of the two Far-
gards XIII. and XIV. of the Vendidad which are devoted
to the subject of dogs. After a .preliminary discussion
of the Dog of Ormusd and the Dog of Ahriman (who are
not Dogs at all, but respectively the Hedgehog and the
Tortoise), we come to the true dog, Canis Ftimiliaris, —
and are told Farg. XIII. II., "Whosoever shall smite
either a shepherd's dog, or a House Dog, or a Trained
(Hunting) Dog, his soul, while passing to the othe
world shall flee amid louder howling and fiercer pursuing
than the sheep does when the wolf rushes upon it in
the lofty forest. No soul will come and meet his de-
THE FKIEND OF MAN. 25
parting soul and help it throagh the howls and pursuit
in the other world ; nor will the dogs which keep the
Kinvat Bridge help his departing soul."
Further penalties are assigned for wounding or mutila-
ting dogs, and 800 stripes are allotted for smiting a
shepherd's dog so that it " gives up the ghost and the
soul parts from the body." Giving bad (poisoned) food
to a dog is the same offence as offering it to a man.
And here is genuine sympathy with a dog : (28) " For
it is the dog of all the creatures of the Good Spirit who
most quickly decays with age while not eating near eating
people, and watching good things none of which it re-
ceives. Bring ye unto him milk and fat with meat ; this
is the right food for the dog." And here is a practical
rule from the Saddar (31) which we commend to those
numerous friends who sternly rebuke us if we happen
to offer a little casual refreshment to any dog under
the dinner table : " Whenever one eats bread one
must put aside three mouthfuls and give them to the
dog ; for among all the poor, there is none poorer than
the dog."
The Vendidad goes on to dictate the treatment of mad
dogs (which are to be tied to a post), and the proper
punishment of dogs which run sheep and bite men ; and
then there occurs a burst of poetry in the midst of all
this quaint ultra-Levitical legislation.
" VI. The Dog, Spitama Zarathustra ! I, Ahura-
Mazda, have made ; self-clothed and shod, watchful,
26 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
wakeful, sharp of tooth, born to take his food from
man, and to watch over man's goods. I, Ahura-Mazda
have made the dog, strong of body against the evil doer,
watchful over your goods when he is of sound mind.
And whosoever shall awaken at his voice neither shall
the thief nor the wolf steal anything without his being
warned. The wolf shall be smitten and torn to pieces.
He is driven away — he flees away."
"If those two dogs of mine (Ahura-Mazda speaks)
the Shepherd's Dog and the House Dog approach the
house of any of my faithful people, let them never be
turned away."
•' For no house could subsist on tbe earth made by
Ahura but for those two dogs of mine, the Shepherd's
Dog and the House Dog." — Sacred Books of tlu; Knat,
Vol. IV., p. 163.
Beside these charming passages there are some tedious
ones allotting quite impossible penalties of innumerable
stripes to offences against dogs ; and especially against
the Water Dog or Otter, concerning which there ^s the
curious superstition already mentioned, that it embodies
the souls of departed earthly dogs. And there is also
(Farg. XIII., 44) a glorification of the Dog for having
eight characters ; that of a Priest, a Warrior, a Hus-
bandman, a Strolling Singer, a Thief, a Wild Beast, a
Courtezan, and a Child. The resemblance to each of
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 27
these is elaborately traced, ami finally we are told that
a Dog resembles a Child because :
" He loves sleejnug like a child ;
He is fearful aud runs away like a child ;
He babbles like a child ; "
" He goes ou all fours like- a child ;
In all these things he is like a child."
Truly so ! aud also in his faith and obedience and
simplicity, he is like a child.
CHAPTER IV.
DOGS IN ANCIENT INDIA.
'EYOND ancient Iran we reach ancient India,
and there, in the heart of the great
Sanscrit IHad, the Mahahharata — portions of
which are probably of as high antiquity as
the Homeric poems — we find the most astonishing tribute
perhaps ever paid to the claims of a faithful dog. Sir
Edwin Arnold is the author of the following beautiful
translation of this wonderful episode.
The hero of the Epic is described as pursuing his
solitary pilgrimage to the Swarga Mount (Paradise),
followed only by his dog. His brothers and his wife
have died by the way, and he goes on, —
" Walking with his face set for the Mount
And the hound followed him, only the hound."
Then Sakra (Indra), the God of the Sky, suddenly
appears and invites him to ascend in his chariot straight
to heaven. Yudhishthira, the hero, remembers his
brothers and his wife, and first prays that they may
30 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
be taken with him, then that his clog may be allowed
to accompany him : —
"O thousand eyed! O Lord of all the gods,
Give that iny brothers come with me who fell.
Not without them is Swarga sweet to me.
She too, the dear and kind and queenly, — she
Whose perfect virtue Paradise must crown, —
Grant her to come with us ! Dost thou grant this ?
" The God replied : ' In heaven thou shalt see
Thy kinsmen and the queen — these will attain —
And Krishna. Grieve no longer for thy dead,
Thou chief of men ! their mortal covering stripped,
They have their places; but to thee the gods
Allot an unknown grace : thou shalt go up
Living and in thy form, to the immortal homes.'
" But the king answered: 'O thou Wisest One,
Wlio know'st what was, and is, and is to be,
Still one more grace ! This hound hath ate with me.
Followed me, loved me : must I leave him now ? '
" ' Monarch,' spake ludra, ' thou art now as we.
Deathless, divine ; thou art become a god ;
Glory and power and gifts celestial.
And all the joys of heaven are thine for aye :
What hath a beast with these '? Leave here thy liound !
" Yet Yudhishthira answered : ' O Most High
thousand-eyed and Wisest! can it be
That one exalted filiould seem pitiless ?
Nay, let me lose such glory : for its sake
1 would not leave one liviu" thing I loved.'
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 31
" Then sternly Indra sj)ake : ' He is unclean,
And into Swarga such shall enter not.
Bethink thee, Dharmaraj ! quit now this beast !
That which is seemly is not hard of heart.'
*' Still he replied : ' 'Tis written that to spurn
A suppliant equals in offence to slay
A twice-born ; wherefore, not for Swarga's bliss
Quit I Mahendra ! this poor clinging dog, —
So without any ho]pe or friend save me.
So wistful, fawning for my faithfulness,
So agonized to die, unless I help.
Who among men was called steadfast and just.'
*' Quoth Indra : ' Nay ! the altar-flame is foul
Where a dog passeth ; angry angels sweep
The ascending smoke aside, and all the fruits
Of offering, and the merit of the prayer
Of him whom a hound toucheth. Leave it here
He that will enter heaven must enter pure.
Why dids't thou quit thy brethren on the way.
And Krishna, and the dear-loved Draupadi,
Attaining, firm and glorious, to this Mount
Through perfect deeds, to linger for a brute ?
Hath Yudhishthira vanquished self, to melt
With one poor passion at the door of bliss '?
Stay'st thou for this, who dids't not stay for them, —
Draupadi, Bhima?'
" But the king yet spake
' 'Tis known that none can hurt or help the dead.
They, the delightful ones, who sank and died,
82 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Following my footsteps, could not live again
Though I had turned, — therefore I did not turn ;
But could help profit, I had turned to help.
There be four sins, O Sakra, grievous sins :
The first is making suppliants despair,
The second is to slay a nursing wife,
The third is spoiling Brahmans' goods by force,
The fourth is injuring an ancient friend.
These four I deem but equal to one sin,
If one, in coming forth from woe to weal.
Abandon any meanest comrade then.'
" Straight as he spake, brightly great Indra smiled ;
Vanished the hound, and in its stead stood there
The Lord of Death and Justice, Dharma's self !
Sweet were the words which fell from those dread lips.
Precious the lovely praise : ' O thou true king !
Thou that dost bring to harvest the good seed
Of Pandu's righteousness ; thou that hast ruth
As he before, on all which lives ! — O Sou,
I tried thee in the Dwaita wood, what time
They smote thy brothers, bringing water ; then
Thou prayed'st for Nakula's life — tender and just —
Hear thou my word ! Because thou did'st not mount
This car divine, lest the poor hound be sheut
Who looked to thee, lo ! there is none in heaven
Shall sit above thee, King ! — Bharata's son,
Enter thou now to the eternal joys,
Living and in thy form. Justice and Love
Welcome thee, Monarch! thou shalt throne with them!"
I cannot leave this marvellous episode without remarking
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 33
how completely we may recognize in it the true Aryan
mind ; that mind which, thousands of years afterwards and
thousands of miles away, under a Christian civilization,
created Fauat and the Arme Scele, and the Pih/rim's Pro-
gress. How Bunyan-like are the ideas of Death, dogtjhKj
the hero's steps through the endless journey to the
Celestial Country of the Swarga ; and of the Lord of
the Sky coming in a chariot of fire to carry the
*' Faithful" one to paradise! Nothing, however, in
any literature, ancient or modern, known to me affords
any parallel to the wonderful moral conception of a Duty
of Fidelity owed, — not by a Dog to Man, but — by Man
to his Dog ; a duty calling on him for the sacrifice even of
beatitude itself. We may smile in our smug Utilitarianism
at such an idea as this, but the poet of the Mahab-
harata was one of those Seers of whom I have spoken,
who see further than other men into Nature and into the
springs of human action; and he must have recognized
that fidelity manifested to those far beneath us is more
noble, more divine, and affords a more perfect evidence of
Goodness than the exhibition of it to our equals or
superiors. It is this faithfulness, so complete as to be
kept even with his dog and in face of the greatest
conceivable temptation to fail in it, which constitutes
the climax of the Indian hero's virtue, and for which
the God of Justice praises him, and bids him " enter
the eternal joys."
CHAPTEE V.
DOGS IN JUD^^A.
^J^^^rajS HE question is rather a painful one : How
~ ' is it, since clogs were so highly valued in
ancient Egypt, Persia, and India, that the
Jews, who derived so many customs and
ideas from the first two countries, seem always
to have despised and hated dogs ? That they were
not incapable of tenderness to animals is clear from
Nathan's parable. The lamb that " lay in the poor
man's bosom," and " was unto him as a daughter,"
was a real " Pet " in the modern acceptation of the
term. But, in the whole splendid literature of Pales-
tine, the only mention of dogs which is not contemptuous,
is the bare mention in the Apocrypha that Tobit's '^'- dog
accompanied his master.
* The chapter which contains this friendly reference to a clog
owes its retention, I have been told, in the English Church Lec-
tionary, to the desire of the ablest Bishop of his day, to leave
that reference for public instruction, when the Lectionary was
revised.
36 THE FRIEND OP MAN.
The word "Dog" occurs 14 times in the canonical
books of the Bible, and "Dogs" 22 times; and of all
these three dozen references to the animal not one is
friendly. His name is made to stand, 1st, for False
Guides, Isaiah Ixvi., 10 ("They are all dumb dogs");
(xi.) (" For they are greedy dogs which can never have
enough"); Phil, iii., 2 ("Beware of dogs, beware of evil
workers"). 2nd, for Persecutors, Ps. xii., 16 (" For dogs
have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me"). 3rd, for Beprohates, Matt, vii., 6 ("Give
not that which is holy to the dogs "). 4th, for Gentile
outsiders, Matt, xv., 26 ("It is not meet to take the
children's bread and cast it to dogs"). And 5th and
finally, Ps. xxi., 20, for the Devil himself ("Deliver my
darling from the power of the Dog").
What a singular contrast is here to the friendly and
playful enumeration of the dog's eight characters which
we have just taken from the Zoroastrian books !
If a Jew of old wished to say something offensive or
humiliating, it was apparently his invariable custom to
drag in a reference to a dog. ' ' Am I a dog that thou
shouldest do this thing ? " is said to have been Sydney
Smith's clerical reply to Landseer's proposal to paint
his picture ; but it was the ordinary habit of the ancient
Jew, and also ancient (and perhaps modern ?) Philistine
to do the same when it was desired to exhibit indigna-
tion or contempt. Goliath (1 Sam. xvii., 43) said unto
David, " Am I a dog that thou comest to me with
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 37
staves?" David asked Saul (1 Sam. xxiv., 14): "After
whom is the King of Israel come out, after whom dost
thou pursue ? After a dead dog, after a flea ! " Abner
(2 Sam. iii., S), being very wroth with Ishbosheth, says
to him, " Am I a dog's head which against Judah do
show kindness ? " etc. Mephibosheth (wishing appa-
rently to demean himself as basely as possible) bowed
to his father's bosom friend, David, and said
(2 Sam. ix., 8), " What is thy servant that thou
shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am ? "
When Shimei cursed David, his courtier Abishai observed
(2 Sam. xvi., 9) : " Why should this dead dog curse my
lord the King 9 Let me go over, I pray thee, and take
ofi" his head"! When Elisha had told Hazael the evil
he would work in Israel when he became King, Hazael
repHed (2 Kings viii., 13), " But what— is thy servant a
dog that he should do this great thing ? " The author
of the LIX. Psalm, praying Jehovah to awake to " bind
all the heathen and be not merciful to any wicked
transgressors," proceeds to compare these persons to
dogs in a somewhat inexplicable way: "They return
at evening, they make a noise like a dog (the Prayer
Book says ' iirin like a dog'), and go round about the
city." (See Proverbs xxvi., 11.) A fool returning to
his folly is compared to a dog, and the same unpleasant
simile is quoted by St. Peter (2 Peter ii., 22) as a "true
proverb " — touching converts who have fallen back into
iniquity. Even when a living dog is said to be "better"
D
38 ■ THE FRIEND OF MAN.
than something else, he has evidently been selected as the
most contemptible of all living things to be contrasted
with the dead lion (Eccl. ix., 4). The dreadful fate
adjudged to Jezebel was to be " eaten of dogs " — and to
Ahab, tbat the dogs " licked his blood." Finally even in
Heaven there is a formal exclusion of dogs (Eev. xxii., 15),
"For without are dogs and sorcerers," etc.
In short it is clear that, though the ancient Jews
could not dispense with dogs, and that they existed pretty
numerously in Palestine (as wherever else Man has dwelt
long upon the globe), the beasts were peculiarly antipathetic
to the Hebrew mind, while they were on the contrary
sympathetic to Egyptians, and to both Persian and Indian
Aryans. Ik gustibus non disputandum. There is little
use in seeking to get at the root of a prejudice like
this, which may be raised in a household or village, or
tribe, against an individual man, woman, or child,
animal, or species of animal, — by the very slightest
incident (like the kindred base sentiment of a Panic
Fear) — and goes on by the law of the " contagiousness of
the emotions " propagated from generation to generation.
Sometimes the unreasoning dislike and mistrust arises, none
can guess how, (as is the common case in incipient insanity,)
against some one whom the deranged person has hitherto
specially loved ; and then, very shortly, the myth-making
faculty, alike of the dreamer and the lunatic, supplies
some imaginary fact to explain and justify the dislike.
But it matters little Junv it arises ; the prejudice once cstab-
THE FRIEND OF 3IAN. 39
lished lives on, aucl is rarely conquered. Among our own
Anglo-Saxon zoophilist race, there are a great many quite
sane people who are uneasy, — some when a playful little
spaniel or noble old mastiff is admitted among the company ;
many more when a serene and purring cat comes rubbing
against their feet, in that arched-back, tail-exalted fashion,
which the friendly creature obviously deems an irresistible
appeal for an aflectionate caress on her exquisitely clean
fur. Needless to speak of the still more common silly
terrors of mice, rats, harmless snakes and spiders.
Some such prejudice obviously pervaded the Israelitish
tribes in Palestine with regard to Dogs ; and a very great
misfortune it has been to our poor relations of the canine
race that so it happened ! Had it but been recorded of any
eminent canonical Prophet or Apostle, as of the virtuous
(but alas ! apocryphal) Tobit, that he had a Dog which
followed him on his pious journeyings, the fate of all
the dogs in Christendom would have been improved.
D 2
CHAPTER V.
DOGS IN GliEECE.
ROM aucient Judaea, we pass to Homeric
^v^^w GrREECE, and there, in that sweet summer
dawn of the European day, with Nausieaa
and Circe and Penelope, we find dear old
Argus, — prototype of all good and faithful hounds. The
author of the Odijssei/ (or authors, if the critics will
compel us to multiply that Unity into a Centriplicity),
surely took special pains with this little episode of his
great story, — lightly as it is touched and quickly as it is
passed over. He prepared us for it in the first place,
in the previous book, by reminding us that the behaviour
of dogs to a man approaching the house of their master
is very significant, and may be at once interpreted to
reveal whether the visitor be a stranger or a friend. As
Praed in Our Vicar, conveys the notion of acquaintanceship
and welcome so delightfully through the house-dogs of
the parsonage : —
•And Don and Sauclio, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the i^arlour steps collected,
Wagged all their tails as if to say.
Our Master knows you, you're expected."
42 THE P'RIENP OF MAN.
SO Homer tells how Telemachus excited no commotion
among the Swineherd's dogs v/hen he approached the
house, because the intelligent guardians were aware he
was a friend.
" Now these twain, Odysseus and the goodly swine-
herd, within the hut had kindled a fire and were makmg
ready breakfast at the dawn, and had sent forth the
herdsmen with the droves of swine. And round Tele-
machus the hounds which love to bark, fawned and
barked not, as he drew nigh. And goodly Odysseus took
note of the fawning of the dogs, and the noise of foot-
steps fell upon his ears. Then straight he spake to
Euma^us winged words : ' Eumanis, verily some friend,
or some other of thy familiars, will soon be here, for the
dogs do not bark but fawn around, and I catch the
sound of footsteps.' While the Avord was yet on his
lips his own dear son stood at the entering of the gate."
— B. XVI.
But when Odysseus a little later approaches his long
forsjiken palace, clothed in rags, there was no dog left to
remember him after his twenty years of absence, save
only his old faithful Argus — whom we are carefully
made to understand had been very young when his
master departed for his long exile. Odysseus had,
we are told, bred the dog himself, but had " got no
joy of him for ere that (he had done so) he went to
sacred Ihos."
Now in his extreme old age the dog is made to recog-
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 43
nise the voice of Odysseus as he passes by couversing
with EumauTs/''
Here is the story of Argus as presented to us by Pope.
It is very instructive to compare it with the prose transla-
tion of the original, wherein the rougher features are pre-
served, which the "elegant" Mr. Pope had eliminated: —
ULYSSES AND ARGUS.
Thus near the gates conferring as they drew,
Argus, the dog, his ancient master knew;
* Perhaps it would have been a degree more true to nature,
though less effective for the poet's immediate purpose, if the
age-dulled senses of the i^oor brute had been represented as
gradually wakened under the touch and smell, as well as voice
of his long-lost master. The longest case of canine memory I
have ever heard of was that of a dog of my own, with whom I
had parted when she was one year old, already singularly and
tenderly attached to me. Eight years afterwards she, — 7iot liaring
seen me once in the [interval, — was sent back to me in a very
pitiable condition. She met me at first as a stranger, silently :
and I puriDosely refrained from speaking or touching her. But
presently she began to show animation and walked i-ound and
round me with quick sniffs of interrogation. Then I stooped and
caressed her, and called her bj^ her name — " Dee " ! In a moment the
poor creature sjirang up into my arms uttering a scream of
joy; and it was long before her rapture subsided into the
peaceful and devoted affection which she continued to show me
till her death five years later. Such an interval,— from one
year old to nine, — would be equivalent in a human life to that
from five years old to fifty — a gulf which probably few human
memories, and still fewer human affections, would overleap. _
44 THE FRIEND OF MAN,
He, not unconscious of the voice and tread,
Lifts to the sound his ear, and rears his head ;
Bred by Ulysses, nourish'd at his board,
But, ah ! not fated long to ijlease his lord !
To him, his swiftness and his strength were vain ;
The voice of glory call'd him o'er the main,
Till then, in every sylvan chase renown'd
With Argus ! Argus ! rung the woods around ;
With him the youth pursued the goat or fawn.
Or traced the mazy leveret o'er the lawn ;
Now left to man's ingratitude he lay
Unhoused, neglected in the public way.
He knew his lord ; he knew, and strove to meet ;
In vain he strove to crawl, and kiss his feet ;
Yet (all he could) his tail, his ears, his eyes.
Salute his master, and confess his joys.
Soft inty touch'd the mighty master's soul,
Adown his cheek a tear unbidden stole,
Stole unperceived ; he turned his head and dried
The drop humane : then thus impassion'd cried : —
" What noble beast in this abandon'd state
Lies here all helpless at Ulysses' gate '?
His bidk and beauty speak no vulgar praise ;
If, as he seems, he was in Ijcttcr days,
Some care his age deserves, or was he prized
For worthless beauty '? Therefore, now desjiised
Such dogs and men there are, mere things of state,
And always cherished by their friends, the great."
" Not Argus so (Eunneus thus rejoin'd).
But served a master of a noliler kind.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 45
Who uever, never shall behold hiui more !
Long, loug since perished on a distant shore !
Oh, had you seen him, vigorous, bold, and young,
Swift as a stag, and as a lion strong ;
Him no fell savage on the plain withstood,
None 'scaped him bosom'd in the gloomy wood ;
His eye how piercing, and his scent how true.
To wind the vapour in the tainted dew !
Such, when Ulysses left his natal coast ;
Now years unnerve him, and his lord is lost."
— Odi/.ssei/. Pope's Translation.
And here is the same tale iu the exquisite Bible-like
simplicity of Professor Butcher and Mr. Andrew Lang's
prose : —
" Thus they spake one to finother. And lo ! a hound
raised up his head and pricked his ears even where he
lay, Ai-gos, the hound of Odysseus, of the hardy heart ;
which of old himself had bred, but had got no joy of
him for ere that he went to sacred Ilios. Now in time
past the young men used to lead the hound against wild
goats and deer and hares ; but as then despised he lay
(his master being afar) in the deep dung of mules, and
mire whereof an ample bed was spread before the
doors, till the thralls of Odysseus should carry it away
to manure therewith his wide demesne. There lay the
dog Argos, full of vermin, yet even now when he was
ware of Odysseus standing by, he wagged his tail and
dropped both his ears, but nearer to his master he had
not now strength to draw."
46' THE FlUEXJ) 01' MAN,
But Odysseus looked aside and wiped away a tear
that he hid from Euma?us, and straightway he asked
him, saying :
" Eumasus, verily this is a great marvel, this hound
lying here in the dung. Truly he is goodly of growth,
but I know not certainly if he have speed with this
beaut}', or if he be comely only, like as are men's
trencher dogs that their lords keep for the pleasure of
the eye."
Then didst thou make answer, swineherd Eumaus,
"In very truth this is the dog of a man that has
died in a far land. If he were what once he was
in limb and in the feats of the chase when Odysseus
left him to go to Troy, soon wouldst thou marvel at
the sight of his swiftness and his strength. There was
no beast that could flee from him in the deep places of
the wood when he was in pursuit, for ever on a track
he was the keenest hound. But now he is holden
in an evil case, and his lord hath perished far from
his own country, and the careless Avomen took no
charge of him. Nay, thralls are no more inclined
to honest service when their masters have lost the
dominion, for Zeus of the far-borne voice, takes away
the half of a man's virtue when ■ the day of slavery
comes upon him."
Therewith he passed within the fair-lying house and
went straight to the hall, to the company of the proud
wooers. But upon Argos came the fate of black death
THE FKIEXD OF MAN. 47
even in the hour that he beheld Odysseus again in the
twentieth year." — Odi/svc;/, B. XVII.
A long interval divides the great Dog-Story of the
Homeric poem from even the slight and casual allusions to
dogs in the later Classics. Here are a few of these last.
^schylus more than once refers to house-dogs and
watch-dogs, proving that in his days, as in those of
Homer, the animals were not left masterless.
Clytemnestra compares herself (unworthy she !) to a
watch -dog :
" Then hither bid my Lord,
Beloved of Argos, to return with speed,
Arriving he will find a faithful wife
Such as he left her; watch-dog of his house,
To him devoted, hostile to his foes."
— Af/ame»i)wn (Miss Swanwick's Translation), v. 590.
The watchman reclining on the roof of the Palace
likewise compares himself to a dog :
" With head ensconced in arm, dog-like, I sleep."
Or otherwise :
" On these Atreidan roofs, dog-like, I keep."
— Ibid., line 3.
Again Clytemnestra calls her husband
"Watch-dog of the fold,
Sure forestay of the ship."
—870.
48 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Cassandra also is compared in the Chorus to a
bloodhound :
" Keen scented seems the stranger like a hound,
Aye and the blood she's tracking will be found."
—1062.
Sophocles hardly deigns to allude to dogs, and only
in the same trivial way :
In Ajax, Act i.. Scene i., Minerva speaks to Ulysses :
" I have observed thee wandering midst the tents
In search of Ajax where his station lies
At the utmost verge, measuring o'er his steps.
But late impressed; like Sjiarta's hounds of scent."
Euripides makes only slight allusions to dogs, e.;/.,
when Phaedra, lamenting her fate, cries to her Nurse :
" Bear me to the mountains — to the Avood and the
pine-forest where the hounds hunt their prey, pursuing
the dappled hinds. By heavens ! I long to cheer on the
hounds ! " — Hippobjtus, 215.
Among the philosophers of Greece were some who
were tender to dogs. Not to speak of old Diogenes, who
paid them " the supreme compliment of imitation," and
his whole school, who seem to have accepted the name
of Cynics uncomplainingly, (a title which assuredly no
Jewish Rabbi, no Sadoc or Antigonus or Hillel would
have endured for a moment) Xenophanes is recorded
to have been mercifully-minded towards ' them. In his
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 49
Focts of Greece, Sir Edwin Arnold quotes a pretty
passage respecting him — again quoted by Sir Arthur
Helps in his delightful Animtih and tJuir JMasters, p, 108.
" Going abroad one day he saw a hound was beaten sore,
Whereat his heart grew pitiful : ' Now beat the hound no
more,
Give o'er thj^ cruel blows,' he cried, ' a man's soul, yerily.
Is lodged in that same crouching beast, — I know him by
the cry.' " *
The price of a dog at Athens in the age of Pericles is
given us by Plutarch in the story of the famous dog of
Alcibiades. " Alcibiades had a marvellously fine large dog
which cost him threescore and ten miiKB (about two hundred
guineas) ; and he cut off its tail which was its chief beauty.
When his friends reproved him and told him how every
one blamed him, he fell a-laughing, and told them he had
gained that which he wanted. ' I would,' said he, ' that
the Athenians should prate of this rather than say worse
of me ' " ! What a barbarian, tm fond, was this fine
gentleman of classic Athens !
* Animals and their Masters, p. 108.
CHAPTER YII.
DOGS IX ROME.
|f^|^^i!S URNINCr to Rome we find in Virgil a few
Life Ivlff ^0^ very important allusions to dogs.
Here is one of them : —
"Mount Citluijron calls mo with a loud
voice and the hounds of Taygetus ; and Epidaurus, the
Tamer of Horses." — Georg. IH., 44.
(Virgil means that these all call to him to sing their
praises.)
Speaking of nomad shepherds of Libya, he says : —
" The African shepherd takes with him all he possesses,
his tent, his household gods, his arms, his Spartan
hound, and his Cretan quiver." — Georg. III., 84 2-4.
And here is a pretty idyllic picture taken from Homer,
wherein the companion hounds bear a part. (Evander
rising from sleep) : —
•• The gracious dawn, the vocal bird
Beneath his eaves at day-break heard,
Bid old Evander rise.
A liueu tunic he endues.
And round his feet Tyrrhenian shoes
In rustic fashion ties.
52 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
A sword he fastens to liis side,
And wears for scarf a panther's hide :
Two watch-dogs from the palace gate
Come forth and on their master wait.'""
— xEnchJ, VIII., 4G'2. (Prof. Conington's Translation.)
In Ovid we find ffinone complaining that Paris has
deserted her and saj'ing : —
" Who was wont to shew you the glades best suited
for hunting, and the rock behind which the wild beast
hid her whelps ? Often I aided yon to stretch the w^ide-
meshed hunting nets, and led the swift dogs over the
long ranges of the mountains."
Epistles, v., 13—10.
There is also in Horace a mention of dogs when the
Town Mouse's feast is disturbed by the sudden baying
of " Molossian hounds" whereby the poor country mouse
is much terrified. We may gather from this that these
Molossians, in Horace's time, were the customary house-
dogs and watch-dogs in Rome.
Lucretius says :
" Hunter's dogs also, often while sleeping gently sud-
denly extend their limbs and utter rapid barks ; sniffing
the air excitedly, as though they were pursuing the trail
of a wild beast." — Z)(' Ilrntm Natura., B. IV., line
992. 995.
* .More exactly. " aecoinjiaiiy tlieir master's steps."
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 53
(The reader will be reminded of the much despised
husband of "Amy," in Locksley Hall, of v/hom Tenny-
son tells us (in Part I., bien entendu),
" Like a dog he hunts in dreams."
" Sixttj Years After" the Squire had, no doubt, abandoned
that ungraceful habit.)
There is again another passage in Lucretius, B. V., de-
scribing the different ways in which dogs bark according
to their moods. And, again, a still prettier bit: —
" Often the faithful and caressing guardian who dwells
beneath our roof, shakes off the light slumber which lay
on his eyes, and starts to his feet, thinking he sees a
strange face and unknown features." — Lucretius, IV., 799.
Lastly, there exists an old Latin poem on Dogs, named
Cyne^/eticon, by Gratian. I have not seen it, but am
assured that, like the other classics quoted above, it
describes dogs only in their capacity as hunting and
house-guarding animals, not strictly as the " Friend of
Man."
As a summary we may observe that, when the Greek and
Latin poets alluded to dogs, they did so, not often as
favourites and companions of their master, but as examples
of vigilance or fidelity, or keenness in the chase. Their
remarks, if not affectionate, are complimentary, and never
contemptuous. On the other hand, among the thirty-six
allusions to dogs in Hebrew literature, every one, (as we
have seen), save the solitary and colourless text in Tohit,
is more or less expressive of aversion.
54 THE FEIEND OF JIAN.
The Romans seem to have been, on the whole, kind to
then- dogs ; but they had a barbarous custom, dating from
the siege of the city in B.C. 385, when the cackHng of the
geese awakened ManHus and saved the Capitol, and when,
alas ! the dogs had failed to give warning of the approach
of the enemy. The yet infantine Bation solemnly decreed
that a golden statue of a Goose (!) should every year be
carried with honour through the city, and a flock of geese
be ever after maintained at free quarters at the public
expense ; while, on the other hand, a miserable Dog
should be annually impaled on a branch of elder.'"
That aiFection for dogs was not by any means unknown
among the old Romans seems certain. There is for
example, the following beautiful illustration which I have
found in Pliny the Elder : —
"Above* all instances of the fidelity of dogs was one
which occurred in our time and which is attested in the
Acts of the Roman People, Appius Junius and P. Silius
being Consuls (A.C. 781). Titius Sabinus and his slaves
were put to death on account of Nero the son of
Germanicus. A dog belonging to one of these slaves
could neither be driven away from the prison, nor made
to leave the corpse of his master when thrown down
the Gemonian steps. Standing over it he uttered such
sad cries that a crowd of Roman citizens collected round,
and some one offered him food. The dog took the meat,
* Univ. i/i.s-f., I'ol. V. iv., ]<. 5G5.
THE FKIEND OF MAN. 55
but laid it clown beside his dead master's mouth. Even
when the body was thrown into the Tiber, he swam out
after it, and was seen endeavouring to support it as it was
carried away by the stream." — Nat. Hist. Lib., VIII., 61.
There is also the famous story of Pyrrhus' dog, which
I shall prefer to take at second-hand in the delightful
old version of Montaigne : —
" Quant a la fidelitc il u'est animal au monde traistre
au prix de I'homme. Nos histoires racontent la vive
poursuite que certaines chiens ont fait de la mort de
leurs maistres. Le roy Pyrrhus ayant rencontre un chien
qui gardoit un homme mort, et ayant entendu qu'il y
avait trois jours qu'il faisoit cet office, commanda qu'on
enterrait ce corps et mena ce chien quand et luy. Un
jour qu'il assista aux montres generales de son armee,
le chien appercevant les meurtriers de son maistre leur
courut sus avecques grands abbays et asprete de cour-
roux, et par ce premier indice achemina la vengeance de
ce meurtre qui en feut faite bientot aprez par la voye
de la Justice." — Essaia de Montnii/nc, Liv. 2, c, xii.
Montaigne goes on to tell of another dog who detected
the murderer of his master, and another who pertinaciously
followed a thief from place to place and town to town,
till the villain was arrested at last.
There is finally the most complete testimony as regards
the common feelings of men of the better sort in the
£ 2
56
THE FRIEND OF MAN.
later Eoman days towards their domestic animals, in the
well-known noble jiassage in Plutarch's Cato.
" A good man will take care of bis horses and dogs,
not only while they are young, but when they are old
and past service Many have shown particular
marks of regard in burying the dogs which they have
cherished and been fond of, and among the rest
Xanthippus of old, whose dog swam by the side of his
galley to Salamis, when the Athenians were forced to
abandon their city, was afterwards buried by his master
upon a promontory which to this day is called the
' Dof/'s Grave' We certainly ought not to treat living
creatures like shoes or household goods, which when
worn with use we throw away ; and were it only to
learn benevolence to human kind, we should be merciful
to other creatures. For my own part I would not sell
even an old ox which had labcurfd for me."— Langhorne's
Translation, p. 240.
PAKT II.
0rl&.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DOCf IN ISLAM.
i:|HilOUGHOUT Islam it would appear that
' -^ the Cat is generally more favoured than
the Dog. The choice is one wherein Mr.
Swinburne and not a few other Englishmen
and women, and perhaps the majority of the French
nation, agree. Nevertheless, though they thus (as I hold)
" Decline,
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower
heart than " —
that of a Dog, — and albeit dogs in their cities are com-
monly driven to adopt the humble profession of Street,-
scavengers under their own canine Trades-Union regula-
tions, the records of Islam are nevertheless, not without
touching little traditions concerning the true four-footed
Friend of Man.
60 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
In Mr. Alger's Eastern Poetry, there is a singular
legend in which Jesus passing through a market place
is said to have beheld a crowd gathered round a dead
dog, and jeering at its miserable appearance.
■' Look at bis torn bide," sneered a Jewish wit,
' ' You could not even cut a shoe from it ! "
And turned away. "Behold bis ears that bleed!"
A fourth chimed in: "An unclean wretch indeed!"
" He bath been banged for thieving," they all cried,
And spurned the loathsome beast from side to side.
Then Jesus standing by them in the street.
Looked at the poor, spent creature at his feet,
And bending o'er him, sj)oke unto the men :
" PmW.s- are not whiter tJtaii his teeth, -^^ and then.
The people at each other gazed, asking
"Who is this stranger i^itying this vile thing?"
Then one exclaimed with awe-abated breath,
" This surely is the Man of Nazaretli,
This must be Jesus for none else but he
Something to praise in a dead dog could see ! "
The following is the same beautiful egcnd in a poem
by Karl Gerok, freely paraphrased by Miss Mangan : —
ALL GOD'S CREATURES ARE GOOD.
Where the dark blue summer sky,
Meets the line of garden-wall.
And the burning sun full high.
Throws its radiance over all ;
In Nazareth, in that sunny street.
Misery still the sight did meet.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 61
On the stouy threshold, dead,
Cold, starved-out, amidst the glare,
Lay a dog, its lifeless head.
Glassy-eyed, with drooping hair.
And the jeering passers by,
Mocked it, going to and fro :
It could utter now no sigh.
Give no sign of by-gone woe.
Dumb in life and dumb in death,
Ill-treated as in life and lowly.
Christ saw it lying there : He said,
With gentle gaze, as it were holy, —
" The creature has its beauties, — See,
Fairer its teeth than a jDearl may be."
In everj^ creature is the trace
Of the Creator. Christ, through grace.
Could see this always, and could speak,
Well of the wretched and the weak.
In Sir Edwin Arnold's Fcarh of the Faith, there is a
still more striking Mahometan legend. (Pearl 78, The
Adultress. )
"Hast seen
The record written of Salah-ud-Deen,
The Sultan ? How he met upon a day.
In his own city on the public way,
A woman whom they led to die. The veil
Was stripped from off her weeping face, and pale
Her shamed cheeks were, and wUd her dark fixed eye,
And her lips drawn with terror at the cry
62 THE FRIEND OF JIAN.
Of the harsh people and the rugged stones
Borne in their hands to break her flesh and bones,
For the law stood that sinners such as she
Perish by stoning, and this doom must be ;
So "went the wan adultress to her death.
High noon it was, and the hot Khamseen's breath
Blew from the desert sands and parched the to'u-u.
The crows gasped, and the kine went up and down
With lolling tongues ; the camels moaned ; a crowd
Pressed with their pitchers, wrangling high and loud
About the tank ; and one dog by a well,
Nigh dead with thirst, lay where he yelped and fell,
Glaring upon the water oi;t of reach.
And praying succour in a silent sijeech.
So piteous were its ej-es. Which, when she saw
This woman from her foot her shoe did draw.
Albeit death-sorrowful ; and looping up
The long silk of her girdle, made a cup
Of the heel's hollow, and thus let it sink
Until it touched the cool black water's brink;
So filled th' embroidered shoe, and gave a draught
To the spent beast, which whined and fawned and quaffed
Her kind gift to the dregs ; next licked her hand
With such glad looks that all might understand
He held his life from her; then, at her feet
He followed close all down the cruel street,
Her one friend in that city.
But the King,
Biding within his litter, marked this thing,
And how the woman on her way to die,
Had such compassion for the misery
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 63
Of that ]parclied hound : " Take off her chain, and i^lace
The veil once more above the sinner's face,
And lead her to her house in peace! " he said,
" The law is that the people stone thee dead,
For that which thou has wrought ; but there is come
Fawning around thy feet, a witness dumb,
Not heard upon thy trial ; this brute beast
Testifies for thee, sister ! whose weak breast
Death could not make ungentle. I hold rule
In Allah's stead, who is the Merciful,
And hope for Mercy: therefore go thou free —
I dare not show less i^ity unto thee."
The moral of this beautiful story, so simply and
pathetically told by Sir E. Arnold, is very much the
same as that of the wondrous old Arabian legend of
the Gardens of Ad, the lost city in the desert, all of
whose inhabitants, save one, had been smitten for their
iniquity by the Sarsar, the ice-cold wind of death. Only
one man survived, discovered dwelling alone a thousand
years afterwards, by a prophet sent to accept his long
penitence and give him dismissal to Paradise. His
life had been spared amid the destruction of his kindred,
because he had once shown pity to a camel and released
it when left bound to die on his mother's grave.
The notion that Mercy to a beast is counted to man for
righteousness, and that the merciful do, in a special way
"obtain mercy" is, very obviously, a doctrine having its
place in the stern theology of Islam.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DOG IN SCANDINAVIA.
ETUENING from the East to the West, and
first to our own Northern ancestors, we find
the Dog from the earliest times estabhshed
as the "Friend of Man." In Petersen's
HUtorij of Denmark in the Ancient Times (a work of
recognised authority) we read : —
" We must now speak of domestic animals. These, in
accordance with a fine natural sentiment, were already
included in the community, as we learn from early legis-
lation and media9val sagas founded on still more ancient
customs.'-' The animals accounted nearest to man seem to
have been the Dog, the Cat, and the Cock and Hen."
In the old Norse laws of Frostalking (dated from the time
of Hagen Adelsten, if not earlier) there is the singular
remark, " We are eight together, and the Dog is the
ninth." In the famous Icelandic Sai/a of Nial (15th
century) it is related that the enemies of Gunnar (a
noble hero, a friend of Nial) plotted to attack him
* I am indebted for the following extracts to Madame
Lembcke, of Copenhagen, the devoted friend of animals in
Scandinavia.
66 THE FRIEND OF JIAN.
secretly in bis house. Dreading, however, his faithful
(log, Sam, they compelled his neighbour Thorkel, to go
first to Gunnar's house, to seize the dog. The assassins
waited outside on the road while Thorkel went to the
house and allured the animal, who recognised him, into
a cave. But Sam, observing the armed men, started and
attacked Thorkel furiously. Omund, one of the con-
spirators, then slew the dog with one blow of his
pole-axe which entered into his brain. Ere he died,
however, Sam howled so loudly and piteously as to
awaken Gunuar in his house, who cried " Badly do
they deal with thee, Sam, my foster child " (pet). " But
short will be the interval between thy death and mine."
In the conflict which follows, after performing prodigies
of valour, Gunnar is killed. In the Saga, the fidelity
of the dog is made to contrast forcibly with the con-
duct of Halgerde, Gunnar's wife, who refuses him a
lock of her hair to make himself a fresh bow-string
when beset by his enemies, and when he had told her
he could save his life if he had one. Halgerde reminds
him that he had once given her a box on the ear, and
declines to cut her hair ! Under these circumstances
I confess to some astonishment that no " Rape of the
Lock " occurred at the hands of the fierce Icelandic
Viking under such excusable circumstances.
More importaut than any of these is the story of the
Norse Sheep-Dog, Vigi, from the Norwegian Sagas,
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 67
which more than matches that of the Greek Argus. The
tale is as follows : —
" King Olaf Trygveson, being engaged in harrying
Ireland from the sea, his men landed on a certain part
of the coast and drove together a vast herd of oxen as
spoil. A peasant, however, besought Olaf so earnestly
to restore those which belonged to him, that the king
consented to give him back such as he could prove to
have been his own. Thereupon, the peasant made his
great sheep-dog understand what was required of him,
and the dog entered among the herds, which consisted
of many hundreds of oxen, and drove apart 'a great
number, which the peasant accordingly claimed. Then
King Olaf gave those oxen to the peasant, but begged
him to sell him the dog ; and the peasant did so
willingly. Then the king gave the peasant a gold ring
and promised him his friendship. And the dog was
called Vigi, and he was the best of all dogs, and Olaf
possessed and cherished him for many years."
In the Hcunskrimila of Suorro Sturleson, the story of
Vigi's service with King Olaf is further recounted in
words to this effect : — ■
" Thorer Hjort (Hjort signifies a ' SUkj ') fled ashore
and left his ship with all his warriors. Then did King
Olaf pursue his enemies, and he and his heroes sprang
also on shore and chased them and slew many of them ;
the King being ever in the front of the battle. But
King Olaf' perceived that Thorer Hjort was very swift of
68 THE FEIEND OF MAN.
foot and that lie could not overtake bim, and he cried to
his dog Yigi who Was following him, ' Yigi ! take the
Stag' (Hjort). Vigi made a spring at Thorer, and seized
him, and Thorer stopped. Then Olaf threw his spear at
Thorer, who had struck Vigi with his sword and wounded
the dog, and the spear of Olaf entered Thorer's right
arm coming out on the opposite side, and Thorer died,
but Vigi was carried wounded back to Olaf's ship."
No more is said of Vigi in the Hciiiiala-hiiila, but in
the Icelandic Sarja of Olaf Trygvescn called the
Fornennanna-Segur, it is told that Vigi was on the huge
ship celebrated through all the Sagas as the Great-Sea-
Serpent, — the ^^ Lonfi Worm" [Onncn hiss Jmuje) — when
it was engaged in battle, and King Olaf fell. Einar
Tampeskalver and the other warriors sailed after the fight
away to Norway with Earl Eric. Vigi, King Olafs
dog, had sat on the forecastle of the ship close to the
warriors, all through the battle and after it had ended.
Then Einar, before going ashore with the Earl, went to
the spot where the dog lay and said to him, "Vigi! we
have lost our Master ! " Then the dog hearing this
sprang to his feet, and yelled aloud as if he had received
a sting in his heart. And Vigi leaped on shore and
ran up a hill and remained on the summit, refusing to
take food from any one. Tears were in his eyes and
fell on the ground, and so he bewailed his master's
death till he died." — Icelandic Sa<ja of Olaf Trygvesen
(date about 1000 A.D.)
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 69
The early Finnish and German poems breathe a similar
friendliness towards dogs and other animals — the Kale-
wala, for example, has the following delicate passage
concerning its hero and the birds : —
" Waiuamoinen, good and righteous
Felled with great strokes the wood,
Cutting down the beautiful trees,
Sparing but one, the Birch,
That there the birds might rest,
That in the foliage the cuckoo might sing.
Came the eagle flying hj,
Swept down from the heights above,
To look more closely at the birch.
" Why has that tree been spared '?
Are not the splendid woods falling, —
Will that little tree be left standing? "
The singer answered him at once : —
" The birch has been spared
That the birds and eagle might have a resting place."
And the eagle called through the air :
" Well was it done.
To leave the birch gi-owing.
To leave the lovely tree,
That the little birds and I might rest there."
There came the messenger of Spring — the Cuckoo
She saw the birch on the green floor : —
"Why has this little tree been left?
Why is the beautiful birch standing ? "
And Wainiimoinen answered : —
" The tree has been saved,
'f
70 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
The lovely birch has remained standing,
That thou mightest sing in the leaves,
Sing, then, the message of the spring,
Sing from a full heart,
Let thy silver voice be heard.
And its sound ring in the distance."
But I am leaving the dogs and taking too ambitious
a flight into remote regions of literature with which I
make no pretension of acquaintance.
. CHAPTER X.
THE DOG IN ITALY.
[ANTE alludes now and then to dogs, very
much in the same accidental way as the
Greek and Latin poets. What personage
is meant by II Veltro in Canto I., v. 101,
who, against the Wolf, —
" Verrji, clio la fara morir di doglia."
whether it be Ugoccione della Faggiola, as say some
commentators, or Can Grande della Scala (on whose
name there would be a pun) is not for me to decide.
When he says to Filippo Argenti
" Via costa con gli altri cani,"
I fear he is respectful neither to man nor to the
"altri cani." The Gormandizers, in Canto VI., are made
to howl :
"Uriar gli fa la pioggia, come cani."
(Line 19.)
The Usurers fare still worse in Canto X VII., where they
scratch themselves like dogs in summer ; — a shocking
F 2
72 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
picture indeed! The " gente mesta " are seated in the
seventh Circle,
Per gli occhi fuori scoppiava lor cluolo
Di qua, di la soccorien con le mani
Quando a'vapori e qiiando al caldo suolo
Non altrimenti fan di state i cani
Or col ceffo or col pie quando son morsi
O da pulci o da moscbe o da tafani.
(Verse 51.)
The Spendthrifts again have got the metaphorical
"Black Dog" literally at their backs—
" Diretro a loro era la selva plena
Di nere cayue bramose e correnti,
Come veltri die uscisser di catena."
XIII., 123.
We find also in Dante many other similes of dogs, —
" dashing out like dogs at a traveller," pursuing victims
" like dogs after a hare," and fastening teeth (poor
Ugolino's!) "like a dog's in an enemy's skull." There
is nothing to indicate any kindly regard for dogs here.
In Ariosto there are a few references to the animal, Cfi.,
when the pursuit of Euggiero takes place the pursuer,
" Avca da lato il can fido compagno." — Cant. VIII., 4.
"We must admit that the great Italian poets, so far
as they have left us any tokens, were not lovers of dogs.
Perhaps the somewhat stilted tone of Italian poetry
of the Renaissance was unfiivourable to that familiarity
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 73
with the fauna and flora of Nature, which belongs to our
later poetic fancy. That some Italians of the great
age of art were not insensible to the merits of dogs
may be proved, inter alia, by the pretty story of the Dog
of Genoa and its monument on the Mole — a pendant
to the tale and memorial stone of Grey Friar's Bobby.
It has been given to me in the following form : —
" There was, within the memory of some now living,
an old stone in the landing-place at Genoa, said once
to have borne the likeness of a dog, and to have been
sculptured in commemoration of one which died on
the spot where it stood. This dog had been the loving
friend and companion of a Genoese merchant, who took
it with him on his voyages. On one occasion when
they went to the strand to embark, the dog played
with some companions, while its master was getting
on board, and the ship sailed without it.
" The trouble of the dog on being left behind was
great, but it was fed and cared for by friends. Every
day it went to the spot where it had last seen its
master, and always returned sorrowful. This went on
for ten years. At last a vessel appeared in the offing
which attracted its attention more than the others had
done. It stood at the water's edge, barking, and as the
ship approached its excitement was excessive. Then the
vessel came in. The poor dog saw his master land, and
rushed to him uttering a loud shriek ; — and then fell
dead at his feet. Joy had broken its faithful heart."
CHAPTER XI.
DOGS IN ENGLAND FROM CHAUCER
TO BYRON.
ERY pleasant it is to turn from Dante and
Ariosto and Petrarch to our own earliest
English poets and to find in the " well of
English undefiled," several crystal drops de-
voted to our canine friends. When Chaucer wished to con-
vey the impression of a perfect Lady, pure and bright and
dignified, who holds her own in society, he describes her as
a dog-loving person ; feeding her pets carefully, and bitterly
resenting any ill-usage of them. The Prioress who is —
" Ben estatlich of mannere "
"And to ben holden digue of reverence,"
is "charitable and pitous " even to a " mous caughte
in a trappe ; " but the great token of her tenderness,
Chaucer makes to be : —
" Of smalle houndes hadde she, that she fedde
With rested flesh and milk and wastel bredde"
" But sore wej^t she if on of them were dede.
Or if men smote it with a yerde smert,
And all was conscience aud teudre heart."
76 THE FKIEND OF MAN.
Gentle old Prioress ! with her broad forehead aud
grey eyes aud soft small mouth ! AVc can forgive her
for speaking French "after the scole of Stratford-atte-
Bowe," since she merited that most exquisite praise for
a woman ; " and all was conscience and tendre heart."
Here is Chaucer's pretty description of a young
" whelpe " — a passage specially brought to my notice by
the lady whose line taste may be said to have restored,
after six centuries, this sweet poet to the general familia-
rity of his countrymen, — Mrs. H. II. Haweis.
(After the Hunt.)
This hart rused, aud stale away
Fro all the houndes a privie way.
The houndes had overshot him, all,
Aud were on a default yfall,
Therewith the huute wonder fast
Blew a " f orloyu " * at the last.
I was go walked fro uiy tree,
And as I weut, ther came by mee
A whelx^e, that fawned me as I stood,
That had yfollowed, aud coudc j uo good
It came aud crept to me as low
Right as it hadde me ykuow :
Held down his head aud joyued his eares.
And laid all smoothe down his heres.
1 would have caught it — aud auou
It fled, aud was fro uie agoue,
And I him followed. . .
Chaucer, Itoul,- "/' llic Duchess.
* Vcrloren. t Knew no better.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 77
" Colle our dogge " is alluded to in the Xiin's, Pricsfs
Tale.
Here again are the dogs in two famous early ballads —
" The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran,
To chase the fallow deere."
— Chevy chase.
And, —
I.
" Johnie rose up in a May morning
Called for water to wash his hands,
' Gar loose to me the gude graie dogs,
That are bound wi' iron bands.'
II.
" And Johnie has bryttled the deer sae weel
That he's had out her liver and lungs ;
And wi' these he has feasted his bluided hounds
As if they had been earl's sons."
— John/ 1' of Breadislee.
In that long prose Epic, Sir Thomas Malory's Movte
(V Arthur, there are a great many pretty references to
dogs, — notably to " brachet hounds." One of the tales
.(9th Book, c. xxi.) is a mediaeval Odyssey, surpassing
in its tenderness the story of Argus. When Sir
Tristram, in an unconscious state, remains unrecognized
by his wife, La Belle Isoud, as by every one else, her
little brachet, which he had given her, discovers him at
once. " And anon as this little brachet felt a savour of
78 THE FKIEND OF BIAN.
Sir Tri&tram, she leaped upon liim and licked his cheeks
and his ears ; ami then she whined and quested ; and she
smelt at his feet and his hands. ' Ah, my lady,' said
Dame Brugwaine unto the Belle Isoud, ' alas ! I see it
is mine own lord, Sir Tristram ' ; and thereupon Isoud
fell down m a swoon. And when she might speak she
said, ' My lord. Sir Tristram, hlessed be God, you have
your life, and now I am sure you shall be discovered by
this little brachet.' .... Then the Queen (Isoud)
departed, but the brachet would not from him. And
therewithal came King Mark, and the brachet sat upon
him (Tristram) and bayed at them all." — (B. 9th, C. xxi.,
(ilohe Edition.) In B. 3 there is another story, running
through many chapters, of " Sir Tor and the Brachet,"
where two knights fight to the death for possession of
the dog. And again, in B. 6, C. xiv., there is a
history of Sir Lamcelot, who follows a mysterious black
brachet in the forest till he is led to a castle wherein lies
a dead knight ; and the brachet guards the corpse and
licks its wounds.
It has been repeatedly remarked that Shakespeare
never said a good word for a dog ; but there is one
passage in Tinnm which might, perhaps, be twisted into
some friendly meaning, though the obvious one is to
pander to the evil prejudice (of which I shall speak
by-and-bye) that it is among the haters of mankind
that dog-lovers may chiefly be found.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 79
When Alcibiades finds Timon in the woods he asks : —
Alc. : " What is thy name ? Is man so hateful to thee
That art thyself a man ? "
Timon replies : —
" I am mimnthropos, and hate mankind,
For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,
That I might love thee, something."
Timon, Act lY., Scene III.
As Timon several times uses the word " dog " as a
term of contempt, it is to be feared that Shakespeare
meant no kindness to the animal in the above speech.
When Launce soliloquizes on his milk-maid love he
observes : —
" She hath more qualities than a water-spaniel, which
is much in a bare Christian."
But here again we arc intended to laugh at the gross
and stupid Launce, and at his estimate of dogs.
There is, of course, also the famous passage, wherein
the great Poachcr-Voet of Warwickshire betrays his
sympathy with the glories of the chase, if not his fond-
ness for the hounds : —
Hippohjta :
" I was with Hercules and Cadmus once
Where in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear
Such gallant chiding, for beside the groves
80 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
The skies aud fouutaius, every region near
Seem'd ail one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder."
Theseus :
" My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew ;
Crook-kuee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessaliau bulls ;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheered with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly :
Judge when you hear."
But if Shakespeare never said anything in praise of dogs,
and condescended to ridicule ill-educated ones in the
person of the miserable aud obscene " Crab," he pro-
nounced the strongest and wisest condemnation on the
practice (obviously, even then, a common one) of making
pathological experiments upon them. Habitually, as we
all recognise, the great poet of England hovers in the
serene altitudes of observation. " The sea " (of human
emotions) " beneath him creeps and crawls." He " sits
as God holding no form of creed " — anxious to press
neither religious dogma nor moral lesson, but contemplating
and interpreting all. He is, we are wont to think, the
Mirror of Humanity in all its varied aspects as Lake
Leman is the mirror of mountains and vineyards, clouds
and stars ; not a human Prophet preaching and praying,
THE FRIEND OF BIAN. 81
struggling and suffering, carrying on through the smoke
of battle the banner of the Right or the True.
But there are a few instances wherein we seem to
hear the real Shakespeare's own voice speaking out of
the tragic mask of one of his characters ; and strange
to say, one of the most noteworthy is this earnest and
peremptory condemnation of experiments on animals, as
both futile and demoralising : —
Queen. " Now master doctor, have you brought these
drugs? "
Cornelius. " Please your Highness, ay ! Here they are,
Madam ! "
fPresentinrf a small box.)
" But I beseech your Grace (without offence,
My conscience bids nie ask) wherefore you have
Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds
Which are the movers of a languishing death ;
But though slow, deadly ? "
Queen. " I do wonder, doctor,
Thou askest me such a question ! Have I not been
Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learned me how
To make perfumes ? distil ? preserve ? yea so
That our great King himself doth woo me oft
For my confections ? Having thus far proceeded,
(Unless thou think'st me devilish) is't not meet
That I did amplify my judgment in
Other conclusions? I will try the forces
Of these thy compounds on such creatures as
We count not worth the banging (but none human)
82 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
To try the vigour of them, and apply
Allayments to their act ; and by them gather
Their several virtues and effects."
Cornelius. "Your Highness
Shall from this praeliee hul nuilti' hard i/oiir heart ! "
CyiithrJiue, Act I., Scene YI.
Would that our scientific generation would learn this
lesson from the greatest genius of the world : — That the one
thing certain as a result of experiments on animals, is, the
hardening of human hearts !
Stately Milton does not, I think, condescend to name
the Dog, but of all animals he would be the most
fitting to deserve the praise in the concluding lines of
the following passage : —
" What call'st thou solitude '? Is mother Earth
AYitli various living creatures and the air
Replenished, and all these at thy command
To come and play before thee '? Kuow'st thou not
Their language and their ways ? They also know.
And reason not contemptibly. With these
Find pastime and bear rule ; thy realm is large."
Paradise Lost, B. 8.
Perhaps, however, it was the unfortunate I'act that
Adam had not yet met with and appropriated a dog
which made him so desirous of a wife '? Had he only
been contented with a faithful mastifi' or intelligent
THE FRIEND OF JIAN. 83
collie, (creatures who would never have partaken of the
fatal apple, or lured him to do the like) — what a
different history would have been that of this planet !
But I must forbear to dwell on the vision of Paradise
which opens to the eye of fancy — irith a good dog and
ivithout a bad woman !
When we descend to the age of Pope, we find the
Hound has dwindled, under the Zeitgeist of the period,
into a Lap-dog. The fatal morning of the Finpc of the
Lock is marked by the " rouzing shake " with which,
like the " sleepless lovers " of Belinda, " they, just at
twelve, awake." When Ariel has whispered his warning
in a dream,
"Then Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leaj)ed up, and waked his mistress with his tongue."
In her despair at the loss of her lock, Thalestris
whispers the wish to recover it or else :
" Sooner let Earth, Air, Sea to Chaos fall.
Men, moukej^s, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all."
Yet Pope has a tender touch about the " Poor Indian,"
whom he credited, perhaps, with more feeling for his
" faithful dog," and desire to admit him hereafter to " an
equal sky," than any genuine Cherokee or Chocktaw ever
actually exhibited. I also fear that it was not the " poor
Indian's" high estimation of his Dog but his low
notion of Heaven, which Pope intended to convey by
the famous lines in question, which (we are told by Bret
84 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Harte) have earned for all Ketlskins the generic name of
"Lo!"; just as an Englishman is John Bull and an
English soldier, Tommy Atkins.
About this period I believe " flourished " Somerville, the
author of "The Chase," a very long poem in which Dogs
are, of course, very prominent characters. Our grandfathers
■were wont to speak of this poem with some respect, but it
has long been dead as a door-nail ; and I confess to having
only seen of it a few lugubrious and prosy fragments.
As Cowper was the first poet after the early chirp
of Collins to sing the praise of Nature in the modern
spirit, the first to depict the woods and streams as
he saw them with his own eyes, not as he read of them
in classic books, so it was befitting that he should open
the burst of poetry hymning the brutes and birds and
cattle on a thousand hills which has ever since been
echoing in our ears. The spirit in which he approached
the subject was perhaps a little too hortative for our taste
in these days of dc I'Jrt 'pour V Art : but he very can-
didly confessed its character when he wrote of this
"humble theme"; in which his "stream of panegyric"
had " reflected clear,"
"If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes,"
and he feels himself recompensed ; —
" If verse of mine
May stand between an animal and woe.
And teach one tj'rant pity for his drudge."
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 85
His modest aspiration has not been vain. No doubt
his own mild lines, and many others which perhaps
would not have been written but for them, have done
much to direct human sympathy downwards among the
lowly ranks of life, till we reach Longfellow's poet (in
the Tales of a Wayside Inn) who is ablaze with such
emotion, and says : —
" With an impassioned cry,
As one who feels the words he speaks
' Among the noblest in the land
Though he may count himself the least,
That man I honour and revere
Who, without favour, without fear
In the great city dares to stand
The friend of every friendless beast.' "
As concerns our special subject Cowper has not failed
to celebrate the Dog in his familiar, hymn-like verses of
the " Dog and the Water Lily ;" wherein his spaniel
" Beau," " prettiest of its race and high in pedigree,"
having noticed his ineffectual efforts to draw a water-
lily from the river Ouse, plunged on their return from
a walk, into the stream of his own accord, cropped the
lily, brought it safe to shore, and laid it at the poet's
feet.
" Charmed with the sight, ' The world,' I cried,
' Shall hear of this thy deed ;
My dog shall mortify the pride
Of man's superior breed ;
86 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
But chief, myself, I will enjoin,
Awake at Duty's call.
To show, a love as prompt as thine
To Him who gives me all.' "
Passing from Cowper to Byron is a great leap, moral
and esthetic. As there are some hands which " touch
nothing without adorning it," so there are others, — and
Byron's were of the number, — which never touch any-
thing without leaving some stain or taint upon it.
Byron, selfish, bitter, essentially untrue, could not praise
even his dead dog's fidelity, without a jibe at human
friendship.
Here is his famous " Epitaph on a Newfoundland
Dog " :—
" When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld bj^ birth.
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below ;
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been :
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend.
The first to welcome, foremost to defend.
Whose honest heart is still his master's own.
Who labours, fights, Hvcs, breathes for him alone.
Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth.
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth.
Ye ! who perchance behold this simple urn.
Pass on, — it honours none you wish to mourn :
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 87
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise ;
I never knew but one, — and here he lies."
To me, I confess, it seems that this poetic snarl has
done much mischief in helping to keep up the vulgar
popular delusion that Love is a sort of tape, or ribbon,
of which every one has a limited quantity in pettu, and
which, if too lavishly measured out to an animal or a
child, leaves the individual ill supplied for nobler calls.
But the divine Light of Life which can kindle a thousand
fires and be mirrored in a hundred hearts and then
burn only the more brightly to the close, is another
thing altogether from this. The more we (unselfishly
and purely) love any being, — human or infra-human, —
the more, assuredly, we are able to love. That " muscle,"
the heart of man, like all others, strengthens and enlarges
in proportion as it works.
If a man or woman be, for any reason, left destitute of
human friends, the affection he may be able to give to,
and receive from, a brute is the saving of his soul from
utter loneliness and lovelessness ; and we may gratefully
beheve it has been intended so to be by Him whose
Providence has caused the solitude. As Jocelyn says of
his dog : —
" Et par quelle pitie pour nos coeurs II vous donne,
Pour aimer celui que n'aime plus personne."
How many wounded, betrayed and bereaved hearts
have been saved from despair by the love of a humble
Cr 2
88 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
dog, is known to God alone. But to confound this love
of isolated men and women for their non-human com-
panions with misanthropy, is as absurd as to say that
the crumbs which have prevented a man from starving
outright, have spoiled his health. Even where there is
no such entire isolation, or no isolation from human love
at all. the tender, worshipping, demonstrative attachment
of a dog, has its own special comfort for the heart-ache,
its own cheer for hours of peace and pleasure. Even a
misanthi'opist is, surely, less, not more, a misanthropist
because he can still love a dog ; and keeps one corner
of his heart still warm. It was often a relief to me
long years ago to hear that modern Lear, — poor Walter
Savage Landor, — pause in his cursing against men and
women to praise his beautiful Pomeranian, Giallo ; and
on the other hand, when I first entered the study
of the greatest philanthi'opist of this or perhaps any
century, — the " Good Earl " of Shaftesbury, — it was
equally refreshing to me to discover, ensconced under the
library table over which half the charity work of London
rolled, like cabs down Fleet Street, in Reports, Speeches,
Bills and Letters, — a magnificent Collie ; silent and
watchful, at the feet of his dear master.
CHAPTER XII.
DOGS AS DEFENDERS.
T the opposite end of the gamut of sentiment
from Byron's false note we have Words-
worth's poems on Dogs. His, assuredly,
was no Timon's soul which turned to the
lower creatures because he had become embittered
against the higher. His first poem on a Dog, as it
chances, precisely follows, among his Poems of Sentiment
and Fieflection the concluding lines of Simon Lee, which
run thus : —
" I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning,
Alas ! the gratitude of men
Hath ofteuer left me mourning."
The " Incident " which struck the moralising poet in
his dog's behaviour, was (it must be confessed) not a
very common one among our canine friends — an act of
devoted friendship to another dog. But (as an article
of mine in the Quarterhj Rcvietv some years ago
on the Consciousnefis of Dogs attempted to show,)
though Man absorbs in large measure the dog's devotion
90 THE FKIEND OF MAN.
" as sunlight drinkuth dew," leaving comparatively
little to spare for bis own kind, of whom he is too
frequently jealous to the verge (and over it) of hatred —
there are abundance of cases on record of dogs forming
real friendships with other dogs ; and doing for them acts
of self-denying kindness, e.ij., the dog who, for many
days surreptitiously carried the best part of bis own
dinner to a poor little mother who had her pups in a
hole in the Common at Ascot, and another who carried
his bones to a companion caught in a trap. There was
recently published in an American paper an account of
two dog friends who long lived as inseparable comrades
in San Francisco ; roaming the streets together and fed
by kindly sympathisers for years, till at length one was
killed by an accident, when his friend pined and refused
food and died soon afterwards.
Here is Wordsworth's "Incident": —
" On his morning round the master
Goes to learn how all things fare.
Searches pasture after jaasture
Sheep and cattle eyes with care.
And for silence or for talk
He liath comrades in his walk.
Four dogs — each pair of different breed,
Distinguished two for scent and two for speed.
See a bare before him started
Off they fly in earnest chase.
Every dog is eager-hearted,
All the four are in the race :
THE FBIEND OF MAN. 91
And the hare whom they pursue, ,
Hath an instinct what to do ;
Her hope is near ; no turn she makes ;
But, like an arrow, to the river takes.
Deep the river was and crusted
Thinly by a one night's frost ;
But the nimble hare hath trusted
To the ice and safely crost ;
She hath crost, and without heed
All are following at fall speed,
When lo ! — the ice so thinly spread
Breaks — and the greyhound Dart is overhead.
Better fate have Prince and Swallow,
See them cleaving to the sport ;
Music hath no heart to follow.
Little Music, she stops short.
She hath neither wish nor lieart,
Hers is now another part
A loving creature she, and brave,
And fondly strives her struggling friend to save.
From the brink her paws she stretshes
Very hands as you would say :
And affecting moans she fetches
As he breaks the ice away.
For herself she hath no fears —
Him alone she sees and hears —
Makes efforts and comx:)lainings, nor gives o'er
Until her fellow sank and reappeared no more.
It was very sweet of " little Music " ; but I cannot
help asking; What was the "Master" doing all the time?
92 THE FEIEND OF MAN.
If the river was not very deep indeed, could not he possibly
have gone into it and pulled out poor Dart '? It is not
a very noble position for the man to " record great actions "
of a little dog, and not to do anything as brave.
"When "Music" died, however, her admiring Master
paid her a poetical " Tribute."
" Lie here without record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the commou earth.
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love that here no stone we raise.
More thou deservest ; but this man gives to man
Brother to brother, this is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear,
Shall find thee through all changes of the year —
This oak points out thy grave ; the silent tree
Will gladlj' stand in monument of thee.
I grieved for thee and wished thy end were past
And willingly have laid thee here at last ;
For thou hadst lived till everything that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years.
Extreme old age had wasted thee away ;
And left thee but a glimmering of the da}',
Thy ears were deaf and feeble were thy knees,
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze,
Too weak to stand against its sportive breath
And ready for the gentlest stroke of death.
It came, and we were glad, yet tears were shed.
Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 93
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were
Old household thoughts in which thou hadst thy share ;
But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree,
For love that comes to all — the holy sense
Best gift of God — in thee was most intense ;
A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind,
A tender sympathy which did thee bind.
Not only to us men, but to thy kind;
Yea, for thy fellow brutes in thee we saw
The soul of love, love's intellectual law.
Hence, if we wept it was not done in shame,
Our tears from passion — from reason came,
And therefore shalt thou be an honoured name !
The other dog honoured by the verse of Wordsworth
was also glorified by that of Walter Scott. This was
the faithful beast who guarded her master's corpse for
three months on Helvellyu, after the unfortunate tourist
(Scott calls him magniloqueutly according to the genius
of the period, when tourists were yet rare, — the " Pilr/rim
of Nature ") had fallen down a precipice and lost his
life. Wordsworth's poem is named
FIDELITY.
A barking sound the shepherd hears
A cry as of a dog or fox ;
He halts and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks :
94 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern,
And instantly a dog is seen
Glancing through that covert green.
The dog is not of mountain breed,
Its motions too are wild and shy
With something as the shei^herd thinks
Unusual in its cry.
Nor is there any one in sight
All round in hollow or in height,
Nor shout nor whistle strikes his ear,
What is the creature doing here ?
It was a cove a huge recess.
That keeps till June December's snow
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below.
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn
Remote from public road or dwelling.
Pathway or cultivated land ;
From trace of human foot or hand.
There sometimes doth a lea^iing lish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer ;
The crags repeat the raven's croak
In symphony austere ;
Farther the rainbow comes — the cloud
And mists that spread the flying shroud.
And sunbeams ; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past ;
But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 95
Not free from boding thoughts awhile
The shepherd stood, then makes his way
Towards the dog o'er rocks and stones,
As quickly as he may :
Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground ;
The ai)palled discoverer with a sigh,
Looks round to learn its history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The man had fallen, that place of fear !
At length upon the shepherd's mind
It breaks and all is clear.
He instantly recalled the name.
And who he was and whence he came ;
Remembered too, the very day
On which the traveller passed this way.
But hear a wonder for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell,
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The dog which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry ;
This dog had been through three months' space
A dweller in that savage place !
Yes, proof was plain that since that day
"When this ill-fated traveller died, '
The dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his master's side :
96 THK FKIEND OF MAN.
How nourislied here tluougli tliat long time,
He kuows who gave that love subhme,
And gave that strength of feehug great,
Above all human estimate.
The impression which the stor}- of this heroic dog —
a Rizpah among her race, — made upon the mind of
Wordsworth, was equally felt, as 1 have remarked, by
Waiter Scott. Every one knows the mountainous lines
in which he describes the scene amid the grandeur and
loneliness of Helvellyn.
HELYELLYN.
I climb'd the dark brow of the mighty Helvellj'n,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleam'd mistj' and
wide ;
All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was j'elliug.
And starting around me the echoes replied.
On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was bending,
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending.
When I mark'd the lone spot where the wanderer had died.
Dark green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretch'd in decay.
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to Aveathor,
Till the mountain -winds wasted the tenantless claj*.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended.
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended.
The much-loved remains of her master defended.
And chased the hill-fox and the ravens away.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 97
How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber ?
When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou
start ?
How many long days and long weeks didst thou number,
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart '?
And oh ! was it meet, that — no requiem read o'er him —
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,
And thou, little guardian, alone stretch'd before him —
Unhonour'd the Pilgrim from life should depart ?
Wlien a Prince to the fate of the peasant has yielded.
The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall ;
With scutcheons of silver the cofl&n is shielded.
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall;
Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are
gleaming ;
In the proudly -arched chapel the banners are beaming ;
Far adowu the long aisle sacred music is streaming.
Lamenting the chief of the i^eople should fall.
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of Nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb
"Wlien 'wildered he drops from some cliff huge in stature
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.
And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying
Thy obsequies sung by the grey plover flying
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying
In the wilds of Helvellyn and Catchedicam.
The second stanza of this poem, I think, is exceed-
ingly striking, — describing the lonely little dog watching
98 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
beside the corpse aud pondering, — as perhaps even a
dog does in its poor way, — on the mystery of death.
Alas ! it is not " fading," but something far more
dread and terrible to look upon which befalls the
poor clay of man or beast when Life has departed ;
and the solitary dog sitting there on the mountain-side,
watching it day after day, is almost an awful picture.
The unburied corpse with the lone watcher on the moun-
tain is more solemn to our imagination than the graves
beside which so many dogs have lingered till they died ;
sometimes refusing all food and expiring speedily of
broken hearts, sometimes exhibiting the marvellous con-
stancy of " Grey Friar's Bobby," whose Latin epitaph by
Professor Blackie records that he, — •
" Followed the remains of his beloved Master to this
Churchyard in the year 1858, and became a constant
visitor to the grave, refusing to be separated from the
spot until he died in the year 1872."
A third of the full space of a dog's life-time !
One of the most affecting of such tales which have
come to my knowledge was that of a poor little ragged
Irish urchin, the possessor of a mongrel cur and the rider
of a donkey. One day he followed along the highway
a car carrying a party of tourists, who naturally bade
him keep his distance, and not raise the dust. The boy
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 99
naughtily continued to canter after the car as fast as
the donkey would carry him, his dog barking at his heels,
till the donkey stumbled and fell, pitching the boy over
his head on the road. The child gave a cry, but the
occupiers of the car only laughed at the discomfiture
of their little enemy and proceeded on their way, never
dreaming of stopping to see the result of the fall. No
one else, it seems, passed along for many hours, and
the first who did so found the boy lying dead by the
roadside, and his dog and donkey standing watching
beside him. The little corpse was carried to the father's
cabin, and of course "waked" and buried very speedily.
A week afterwards some one thought of the dog and
wondered what had become of it. It was remembered
that it had followed the humble funeral of its master to
the chapel-yard, and there it was sought and found.
The poor beastie had scratched away the newly-stirred
earth down the whole way to the coffin (probably at no
great depth), and there it lay on the coffin, unable to
get nearer to its dead friend !
These stories, of which there are scores well authen-
ticated, — down to the dogs which accompanied Mr.
Mackonochie, and which (though he was not their
master) would obviously have remained permanently
guarding his corpse, — always suggest AVordsworth's ques-
tion : How do the animals live in those lonely places
without food ? The answer is sadly simple, and their
worst enemies have supplied it. Dogs can live without
100 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
any food at all for six weeks/' Those who remain on
the hills no doubt easily find water ; and we may suppose
that now and then, when driven by hunger, they may
catch and devour some bird or rabbit which happens to
approach too near the resting place of the beloved dead.
Here is another tale of dog-devotion, lightly touched
by the same kindly hand as " Helvellyn."
" The widow sees at dawning i^ale
The orphans raise their feeble wail,
And close beside him on the snow,
Poor Yarrow, partner of their woe
Couches upon his master's breast
And licks his cheek to break his rest."
Mftniiion, Int. Canto IV.
A note to Marwion informs us that this incident is
taken from one which actually occurred at a farm five
miles from Ashestiel.
* Luciaui and Bufalini iu their Ricerche Sperimentali sulla
Decorso dell' inanizione genuina describe how they starved a
large dog to death in a cage from !March 12th, 1880, to
April 24th — 43 days. The first five days, they tell us, it moaned
from hnnger. Afterwards, even when they showed it food, it
displayed scarcely any avidity. Although it reached the last
extremity of weakness, the dog did not fall into a state of
insensibility or coma ; — and thus it offered " a beautiful
confirmation of the theory of Professor Voit." It is to these
gentlemen that it is feared the lost dogs of Florence from the
Deposit ma}' be delivered, as they have just been withdrawn from
the charge of the excellent Societd Frottettrice.
THE FEIEND OF MAN. 101
Before quitting Walter Scott I must not omit the delight-
ful little touch in the Dedication of the III. Canto of Marmion
to his friend James Skene, of Rubieslaw, wherein we recog-
nise the genuine observer of dogs, their ways and passions.
Speaking of their excursions together among the hills, when
Mr. Skene sketched and Scott read old ballads, he adds : —
" At either 's feet a trusty squire,
Pandour aud Camp with eyes of fire.
Jealous each other's motions viewed
Aud scarce repressed the aucieut feud."
Who does not know how (like Germany and France) two
big dogs, who by any chance have set up a rivalry, will go
on for years making frightful snarling faces at each other, and
walking round and round each other with their tails in the air,
but still, when under wholesome Bismarckian discipline,
stopping short of the final leap at each other's throats !
The reader will like to learn that pictures of both Camp
and Pandour are still preserved by Mr. G. Skene, the son of
Walter Scott's friend, aud brother of Miss Felicia Skene.
■ Here is another poem, recording a very similar story
to that of Helvellyn, This is by Casimir Delavigne : —
LE CHIEN DU LOUVEE.
Anecdote of the Revolution of 1880.
Passant que ton front se decouvre
La plus d'un brave est eudormi !
Des fleurs pour le martyrs du Louvre
Un peu de pain pour son ami !
H
102 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
C'etait le jour de la bataille
II s'elance sous la mitraille
Sou cbieu suivit.
Le plomb tous deux viut les atteindre
Est ce le martyre qu'il faut plaiudre
Le chieu survit.
Morne, vers le brave il se pencbe
L'appelle et de sa tete blanche
Le caressant.
Sur les corps de son frere d'armes
Laisse couler ses grosses larmes
Avec son sang.
Gardien du tertre funebre
Nul plaisir ne jpeut le distraire
De son ennui
Et fuyant la main qui I'attire
Avec tristesse il senible dire
" Ce n'est i)as lui."
Quand sur ces touffes d' immortelles
Brillant d'humides etincelles
An point du jour
Son ceil se ranime il se dresse
Pour que son maitre le caresse
A sou retour.
Aux vents des units, (^uaud la couronne
Sur la croix du tombcau frisoune
Perdant I'espoir,
II veut que son maitre rentende
II grondc, il i^leure ot lui demande
L'adieu du soir.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 103
Si la neige avec violence
De ses flocons couvre en silence
Le lit de mort
II jpousse un cri lugubre et teudre
Ou s'y couche j)Our le defeudre
Des vents du nord.
Avant de fermer 'la paupi«re
II fait pour soulever la pierre
Uu vain effort ;
Puis il se dit comme la veille
" II m'a]ppelera s'il s'eveille "
Puis il s'endort.
La nuit il reve barricades
Son maitre est sous la fusilades
Convert de sang ;
II I'entend que siffle dans I'ombre
Se leve et saute ajires son ombre
En geniissant.
C'est la qu'il attend d'heure en heure
Qu'il aime, qu'il souffre, qu'il pleure
Et qu'il raourra.
Quel fut son nom ? C'est uu mystere
Jamais la voix qui lui fut cliere
Ne le dira !
Passant ! que ton front se decouvre
La plus d'un brave est endormi
Des fleurs pour le martyre du Louvre
Un peu de pain pour son ami.
H 2
104 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
And here is another poem by Chamisso, of which
the following is a spirited translation from the German
original, which will be found in the Appendix : —
THE BEGGAR AND HIS DOG.
•' Pay down three dollars for my hound !
May lightning strike me to the ground !
What mean the Messieurs of Police ?
And when and where shall this mockery cease ?
" I am a poor, old. sickly man.
And earn a penny I nowise can ;
I have no money, I have no bread,
And live upon hunger and want instead.
" Who pitied me when I grew sick and poor
And neighbours turned me from their door?
And who, when I was left alone
In God's wide world made my fortunes liis own ?
" Who loved me when I was weak and old ?
And warmed me when I was numb with cold ?
And who, when I in poverty pined,
Has shared my hunger and never whined ?
" Here is the noose, and here the stone,
And there the water — it must be done!
Come hither, j)oor Pomp, and look not on me,
One kick — it is over — and thou art free ! "
As over his head he lifted the band.
The fawning dog licked his master's hand;
Back in an instant tlie noose he drew,
And round liis own ueclv in a twinkliii" threw.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 105
The dog sprang after him into the deej),
His howHngs startled the sailors from sleep ;
Moaning and twitching, he showed them the spot :
They found the beggar, but life was not !
They laid him silently in the ground,
His only mourner the whimpering hound,
Who stretched himself out on the grave and cried
Like an orphan child — and so he died.
Ohaniis.so, Tr. by C. T. Brooks.
Here is a little poem by T. Staub (the original in
the Appendix) on the same theme. I am indebted for the
translation to Miss Mangan : —
THE FAITHFUL DOG.
Companions old, companions tried.
Wanderers through the whole world wide.
The beggar and his dog.
Comrades in want and misery too,
With hunger and thirst their fights not few.
Time came when the beggar no longer could
Find his way through the pathless wood :
Dying he sank on the dewy grass.
The spot was lonely, no one might pass, —
In the nearest village the dog sought aid,
None came till the beggar in death was laid.
They buried him poorly where he fell,
With a rough-hewn cross the tale to tell,
His dog was the only mourner he had,
He lay on the grave lonely and sad.
106 THE FRIEND OF .MAN.
Hot sunshine came, the snow and rain,
But in none did the poor brute's courage wane
He kept his watch with weary ej^es.
Hoping to see a day-break rise,
Which should bring his master back.
But while he played his valiant part,
A little flagged the generous heart.
No longer waited, but moaned and died,
Content to lie by his master's side.
Another beggar lamenting his dog is described by
Campbell : —
THE HARPER.
" On the green banks of Shannon when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I,
No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray."
But times altered —
"Poor dog he was faithful and kind to be sure,
And he constantly loved me although I was poor,
When the sour-looking friends sent me heartless away,
I had always a friend in my poor dog Tray.
" When the road was so dark and the night was so cold,
And Pat and his dog were grown weary and old,
How snugly we slept in my old coat of grey,
And he licked me for kindness, my good dog Tray !
" Where now shall I go, poor, forsaken, and blind ?
Can I find one to guide me so faithful and kind "?
To my sweet native village, so far, far away,
I shall never return with my poor dog Traj',"
THE FKIEND OF MAN. 107
After the dogs who pined on graves or faithfully followed
houseless beggars, we may place poor famous Gelert —
whose -tragic tale is said to be common in one shape or
other to the whole Aryan race. This is the well-known
version of it by Mr. Spencer, abbreviated : —
LLEWELLYN AND HIS DOG.
The spearmen heard the bugle sound,
And cheerily smiled the morn,
And many a brach and many a blast,
Attend Llewellyn's horn.
"Come, Gelert ! come! why art thou last
Llewellyn's horn to hear?"
Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied.
When near the portal seat,
His truant Gelert he espied,
Bounding his lord, to greet.
But when he gained, the castle door.
Aghast the chieftain stood :
The hound was smeared with drojas of gore ;
His lij)S and fangs ran blood.
Llewellyn gazed with wild, surprise,
Unused such looks to meet ;
His favourite checked, his joyful guise,
And crouched and licked his feet.
108 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Onward in haste Llewellj'n passed,
(And on went Gelert too) ;
And still where'er his eyes were cast,
Fresh hlood-drops shocked his view.
O'erturned his infant's bed he fouud.
The blood-stained cover rent.
And all around, the walls and ground,
With recent blood besprent.
He called his child — no voice replied ;
He searched — with terror wild;
Blood ! blood ! he found on every side.
But nowhere found the child !
" Monster, by thee, my child's devoured !
The frantic father cried,
And to the hilt his vengeful sword.
He plunged in Gelert's side.
His suppliant, as to earth he fell ;
No i)itj" could impart;
But still his Gelert's dying yell,
Passed heavy o'er his heart.
Aroused by Gelert's dying jell,
Some slumberer wakened nigh ;
What words the parent's joy can tell.
To hear his infant cry !
Concealed beneath a mangled heap
His hurried search had missed ;
All glowing from his rosy sleep.
His cherub boy he kissed. '
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 109
Nor scratch had he, nor harm, nor dread :
But the same couch beneath
Lay a great wolf, all torn and dead —
Tremendous still in death.
Ah ! what was then LlewelljTi's pain ;
For now the truth was clear
The gallant hound the wolf had slain
To save Llewellyn's heir !
Here is another tale of a devoted dog, — by Hang.
The original will be found in the Appendix : —
THE RESCUE.
From a still Alpine cloister go,
A traveller and his friend,
His faithful dog, and through drifted snow,
Their homeward way they wend.
The traveller gazed around him, hushed,
By the winter's placid beautj' :
In front his dumb companion rushed,
As if he were on dutj'.
The ice gave way, an avalanche fell.
The traveller buried lay.
How shaU his dog find means to tell,
"What happened on the way ?
He sought the cloister's open door.
He gave the monks no rest.
At length they came, he ran before.
Leading his master's quest.
110 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
They quickly came to where the snow,
His master's grave had formed.
He stoijped, no further would he go,
As though the spot were charmed.
The last spade-full of suow was whirled
Into the frosty air,
The master gained the day-Ht world
His faithful dog was there.
"How shall I ever thank you all?"
They stopped the thanks thus raised :
" Not us 3^our rescuers you can call,
Your faithful dog be praised."
Into the traveller's eyes tears came,
He kissed his dog with tears,
" Until I die, dear friend, thy fame.
Shall last throughout the years."
CHAPTER XIII.
DOGS AS FEIENDS.
FTER these poems on the heroism of dogs,
we may pass to those which speak of the
comfort which a dog's faithful affection has
brought to many a gloomy life, and the
cheer it has added to a bright one.
TO MY DOG— BLANCO.
My dear, dumb friend, low-lying there,
A willing vassal at my feet,
Glad partner of my home and fare,
My shadow in the street.
I look into your great brown eyes.
Where love and loyal homage shine,
And wonder where the difference lies.
Between your soul and mine !
For all of good that I have found,
Within myself or human-kind,
Hath royalty informed and crowned,
Your crentle heart and mine.
112 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
I pcan the whole broad earth around,
For that one heart which, leal and true,
Bears friendship without end or bound.
And find the prize in j'ou !
I trust you as I trust the stars ;
Nor cruel loss, nor scoff of pride,
Nor beggary, nor dungeon bars,
Can move you from my side!
As patient under injury,
As an J' Christian saint of old.
As gentle as a lamb with me.
But with your brothers bold.
More playful than a frolic boy.
More watchful than a sentinel ;
By day and night your constant joy.
To guard and please me well !
I clasp your head upon my breast —
And while you whine and liclv my hand—
And thus our friendship is confessed,
And thus we understand !
Ah ! Blanco, did I worship God
As truly as you worship me,
Or follow where my Master trod
With your humility !
Did I sit fondly at His feet,
As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine.
And watch Him with a love as sweet,
My life would grow divine !
THE FKIEND OF 3IAN. 113
Here is another of the charming little playful pieces
I borrow from Voices for tlw SpeecJdcss : —
SIX FEET.
My little rough clog aucl I
Live a life that is rather rare,
We have so many good walks to take,
And so few bad things to bear ;
So much that gladdens and recreates,
So little of wear and tear.
Sometimes it blows and rains.
But still the six feet ply ;
No care at all to the following four
If the leading two knows why,
'Tis a pleasure to have six feet, we think,
My little rough dog and I.
And we travel all one way ;
'Tis a thing we should never do.
To reckon the two without the four,
Or the four without the two ;
It would not be right if any one tried,
Because it would not be true.
And who shall look uj) and say
That it ought not so to be.
Though the earth that is heaven enough for him
Is less than that to me.
For a little rough dog can wake a joy.
That enters eternity.
—Humane Journal.
114 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
It is, perhaps, going a little too far in praise of a
man to say that in " all " bis actions he copied a good
dog ; but such was the euloifiuni of Robert Mossendew,
game-keeper, inscribed on his memorial tablet on the
wall of Harefield Church, Middlesex, date 1744. A
marble bas-relief represents the game-keeper following
his dog in the flesh, as well as by his master's testi-
mony, he was wont to do in the spirit : —
In frost, aud snow, thro' hail and rain,
He scour'd the woods, and trudg'd the plain ;
The steady pointer leads the way,
Stands at the scent, then springs the prey ;
The timorous birds from stubble rise,
With iiinions stretch 'd divide the skies :
The scatter'd lead pursues the sight,
And death in thunders tops their flight ;
His spaniel of true English kind.
With gratitude, inflames his mind ;
This servant in an honest way,
In all his actions copied Traj^
I hope no reader will be shocked by Mr. George Sims'
poem, — a very fine one I venture to think, in its
grotesque way : —
TOLD TO THE MISSIONARY.
Just look'ee here, Mr. Preacher, you're a-goin' a bit too fur ;
There isn't the man as is livin' as I'd let say a word
agen her.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 115
She's a rum-lookiu' bitch, that I own to, and there is a
fierce look in her eyes,
But if any cove sez as she's vicious, I sez in his teeth,
he lies.
Soh ! gently, old 'ooman ; come here, now, and set by my
side on the bed ;
I wonder -who'll have yer, my beauty, when him as you're
all to's dead !
There, stow your perlaver a minit ; I knows as my end is
nigh;
Is a cove to turn round on his dog, like, just 'cos he's
goin' to die ?
Oh, of course, I was sartiu j'ou'd say it. It's alius the
same with j^ou,
Give it us straight now, guv'nor, — what would you have
me do '?
Think of my soul ? I do, sir. Think of my Saviour ? —
Right !
Don't be afeard of the bitch, sir ; she's not a-goin' to bite.
Tell me about my Saviour — tell me that tale agen.
How He j)raj'ed for the coves as killed Him, and died
for the worst of men.
It's a tale as I always liked, sir ; and bound for the
'ternal shore,
I thinks it aloud to myself, sir, and I likes it more and
more.
I've thumbed it out in the Bible, and I know it now by
heart,
And it's put like steam in my boiler, and made me ready
to start.
116 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
I ain't not afeared to die now ; I've been a bit bad iu
my day,
But I know when I knocks at them portals there's one
as won't say me nay.
And it's thinkin' about that story, and all as he did
for us,
As makes me so fond o' my dawg, sir, speciallj'^ now I'm wus;
For a-savin' o' folks who'd kill us is a beautiful act, the
which
I never heard tell on o' no one, 'cej^t o' Him and o' that
there bitch.
'Twas five years ago come Christmus, maybe you remember
the row.
There was scares about hydrophoby — same as there be
just now ;
And the bobbies came down on us costers — came in a
reggerlar Avax,
And them as 'ud got no license was summerned to pay
the tax.
But I had a friend among 'em, and he came in a friendly way.
And he sez, " You nuist settle your dawg. Bill, unless
you've a mind to pay."
The missus was dyin' wi' fever — I'd made a mistake in
my pitch,
I voulilii't afford to keep her, so I sez, " I'll drownd the
bitch ! "
I wasn't a-goiii' to lo.sc her, I warn't such a brute, you bet,
As to leave her to die by inches o' hunger, and cold,
and wet ;
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 117
I uever said uow't to the missus — we both on us liked
her well —
But I takes her the follerin' Sunday to the Grand Canell.
I gets her tight by the collar — the Lord forgive my sin !
And, kneelin' down on the towpath, I ducks the poor beast in.
She gave just a sudden whine like, then a look come into
her eyes
As 'nil last for ever in mine, sir, up to the day I dies.
And a chill came over my heart, then, and thinkin" I
heard her moan,
I held her below the water, beating her skull with a stone.
You can see the mark of it now, sir — that place on the
top of 'er 'ed —
And sudden she ceased to struggle, and I fancied as she
was dead.
I shall never know how it happened, but goin' to loose
my hold.
My knees slipped over the towpath, and into the stream
I rolled;
Down like a log I went, sir, and my eyes were filled with mud,
And the water was tinged above me with a murdered
creeter's blood.
I gave myself up for lost then, and I cursed in my wild despair,
And sudden I rose to the surfis, and a su'thing grabbed
my hair —
Grabbed at my hair, and loosed it, and grabbed me agin
by the throat.
And she was a-holdin' my 'ed up, and somehow I kep' afloat.
I can't tell yer 'ow she done it, for I never know'd no more.
Till somebody seized my collar, aud giv' me a lug ashore ;
I
118 THE FEIEND OF MAN.
Aud my head was queer aud dizzj% but I see as the bitch
was weak,
And she lay on her side a-pautin' waitiu' for me to speak.
"VMiat did I do with her, eh ? You'd a liardly need to ax,
But I sold my barrer a Monday, an' paid the bloomin' tax.
******
That's right, Mr. Preacher, pat her — you ain't not afeard
on her now ! —
Dang this here telHn' o' stories — look at tlie muck on my brow !
I'm weaker, an' weaker, an' weaker ; I fancy the end ain't fur.
But you know why here on my deathbed I think o' the
Lord and her.
And He who by men's hands tortured uttered that prayer divine,
'Ull pardon me linkin' him like with a dawg as forgave
like mine.
When the Lord in His mercy calls me to mj' last eternal pitch,
I know as you'll treat her kindly — promise to take my bitch !
A similar tale to this of Sims' with more tragic
ending is told by Duill, and will be found in Appendix B.
The story is this : — A man led his dog to the river
at evening. The dog had faithfully watched his master's
house by day and night, but because he had grown
old and ugly he was condemned to die. The master
threw him into the deepest part of the Rhine. The
dog, however, managed to get back, keeping his faithful
eyes fixed on his master. When the man saw this,
he seized the boat-hook, and over-balanced himself in
the effort to hit the dog. The waves would have
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 119
sucked him clown, had not the dog, using his last
remnant of strength, drawn him to the bank. This
done, he fell back into the waves, exhausted.
I shall now quote the most beautiful of such verses
on the friendship of dogs and men, which have come in
my way. They are by Lamartine : —
" O mon chien! Dieu seul salt la distance autre nous,
Seul 11 sait quel degre de I'echelle de I'etre
Separe ton instinct de I'ame de ton maitre ;
Mais seul il sait aussi par quel secret raj)port
Tu vis de son regard et tu meurs de sa mort,
Et par quelle pitie jDOur nos cceurs 11 te donne.
Pour aimer encore ceux que n'aime plus personne
Aussi, pauvi'e animal, quoique a terre couche,
Jamais d'uu sot dedain mon pied ne t'a touclie
Jamais d'uu mot brutal contristant ta tendresse,
Mon coeur n'a repousse ta toucliaute caresse.
Mais toujours. Ah ! toujours en toi j'ai respecte
De tou Maitre et du mien Tineffable bonte
Comma on doit respecter sa moindre creature,
Frere a qualque degre qu'ait voulu la nature.
Ah ! mon j)auvre Fido, quand, tes veux sur las miens,
Le silence comprend nos muats antretiens ;
Quand, au bord de mon lit epiant si je veille,
Un seul souffle inegal da mon sein ta reveille ;
Que, lisant ma tristesse an mas yaux obscurcis,
Dans las plis de mon front tu cliarches mes soucis,
Et que, pour la distraire attirant ma pensea,
Tu mords j)lus teudramant ma main vers toi baissee
I 2
120 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Que comme un clair iiiiroir, nia joie an nion chagrin
Rend ton ceil fraternel iuquiet on serein,
Que Tame en toi se leve avcc tant d'evidence,
Et que ramour encore jsasse Tintelligence ;
Non, tu u'es pas du coeur la vaine illusion,
Du sentiment limnain une derision,
Un corps organise qu'anime une caresse,
Automate trompeur de vie et de teudresse!
Non ! quand ce sentiment s'eteindra dans tes yeux,
II se ranimera dans je ne sais quels cieux!
De ce qui s'aima tant la tendre sympatliie,
Homme ou bute jamais ne meurt aneantie :
Dieu la brise un instant, mais pour la reunir ;
Son sein est assez grand pour nous tons contenir —
Oui nous nous aimerons comme nous nous aimames.
Qu'importe u ses regards des instincts ou des anies '?
Partout on I'amitie consacre un coeur aimant,
Partout oil la nature allume un sentiment,
Dieu n'eteindra pas plus sa divine etiucelle
Dans I'etoile des nuits dont la splendour ruisselle
Que dans I'humble regard de ce tendre epagueul
Qui conduisait I'aveugle et meurt sur son cercueil !
Oh! viens, dernier ami que mon pas rejouisse,
Ne crains pas que de toi devant Dieu je rougisse ;
Leche mes yeux mouilles, mets ton cceur pres du mien
Et, seuls il nous aimer, aimons-nous, pauvre chien !
Joc(li/ii, XcHviciiie Epoque.
In a different vein and yet with great insight and
tenderness Mrs. Pfeiffer writes : —
THE FRIEND OF MAN, 121
THE DOG.
Poor friend and si^ort of mau, like bim unwise,
Away ! tliou staudest to his heart too near,
Too close for careless rest or healthy cheer ;
Almost in thee the glad brute nature dies.
Go scour the fields in wilful enterprise.
Lead the free chase, leap, plunge into the mere,
Herd with thy fellows, stay no longer here,
Seeking thy law and gospel in men's eyes-
He cannot go ! Love holds him fast to thee ;
More than the voices of his kind thy word
Lives in his heart ; for him thy very rod
Has flowers ; he only in thy will is free.
Cast him not out, the unclaimed savage herd
Would turn and rend him, pining for his God.
The Dog as Comforter in Sorrow has been sung by
Lamartine. The Dog as Companion in Sickness is the
theme of Mrs. Browning. Can any lines be more play-
fully tender than these, or go much deeper into the
mystery of our relations with those who possess so few
joys but so much love ; natures so limited on the side
of intellect, so large on that of the feelings ?
TO FLUSH, MY DOG.
Loving friend, the gift of one
Who her own true faith has run,
Through thy lower nature.
Be my benediction said
With my hand upon thy head,
Loving fellow creature !
122 THE FRIEND OF 3IAN.
(Then follow four stanzas in laud of Flush's beauty.)
Yet, my pretty, sportive friend
Little is't to such an end
That I praise thy rareness ;
Other dogs may be thy peers
Haply in their drooping ears
And their glossy fairness.
But of thee it shall be said, —
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary.
Watched within a curtained room
Where no sunbeam break the gloom
Round the sick and dreary.
* * * *
Other dogs in thymy dew
Tracked the hares and followed through
Sunny moor or meadow
This dog only crept and crept
Next a languid cheek that slept
Sharing in the shadow.
And if one or two quick tears
Dropped upon his glossy ears,
Or a sigh came double,
Up he sjirang in eager haste
Fawning, fondling, breathing fast,
In a tender trouble.
Therefore to this dog will I
Tenderly, not scornfully.
Render praise and favour
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 123
With my liaucl uj)on his head
Is my benediction said
Therefore and for ever.
(Then follow the poet's efforts to reward her dog —
pathetic in their playful littleness.)
Blessings on thee, dog of mine,
Pretty colours make thee fine,
Sugared milk make fat thee;
Pleasures wag on in thy tail,
Hands of gentle motion fail
Nevermore to pat thee !
Downy pillow take thy head,
Silken coverlet bestead,
Sunshine help thy sleeping!
No fly's buzzing wake thee up,
No man break thy purple cup.
Set for drinking deep in.
Whisker'd cats arointed flee !
Sturdy stoi^pers keep from thee
Cologne distillations !
Nuts lie in thy path for stones
And thy feast-day macaroons
Turn to daily rations !
Mock I thee in wishing weal ?
Tears are in my eyes to feel
Thou art made so straitly.
Blessings needs must straiten too,
Little canst thou joy or do.
Thou who lovest (jrcathj.
124 THE FKIEND OF MAN.
Yet be blessed to the height
Of all good and all delight
Pervious to thy nature ;
Only loved bej'oud that line
With a love that answers thine,
Loving fellow-creature
nature.
CHAPTER XIV.
DOGS AS VICTIMS.
HE playful view of a clog's nature is, in the
foregoing poem of Mrs. Browning, most
happily blended with the tender sentiment of
pity for the limitations of the creature's
In Mr. Lewis Morris' poem, which I must
now quote, that same gentle sportiveness comes out in
appalling contrast to the treatment which these little
playfellows of man receive at the hand of Science. Very
noble are the concluding lines : —
FEOM A " SONG OF TWO WORLDS."
Dear little friend, who day by day
Before the door of home
Art ready waiting till thy master come,
With monitory paw and noise
Swelling to half delirious joys,
Whether my path I take
By leafy coverts known to thee before,
Where the gay coney loves to play.
Or the loud pheasant whirls from out the brake
Unharmed by us, save for some frolic chase.
Or innocent panting race ;
126 THE FEIEND OF MAN.
Or, who, if by tlie suuuy river's side
Haply my steps I turn.
With loud petition constantly dost yearn
To fetch the whirling stake from the warm tide ;
Who, if I chide thee, grovellest in the dust,
And dost forgive me, though I am unjust.
Blessing the hand that smote : who with fond love
Gazest, and fear for me, such as doth move
Those finer souls which know, yet may not see
And are wrapped round and lost in ecstacy ; —
What are ye all, dear creatures, tame or wild?
What other nature yours than of a child,
Whose dumbness finds a voice mighty to call.
In wordless pity to the souls of all
Whose lives I turn to profit, and whose mute
And constant friendship links the man and brute,
Shall I consent to raise
A torturing hand against your few and evil days ?
Shall I indeed, delight
To take you, helpless kinsmen, fast and bound,
And while ye lick my hand
Lay bare your veins and nerves in one red wound.
Divide the sentient brain :
And while the raw flesh quivers with the pain,
A calm observer stand.
And drop in some keen acid, and watch it bite
The writhing life : wrench the still beating heart.
And with calm voice meanwhile discourse, and bland,
THE FEIEND OF MAN. 127
To boys who jeer or sicken as they gaze,
Of the great Goddess Science and her gracious ways ?
Surely a man should scorn
To owe his weal to others' death and pain ?
Sure 'twere no real gain
To batten on lives so weak and so forlorn ?
Nor were it right indeed
To do for others what for self were wrong.
'Tis but the same dead creed,
Preaching the naked triumph of the strong;
And for this Goddess Science, hard and stern,
We shall not let her priests torment and burn :
We fought the priests before, and not in vain ;
And as we fought before, so will we fight again.
Tennyson speaks of those who " carve the living hound "
— and describes one of them in The Children's Hospital: —
" Wonderful cures he had done, O yes, but they said too
of him
He was hapx^ier in using the knife than in trying to save
the limb.
And that I can well believe, for he looked so coarse and
so red,
I could think he was one of those who would break their
jests on the dead
And mangle the living dog that had loved him and fawned
at his knee —
Drenched with the hellish-oorali — that ever such things
should be ! "
128 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
The great Laureate of England is wrong in imagining that
the men who commit thifi kind of cruelty on human or
infra-human victims are of the "coarse, red" type. They
are highly refined, white-handed gentlemen — with every
outward semblance of refinement. Scientific cruelty is
quite an exquisite kind of vice, not for a moment to be
confounded with the more stupid brutality of the beer-
besotted costermonger. Which is the worst and
most devil-like I leave for my readers to decide for
themselves.
Here is a singular poem of Robert Browning touching
on the same theme, and proving — a fact well known by
his ready signature of every memorial against the
abominable thing — that he entirely shares his brother
poet's feelings on this matter : —
TRAY.
"A beggar child" (let's hear this tliird !)
Sat on a quay's edge, like a bird —
Sang to herself at careless play,
And fell into the stream ' Dismay !
Hell), you the standers-by ! ' None stirred.
" By-stauders reason, think of wives
And children ere they risk their lives ;
Over the balustrade has bounced
A mere instinctive dog and pounced
Plum on the prize. How well he dives !
THE FEIEND OF MAN. 129
*' Uj) he comes with the child, see, tight
In mouth, alone too, clutched from quite
A depth of ten feet — twelve I bet !
Good dog ! What off again ? There's yet
Another child to save ? All right ! !
*' How strange we saw no other fall !
It's instinct in the animal,
Good dog ! But he's a long while under ;
If he got drowned I should not wonder —
Strong current that, against the wall.
*' Here he comes — holds in mouth this time —
What may the thing be ? Well that's i)rime !
Now did you ever ? Reason reigns
In man alone, since all Tray's pains
Have fished— the child's doll from the slime !
*' And so, amid the laughter gay,
Trotted my hero off — old Tray —
Till somebody, prerogatived
With reason reasoned : ' Why he dived
His brain should show us I should say.'
" John go and catch — or if needs be
Purchase that animal for me !
By vivisection at expense
Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence
How brain secretes dog's soul we'll see."
— Dramatic Idylls.
After these great masters of English song, here is a
very unpretentious little poem which has come to my
130 THE FKIEND OF MAN.
hands in a leaflet, but which I think is pathetic
enough to be preserved : —
O Man ! O God ! — for God thou seem'st to me,
And I thy creature ■worshiiiping and true ;
All of my life I dedicate to thee —
All that I know of love is felt for you.
It is my all of heaven to see thy face,
To fall do^\Ti at thy feet, to lick thy hands,
To doing thy great will, all joj's give place,
I only live to follow thy commands.
To lay my body underneath thy feet,
To die if only slain by thy dear hand.
The blow that reft my life would e'en be sweet,
Lj'iug or dying; 'tis at thy demand.
But, master ! from the love I bear thy race
By all my loving service freelj- thine,
Oh ! hear my cries within this awful place,
Wherein one spark of mercj' does not shine!
I ask not for my life, 'tis thine to take.
And freely do I yield it up to thee —
Pains I have often borne for thy dear sake,
If thou approve, 'twere bliss enougli for me.
But leave me not within these hell-bound walls,
These dread abodes of horror, wrong, and sin.
The very threshold of whose gloom appals.
And strikes with terror all mj' heart within.
THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Ob ! take me forth from this more awful hell,
Than that which claims thy soul's foreboding fear
Oh ! listen to my voice all it can tell
Is eloquent in agonies and tears !
Perhaps the most terrible of this class of poems is the
long passage in Mr, Buchanan's recent City of Dream,
in the Chapter XIY. In the City without God the
Pilgrim finds the marble temple of Science and thus
describes what he sees there : —
"And seeing that the doors were open wide
Enter'd and passed through echoing corridors
And found myself within its inmost core,
And in a lofty hall with marble paven
One stood before a table wrought of stone
And strewn with phials, knives and instruments
Of sharpest steel ; before him ranged in rows
Of benches forming a great semi-moon.
His audience thronged, all hungry ears and eyes.
The man was stripped to the elbow, both his hands
Were stained and bloody ; and in the right he held
A scalpel dripping blood : beneath him lay
Fastened upon the board, while from its heart
Flowed the last throbbing stream of gentle life
A coney white as snow. In cages near
Were other victims, coney and cat and ape.
Lambkins but newly wean'd and fluttering doves
Which preen'd their wings and coo'd their summer cry.
132 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
The hall was darkened from the suu, but lit
By lamps electric that around him shed
Insufferable brightness clear as day.
Presently at the door there entered one
Who by a chain did lead a gentle hound
AVhich scenting new- shed blood drew back in dread ;
Whereon from all the benches rose a cry
Of cruel laughter ; and the lecturer smiled,
And wiping him his blood-stained instrument,
And casting down the coney scarcely dead,
Prepared the altar for fresh sacrifice.
The hound drew back and struggled with the chain
In act to fly, but every way dragged and driven
He reached the lecturer's feet and there lay down
Panting and looking up with pleading eyes ;
The lecturer smiled again and patted him.
When lo ! the victim licked the bloody hand
Pleading for kindness and for pity still.
Then crushing one hand on the murmuring mouth
He with the other took the glittering knife,
And leisurely began.
I looked no more,
But covering up mine eyes, I shrieked aloud
And rushed in horror from the accursed place ;
But at the door I turned, and turning met
The piteous eye-balls fixed in agony
Beneath a forehead by tlic knife laid bare."
The City of Dream, p. 318.
CHAPTER XV.
THE DEATH OF DOGS.
^ IKE the Pilgrim we will rush away from these
horrors, (repeated alas ! every clay in scores
of laboratories all over Europe), and for
contrast, let us see the dog dying among
loving friends — a great Poet the chief mourner. Poor
Geist (I happen to have had the privilege of his personal
acquaintance) was not at all a beautiful dog ; a humble
little Dachs, not particularly highly bred. But he had
the true dog's heart ; and the large hearts of his master
and mistress understood it and loved him as he deserved.
That " common and low thing " to the scientist, was a
precious one in the eyes of a man whom even he would
probably admit to have been in the foremost intellectual
ranks of his generation.
GEIST'S GRAVE.
Four years ! — and didst thou stay above
The ground which hides thee now but four ?
And all that life, and all that love.
Were crowded, Geist ! into no more ?
K
134 THE FRIEND OF MAX.
Only four years those winning ways,
Wliich make me for thy presence j'earn,
Called us to iset thee or to praise,
Dear little friend ! at every turn ?
That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span,
To run their course, and reach their goal.
And read their homily to man ?
That liquid, melancholy eye.
From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
Seem'd surging the Virgiliau cry,*
The sense of tears in mortal things.
That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled
By spirits gloriously gay,
And temper of heroic mould —
What, was four years their whole short day ?
Yes, only four ! — and not the course
Of all the centuries to come.
And not the infinite resource
Of nature, with her countless sum
Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore. •
Stern law of every mortal lot !
Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear
And builds himself I know not what.
Of second life I know not where.
* Sunt lacriince rerum.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 135
But tliou, when struck thine hoiir to go,
On us, who stood despondent by,
A meek last glance of love didst throw,
And humbly lay thee down to die.
Yet would we keep thee in our heart —
Would fix our favourite on the scene.
Nor let thee utterly depart
And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.
And so there rise these lines of verse
On lips that rarely form them now ;
While to each other we rehearse :
Such ivaj/s, mirh arts, such looks hadst thou !
We stroke thy broad, brown paws again,
We bid thee to thy vacant chair.
We greet thee by the window-pane,
We liear thy scuffle on the stair ;
We see the fla^js of thy large ears
Quick raised to ask which way we go ;
Crossing the frozen lake appears
Thy small black figure on the snow !
Nor to us only art thou dear,
Who mourn thee in thine English home ;
Thou hast thine absent master's tear,
Dropped by the far Australian foam.
Thy memory lasts both here and there,
And thou shalt live as long as we.
And after that — thou dost not care ?
In us was all the world to thee.
K 2
136 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Yet fondly zealous for thy fame,
Even to a date bej-ond tliiue own
We strive to carry down thy name,
By mounded turf, and graven stone.
We lay tliee, close within our reach,
Here, where the grass is smooth and warm.
Between the holly and the beech,
Where oft we watched thj' couchant form.
Asleep, yet lending half an ear
To travellers on the Portsmouth Road —
There choose we thee, O guardian dear,
Marked with a stone, thy last abode !
Then some, who through the garden jiass,
"Wlien we, too, like thyself are clay.
Shall see thy grave upon the grass.
And stop before the stone, and say —
" People who lived here long ago
Did by this stone, it seems, intend
To name for future times to know
The dachshund — Geist, their little friend."
How exquisite are these verses from beginning to end!
Especially so, I think, the sixth and seventh stanzas,
where Mr. Arnold expresses the thought (which must have
occurred to so many of us, but to which I do not think any
one else has given words), that in all the vastness of this
immeasurable Creation there is not, and never will be,
another being like the one who is dead. That being,
(some of us believe), may revive and live once more — but
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 137
(mother who can restore its "little self" to us will never
exist in " all the centuries to come."
In a lighter vein is the same poet's " Kaiser Dead," which
appeared in the Fortni/jhtltj Review for July, 1887. Obviously
Kaiser was not a dog cast in either heroic or sentimental mould ;
and his master's lament for him is an exquisite sample of that
half humorous, half sad and tender feeling wherewith a
strong and kindly man naturally regards such a creature.
KAISER DEAD.
April 0, 1887.
What, Kaiser dead ? The heavy news
Post haste to Cobham calls the Muse,
From where in Farringford she brews
The ode sublime ;
Or with Pen-bryu's bold bard pursues *
A rival rhyme.
Kai's bracelet tail, Kai's busy feet
Were known to all the village street,
""What, poor Kai dead?" say all I meet,
" A loss, indeed ! "
O for the croon, pathetic, sweet,
Of "Robin's reed."
* Cobham, in Surrey, some readers may wish to be told was
Mr. Arnold's own residence, — Farringford is Lord Tennyson's, —
and Pea-bryu that of Mr. Lewis Morris.
138 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Six years ago I brouglit him down
A baby dog from London town.
Bound his small throat of l)lack and brown
A ribbon blue
And vouched by glorious renown,
A dachshund true.
His mother, most majestic dame,
Of blood unmixed, from Potsdam came
And Kaiser's race we deemed the same
No lineage higher,
And so he bore the imperial name,
But ah ! his sire.
Soon, soon the days conviction bring.
The collie hair, the collie swing,
The tail's indomitable ring.
The eye's unrest —
The case was clear ; a mongrel thing
Kai stood confest.
But all those virtues, which commend
The humbler sort who serve and tend,
Were thine in store, thou faithful friend.
What sense, what cheer !
To us, declining tow'rds our end,
A mate how dear !
For Max, thj' brother-dog, began
To flag, and feel his narrowing span.
And cold, besides, his blue blood ran,
Since, 'gainst the classes,
He heard, of late, the Grand Old Man
Incite the masses.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 139
Yes, Max aud we grew slow and sad ;
But Kai, a tireless shepherd-lad,
Teeming with plans, alert and glad
In work or play,
Like sunshine went and came, and bade
Live out the day !
Still, still I see the figure smart —
Trophy in mouth, agog to start.
Then home return'd, once more depart ;
Or prest together
Against thy mistress, loving heart.
In winter weather.
I see the tail, like bracelet twirl'd.
In moments of disgrace uncurled.
Then at a pardoning word re-furled,
A conquering sign ;
Crying, " Come on, and range the world,
And never pine."
Thine eye was bright, thy coat it shone ;
Thou hadst thine errands, off and on ;
In joy thy last morn flew ; anon,
A fit ! All's over ;
And thou art gone where Geist hath gone.
And Toss, and Rover.
Poor Max, with downcast, reverent head,
Regards his brother's form outspread :
Full well Max knows the friend is dead
Whose cordial talk
And jokes in doggish language said,
Beguiled his walk.
140 THE FBtEXD OF MAN.
And Glory, stretched at BurTvood gate,
Thy passing by doth vainly wait;
And jealous Jock, thy only hate,
The chiel from Skye,
Let's from his shaggy Highland pate
Thy memory die.
Well, fetch the graven coUar fine,
And rub the steel and make it shine,
And leave it round thy neck to twine,
Kai, in thy grave.
There of thy master keep that sign,
And this plain stave.
CHAPTER XVI.
HOPES FOE DOGS.
^HAT love of man for his non-human friend,
which inspires the hope that they may be
" united in some equal sky " hereafter, is,
like every other sentiment which instinc-
tively stretches out towards the infinite, an ennobling
one. It is not only (albeit this is a very strong
impression on many of us) our sense of Justice which
forces us to project into the void some hope of recom-
pense and joy for the brute whose earthly life has
been miserable, but also our own affection which refuses
to contemplate extinction in any direction. Like vines
we stretch out tendrils on all sides, — large ones on which
we hang — small ones which bind us to some lesser
plant in Grod's garden. To think that any of them will
be cut off' rudely, is to contemplate the mutilation and
impoverishment of our own natures, of which growth and
expansion are the vital laws. In a deeper sense perhaps
than the poet thought of as he wrote the words, it is
true that —
" They nin, who tell us Love can die " ;
142 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
It is a sort of sin — a lese niqjcste against Love, — great
or small, it matters not, so that it be pure and true, —
to suppose that it can expire like a material thing.
A curious number of favourable opinions of eminent
thinkers and divines on this point of the immortality of
animals, have been collected ;''' Bishop Butler, the greatest
name in the Church of England at the head of them ; and
after him John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Matthew Henry,
Hartley, Henry More, and others down to George
Macdonald and Theodore Parker. Here are a few from
the Poets : —
THEEE'S ROOM ENOUGH FOR ALL.
Ah ! Rover, by those lustrous eyes
That follow me with longing gaze.
Which sometimes seem so human-wise,
I look for human speech and ways.
By your quick instinct, matchless love,
Your eager welcome, mute caress.
That all my heart's emotions move.
And loneliest moods and hours bless,
I do believe, my dog, that you
Have some beyond ; some future new.
Why not? In Heaven's inheritance
Space must be cheap where worlds of light
In boundless, limitless expanse
Roll grandly far from human sight.
* See an Essay on the Fuhire of the Lower Anhnals. Part II.
in the Modern Racl;. Sonnenscliein. 1889.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 143
He who has given such patient care,
Such constancy, such tender trust.
Such ardent zeal, such instincts rare,
And made you something more tlian dust.
May yet release the speechless thrall
At death — There's room enough for all.
— Our Continent.
Miss Ingelow touches the theme with her wonted
tenderness. Speaking of animals, she asks : —
Have they another life, and was it won
In the sore travail of another death,
Which loosed the manacles from our race undone.
And plucked the pang from dying ? If this breath
Be not their all, reproach no more debarred ;
"O! unkind lords, you made our bondage hard;"
May be their plaint when we shall meet again
And make our peace with them ; the sea of life
Find flowing full, nor aught, or lost, or vain.
Shall the vague hint, whereof all thought is rife.
The sweet pathetic guess indeed come true.
And things restored reach that great residue ?
Why must we think, begun in paradise.
That their long line, cut off with severance fell
Shall end in nothingness — the sacrifice
Of their long service in a passing knell '?
Could we be wholly blest, if not to say
"Forgive," nor make amends, for ever and aye?
144 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
God scattereth bis abundance as forgot —
And wbat tben dotb He gather ? If we know :
'Tis that One told us it was life ; for " not
A Sparrow," quoth be, — uttering long ago
The strangest words that e'er took earthly sound-
" Without your Father, falletb to the ground."
Here is another :
DO YOU KNOW •?
When a human being dies,
Seeming scarce so good or wise,
Scarce so high in scale of mind
As the horse he leaves behind,
" Lo," we cry, "the fleeting spirit,
Dotb a newer garb inherit ;
Through eternity doth soar,
Growing, greateniug, evermore."
But our beautiful dumb crea^tures
Yield their gentle, generous natures
With their mute, appealing eyes.
Haunted by earth's mysteries.
Wistfully upon us cast,
Loving, trusting, to the last ;
And we arrogantly say : —
" They have had their little day ;
Nothing of them but was clay."
Has all perished ? Was no mind
In that graceful form enshrined ?
Can the love that tilled those eyes
With most eloquent replies.
When the glossy head close pressing,
Grateful met your hand's caressing
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 145
Can the mute intelligence,
Baffling oft our human sense
With strange wisdom, buried be
Under the wild cherry tree '?
Are these elements that spring
In a daisy's blossoming.
Or in long dark grasses wave
Plume-like o'er your favourite's grave ?
Can they live in us, and fade,
In all else that God has made ?
Is there aught of harm believing,
That, some newer form receiving.
They may find a wider sphere,
Live a larger life than here ?
That the meek, appealing eyes.
Haunted by strange mysteries.
Find a more extended field,
To new destinies unsealed ;
Or that in the ripened prime
Of some far-off summer time.
Ranging that unknown domain.
We may find our pets again ?
H. B. BosTwicK.
And here speaks our recent favoured guest to Loudon,
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes : —
QUESTIONS.
Is there not somethi*ng in the pleading eye
Of the ]30or brute that suffers, which arraigns
The law that bids it suffer '? Has it not
A claim for some remembrance in the book,
146 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
That fills its pages with the idle words
Spoken of man ? Or is it only clay,
Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand,
Yet all his own to treat it as he will.
And when he will to cast it at his feet,
Shattered, dishonoured, lost for evermore ?
My dog loves me, but could he look beyond
His earthly master, would his love extend
To Him who,— Hush ! I will not doubt that He
Is better than our fears, and will not wrong
The least, the meanest of created things.
In that very pleasant volume the reminiscences of the late
Charlotte Williams Wynn, after describing her sorrow at the
death of a dog, she mentions placing the following epitaph on
his little grave with an ivy plant to trail over it : —
EPITAPH ON MISS CHARLOTTE WILLIAMS WYNN'S
DOG.
Round this sepulchral spot
Emblems of Hope we twine.
If God be Love, what sleeps below was not
Without a spark divine.
Barry Cornwall is much of the mind of the hero of
the Mahabharata, when he wrote of the
BLOODHOUND.
What, Herod, old hound ! Dost remember the day
AVhen I fronted the wolves like a stag at bay ?
When downward they gallopped to where we stood.
Whilst I staggered with fear in the dark pine wood "?
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 147
Dost remember their bowlings ? Their horrible speed ?
God ! God ! how I prayed for a friend in need !
And — he came ! Ah ! 'twas then, my dear Herod, I found
That the best of all friends was my bold Bloodhound !
Men tell us, dear friend, that a noble hound,
Must for ever be lost in the worthless ground ;
Yet "Courage," "Fidelity," "Love" (they say),
Bear MAN, as on wings, to his skies away.
Well, Herod — go tell them whatever may be,
I'll hope I may ever be found by thee.
If in sleep, then in sleep ; if with skies around,
May'st thou follow e'en thither — my dear Bloodhound !
The idea of the immortality of the lower animals seems
to be a peculiarly favoured one among the poets of
modern Scandinavia. Wergeland, a celebrated Norwegian
Poet, wrote on his death-bed in 1845 verses in which
voices are heard to whisper thus : —
" When our souls rise to the glory of Heaven
The innocent earthly beings who loved us cling to us
magnetically.
There shall'st thou find again all thou hast loved
Even the smallest creature
There, if thou wiliest shall'st thou see thine old horse
and ride him,
Over the boundless plains of Heaven.
Thy dead mother will joy to see thee mounting him
once more, —
The creature she loved and fondled so often —
Careering on his back over the thunder clouds, — and
the floods of the lightning."
148 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
It was this charming poet who said that he could
" drown all his sorrows in the deep sea of his dog's
eyes."
The Dani/^Poet, Rev. G. Eichardt, asks: —
The Soul that, embodied iu the form of a brute,
Longs and suffers here,
Will it, think you, be debarred
From Life iu the world eternal ?
When our great Master Christ,
The New Jerusalem enters.
When the Eedeemed around Him
Wave their palms in the skies,
Will He not then be followed
By "the colt the foal of an ass?"
Another celebrated Danish poet, Paladan Miller, in the
same strain says : —
" The brute's life now shaded in gloom
Will it not be revived where all gloom is banished ?
The faithful dog which died on the grave of his master,
Will he not meet again the man he loved so truly ?
'Tis the thought of consolation the faith to which we
cling,
That all we here have lost we surelj' regain yonder.
The husk of the seed may perish —
The living grain survives."
The poet Kaalniul, who died iu 1885, called himself
THE FKIEND OF JIAN. 149
the Poet of Animals. Speaking of the maltreatment of
brutes he says : —
"It is a tragedy of ancient date
Even from the daj^s of creation.
Shall it be played to earth's last hour,
When the end of all things comes,
' And none are left more to suffer ? ' "
And on the tombstone erected by many admirers to
this poet, are inscribed his own lines of faith and hope,
referring to all ranks of Life : —
" Through the conflict of ages
The harmony runs
From the dust of the earth
•To the furthest of suns."
Finally, the best expression which the poets have left us
of the sentiment of Hope extended to the future life of
higher animals, is, in my humble judgment, that which
is to be found in Southey's manly lines. On the Death of
a Favourite Old Sjxiniel. With these I shall conclude
this little volume.
After describing the " faithful fondness " of the dog
for him as a boy, Southey says : —
" Ah ! poor companion ! when thou followedst last
Thy master's parting footsteps to the gate,
"Which closed for ever on him, thou didst lose
Thy truest friend, and none was left to plead
For the old age of brute fidelity.
150
THE FRIEND OF MAN.
But fare thee well ! Mine is no narrow creed ;
And He who gave thee being did not frame
The mystery of life to be the sport
Of merciless man. There is another world
For all that live and move — a better one !
Where the proud bipeds who would fain confine
Infinite Goodness to the little bounds
Of theik own charity, may envy thee."
THE END.
THE FRIEND OF MA.N. 151
APPENDIX
A.
The following is M. Lenormant's description of ancient
Egyptian clogs referred to in Note f, p. 18 : —
I, " Le chien renard, a la robe fauve, au mus-eau eflSle,
aux oreilles pointues, a la queue epaisse, qui se retrouve
identique, li bien de siecles de distance, dans le chien des
bazaars du Caire. II figure sur les monuments de toutes
les epoques, depuis les ages les plus recules de I'Ancien
Empire. Dans les scenes de la vie quotidienne retracees
sur les parvis des tombeaux, il joue le role de gardien
de la maison et des troupeaux, de compagnon du maitre,
ou de ses colons ; mais on ne le voit jamais employe a
la cliasse C'est cette variete des cliiens dont
on trouve des momies dans plusieurs des necropoles
antiques. C'est elle en effet qui, avec le chaeal, etait
I'animal sacre du dieu Anubis, le gardien des sepultures
et I'une des divinites principales du monde des morts."
II. Depuis le Xllth dynastie {circa 3000 B.C.) " nous
voyons apparaitre sur les monuments a cote de ce chien,
qui est celui qui appartient a I'Egypte d'une maniere
toute speciale, et remplir les memes oflSces, a la maison
et aux champs, le chien de Dongolal Ce
chien est encore aujourd'hui celui qu'on recontre le plus
habituellement dans les villages de Nubie."
L 2
152 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
III. " Le chien de chasse de I'Aucieu Empire ....
est le ' slougbi ' ou grand levrier du uord de I'Afrique.
.... Les bas-reliefs des tombes des dynasties
primitives, autour de Mempbis, le montrent toujours tenu
en laisse par des valets de cbasse, ou lance dans la
campagne poursuivant les antelopes du desert attaquant
meme des animaux plus redoutables, comme la byene,
et le cbien byenoide. Pendant toute cette epoque, il est
le seul cbien employe a de semblables usages."
IV. From tbe time of tbe Xlltb dynasty, bowever,
No. III. is associated witb " un grand cbien courant, de
baute taille, aux formes elancees, aux oreilles pendantes,
a la tete semblable a celle du ' fox-bound ' anglais ....
Ce cbien devient surtout en usage sous le Nouvel Empire,
. . . . et supplante presque entierement le levrier des
ep6ques plus anciennes."
V. Belongs exclusively to tbe Xlltb dynasty, — " d'ou
il faut conclure que c'etait sans doute une race etrangere
.... qui ne parvint pas a se naturaliser definitive-
ment dans le pays. C'est une sorte de basset a jambes
basses, de fort petite taille, dont le port est exactement
celui du ' turnspit ' anglais, mais la tete differe absolu-
ment de celle de toutes uos varietes de bassets
Je ne connais pas de race vivante analogue. C'etait le
cbien a la mode sous les Osortasen et les Amenembe B.C.
8000. Tous les morts de distinction de cette epoque se
font representer dans leur tombeau ayant aupres d'eux
leur basset favori. Mais il ne parait pas que cette race
THE FKIEND OF MAN,
ait jamais servi autrement que comme animal de luxe, et
d'agrement dans I'interieur des maisons."
VI. and VII. are only known to be represented once
each ; VI. on a tomb of Beni Hassan (Xlltli dynasty), a
" chien-renard," and VII. on a tomb of Zouruah (XVIIIth
dynasty), a " grand matin."
" Le chacal, qui parait etre la source d'une partie du
moins de nos chiens s'apprivoise aisement Les
tombes de I'Ancien Empire montrent a plusieurs reprises
un chacal apprivoise remplagant le chien aupres du defunt,
ou se melant a ses chiens."
On tombs of Sakkarah, of the IV th and Vth dynasties,
we have represented, as a hunting dog, the Canis pictus,
" Le chien hyenoide Les Egyptiens de I'Ancien
Empire elevaient done habituellement le chien hyenoide
pour I'employer au services de leurs chasses .... II
etait si complement domestique chez les Egyptiens de
I'Ancien Empire qu'il se reproduisait dans le domesti-
cite." But before the Hyksos invasion it had disappeared.
The "guepard" (fehs jubata) is only found on XVIIIth
and XlXth dynasty monuments. It figures as an article
of tribute from Negro populations to their Theban
suzerain.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 155
APPENDIX.
B.
The following famous tale of Aubry's Dog, whicli I
here give as versified by Gockingk, is to be found in
Montfaucon's Monumens de la Monarchie Franqaise (1729).
There is a rather droll incident concerning the poem
which allies it with the career of Goethe. The dog-
story, it seems, was converted into a small drama for a
provincial stage, but the Grand Duke of Weimar, being
pleased with it, resolved that it should appear on his own
theatre. Goethe, who had collected a troupe of the
cleverest actors and actresses of the period and trained
them himself, was highly indignant at the notion that
they should be called on to perform in company with a
Dog, who was to be trained for his part of the play by
a common dog-breaker. When the Duke insisted on the
production of the piece Goethe accordingly retired from
the management of the Weimar Theatre. The story as
Gockingk tells us is as follows : —
Aubry de Montdidier was the favourite of King
Charles, and thus excited the jealousy of his other
courtiers, especially of Count Macaire, who met him when
alone in a wood with his dog, and killed him. The dog
afterwards lay constantly on Aubry's grave, and, on
seeing the Count again, flew at him. Almost strangled,
156
THE FRIEND OF MAN.
he confessed to having murdered Aubry, and was hanged
for his crime.
DEE TEEUE HUND.
lu Konig Karls des Weisen Gnade
Wuchs Aubry von Montdidier,
Gleich einem Oelbaum am Gestade
Der Marue in die Hob'
Denn er, keiu Scbmeicbler uud kein Zwitter
Von Schurk uud Biederruauu,
Hing eifriger, als alle Ritter
Bei Hof, der Weisheit an.
Scbeel sab der Ritter von Macaire
Im Sonneuglauz den Liebliug bliibn,
Und er, der geru gewesen wiire,
Was obne seiu Bemiib'n
Jetzt Aubr}' ^var, legt Aubry Schliugen
Fein, wie der Hofmann fliebt,
Und grub ibm Gruben ; docb gelingen
Wollt' alle List ibm uiclit.
Von einem Jagdbund nur begleitet,
Ging Aubrj' einstens iu den Wald
Von Bondy. — Sielie ! plotzlicb reitet
Sein Feiud daber : — Halt! — bait!
Dn Seburke ! — "rief er." — Aubrj' kanute
Die Stimm' und bielt's fiir Seberz ;
Doch jener zog sein Schwert, und rauute
Die Spitz" iu Aubry's Herz.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 157
Noch warm verscbarrt' er Aubry's Leiche,
Bedeckte den blutrotlien Ort
Mit Erde, Rasen uud Gestriiucbe
Sorgfiiltig uud ritt fort.
Der Huud blieb aber auf der Stelle,
Dem todten Herru zu Lieb,
Mit Kratzeu, Heuleu uud Gebelle,
Bis Hunger fort ibn trieb.
Von Aubry's Freuudeu fast vergesseu,
Kam Herkul niager uacb Paris
Kaum hatt' er balb sich satt gefresseu,
So heult' er uud verliess
Geschwiud das Haus, uud rauute wieder
In Bondy's Wald hinauf,
Legt auf der Gruft des Herru sich nieder,
Uud hielt Scbildwache drauf.
So trieb er's lauge Zeit. — Man spiirte
Des Huudes Fabrte uach, uud faud
Tief im Geholz, wohin sie fiihrte,
Den Hund auf seiuem Stand. —
Als mau die Stelle voll Gestraucbe
Uud friscli gegraben sah,
Grub man sie auf, und Aubry's Leiclie
Lag halbverweset da.
Man fubr sie nach Paris. — Die Ohreu
Gesenkt, lief Herkul nebeuher,
Schon alle Hoffuuug war verloreu,
Je zu eutdeckeu, wer
158 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Der Morder sei; — da packt, voll Rache,
Einst Herkul sieuen Mann,
Im Kreis der Armbrustscliiitzeuwache
Des Konigs, grimmig an.
Was schlagen kouute, selling den Treuen,
Der seines Herrn Morder biss ;
Doch immer fasst' er ilm von neuem,
Als man hinweg ihu riss.
In alien Hausern, alien Gassen
Sucht' er den Ritter auf,
Und konnt' er ilm, uacli Wunsch, nicht fassen,
So bellt' er dran und drauf.
Dem Adel, der den Hund wolil kaunte
Schien dies verdaclitig. — Bald erfuhr
Der Konig selbst es. — Dieser brannte
Noch niiber auf die Spur
Zu konimen, lies umringt von Rittern, —
Den Morder Aubry's stelin,
Und dennocli war beraus ihu witteru
In einem Hui geschehn ;
Denn Herkul kiindigt mit Gebelle,
So schlau sicli jener aucb verbirgt.
Den Morder an, und auf der Stelle
Hatt' er ilin stracks erwilrgt.
So scblug er, Hakeu gleich, die Pfoteu,
In's Fleisch des Feindes ein,
Weun nicbt der weise Karl geboten,
Macaireu zu befrei'u.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 159
Der Kouig zog ilm anf die Seite :
" Gestehet, Ritter," sprach er sacht,
" Habt ilir, schou sageu's alle Leute,
Nicht Aubry umgebracht ?
Bedenkt ! wenu gar verloren sollte
Selbst eure Seele gehn ! "
AUein, aus Furclit vor Strafe wollte
Macaire nichts gestebn.
"Nun wobl ! " spracb Konig Karl, "so mache
Gott selber danu die Wahrbeit kuud ; "
Denn Aubry's Blut schreit laut um Racbe
" Durcb seiueu treuen Hund.
Drum soil eiu Zweikampf zwiscben Beiden
Den sonderbaren Zwist
Auf iibermorgeu gleicb eutscbeideu !
Uud wenu du scbuldig bist ! "
Karl drohte mit den Augeubrauuen
Dem Morder nacb uud liiess ibu gebn.
Die Insel unserer lieben Fraueu,
Zum Kamjifplatz ausersebu,
Ward eingef asset mit Stacketen,
Dem, Hof ein Pavilion
Erbaut ; — der Konig kam ; — Trompeten
Erscballten vom Balkon.
Macaire erscbien ; in seiuer Kecbten
Mit einem Prtlgel, einem Scbild
In seiner linken Haud. Zum Fecbteu
Hatt' Herkul nicbts, der wild
1(50 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Um seineu Fciud uud um die Kenle,
Die keck der Bube schwang,
Mit Zahnefletscheu uud Geheule
Heruiu im Kreise sprang.
Auf einmal fuhr er zu and packte
Den, der verholuiend vor ihm lief,
So fest, dass das Genick ihm kuackte,
Und dass aus Angst er rief :
" Ach Guade ! — Ihr sollt alles wisseu !
Bringt nur die Bestie fort ! "
Und als der Hund war losgerisseu,
Gestand er seinen Mord.
Man driiugt sicli, Herkul'n licbzukoscu,
" Es lebe ! " schrie'n aus eiuem Mund
p]nthusiastisch die Franzosen,
" Der Kouig und der Huud ! "
So rief jetzt vom Balkon der Konig :
" Wohlan du Schlangenbrut !
Recht uud Gercchtigkeit vcrsiihu' ich
Nuumebro durch dein Blut ! " —
Macaire erzittert' uud erblcicbte,
Er bat, — umsoust ! da kauieu schou
Zwei' Priester, filbrten ibn zur Beichte
Uud Absolutiou :
Worauf, als er sich straubeu wolltc,
Der Heuker fest ibn band,
Und, — nur eiu Scbwertstreicb, — scbuappend rollte
Sein Koj)! soliou in den Sand.
GoCKINGK.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 161
RETTUNG.
Vorn stillen Alpenkloster schied,
Im Frost ein Pilger sclinell,
Fidel, seiu Huudclien springfc voraus,
Mit freudigem Gebell.
Er sielit mit Stauueu rings um sich,
Des Winters Majestat,
Und betet still den Scliopfer an,
In dem er tbalwiirts gebt.
Da tont's wie dunipfer Donuerliall,
Da kracht's groUt's in Nu,
Und eine Schneelawine deckt.
Den Waud'rer plotzlicb zn.
Sein Hiindchen eilt zuriick und sucbt,
Wolil auf wobl ab die Hoh',
Und schnobert nahe seinem Herrn
Und scbnarrt umsonst ini Schnee.
Er fliegt den frommen Moncben zu,
Er wedelt, winselt dort,
Und lockt zu rascher Hiilfe sie,
Mit Schmeicbeleien fort.
Scbon weilt er wo seiu Herr,
Verscbitttet lag, uud bellt,
Sie graben nacb : cr bort's und ruft,
Wie aus der Uuterwelt.
Sie rasten nicbt, sie scbaufeln fort,
Wobl eine Stunde lang,
Er ist's — Er tritt aus seinem Grab :
" Ibr Retter meinen Diiuk."
1G2 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
" Niclit wir, mein Freund, dein Rctter ist
Der kleine, treue Hund,"
" Er forsclit, Sie tliun was sicli begab
Deni tief geriihrteu kuud."
" Als ob er iins verstunde, liuj)ft
Dein Hund empor an dir,"
Er druclvt iliu -weinend an seiu Herz,
Und kiisst das gutes Thier.
" Nun bab' icb deinen Wertb erkannt,
Du Freund in bochster Notb,
Dieb lobne steter Ueberfluss,
Icb denke dein im Tod."
Hang.
"FEURIGE KOHLEN AUF DAS MENSCHENHAUPT
You G. Duill (Scbriftstellername).
Es fubr ein Maun mit seineni Hund
In den rauscbenden Fbiss zur Abenstuud
Der Hund bat treu bei Tag und Nacbt
Dem Manne Haus und Hof bewacbt;
Docb soil er sterbeu zu dieser Frist,
Weil er nun alt und liiisslicb ist.
Und wo am ticfsteu der tiefe Rbeiu,
Da stosst er ibn ins wasser binein.
Docb will es ibni nicbt so leicbt geliugen
Den Kopf des Tbicrcs bininitcr zu zwingen.
THE FRIEND OF MAN. 16B
Der sich stets wieder hebt zu ihni lieran
Und ibu schaut mit den treueu Augen an.
Wie dies dem Manue wahrt zu lange,
So ergreift er die schwere Ruderstange
Und holt zu gewaltigem Schlage aus :
Da schwankt der Kaliu und er sturzt hinaus
Und die Wogen zielieu den Mann liinab,
Ihm selber winkt das nasse Grab.
Da hat der Hund seine letzte Kraft
Ob der Noth seines Herrn zusammen gerafft :
Er fasst ihn vorn bei Rock und West,
Und hebt ihn empor und halt ihn fest,
Und zerrt und zieht und sclileppt den Mann
Bis nah' an's rettende Ufer heran ; —
Dann stohnt er dumpf und lasst ihn los,
Sinkt sterbend zuriick in der Wellen Schoss.
The following is the original of "The Faithful Hound
DER TREUE HUND (T. Staub).
Ein Bettelinann, ein blinder Mann,
Einst nicht mehr weiter wandern kann
Er war so hungrig, war so krank,
Im Wald er sterbend niedersank,
Und heulend springt sein treuer Hund
Und thut's im nJichsten Dorfe kund
164 THE FRIEND OF MAN.
Er tlieilte ja in bittrer Not,
Mit ihm seiu letztes Stiicldein Brot
Als endlich Hiilfe kam zum Wald
Fand mau den Leichnam starr und kalt
Man seuket schnell nnd oliue Schrein
Ini Wald den Todten Fremdiing eiu
Mau scliaufelt kalt den Flugel auf
Und steckt eiu grobes Ivreuzlein drauf
Kein Auge weint dem Armen nacli
Keiu Bliimlein schmuckt sein Scblafgemacb.
Und uur sein Huud, sein eiuz'ger Freuud,
AUein an seinem Grabe weint.
Da winselt er, tagaus, tageiu
Voni Morgen — bis zum Abendschein.
Beim Sonuen, und beim Sternenlicht
Lasst er den Fotenbugel nicbt ;
Fiililt uiclit, dass ibn der Hunger qualt,
Fitblt nur, dass ihm seiu Liebliug feblt
Drauf ward es eines Tages kund
Todt auf dem Grabe lag der Hund.
The beautiful poem of Chamisso with wliich I shall
conclude this German series, is well-known and the
translation will be found above, p. 108 : —
DER BETTLER UND SEIN HUND.
(Adalbert von Chamisso.)
Drei Thaler erlegen fiir meinen Hund !
So sclilage das Wetter mich gleich in den Grand !
Was denkeu die Herrn von der Polizei ?
Was soil nun wicder die Schinderei ?
THE FEIEND OF MAN. 165
Icli bin ein armer ein kranker Mauu
Der keinen Grosclieu verdienen kami
Ich habe nicht Geld, ich habe nicht Brot
Ich lebe ja nur von Hunger und Not.
Und wann ich erkrankt und wann ich verarmt,
War hat sich da noch meiner erbarmt
,Wer hat, wenn ich auf Gottes Welt
AUeiu mich fand, zu niir sich gesellt ?
Wer hat niich geliebt wann ich mich geharmt
Wer, wann ich fror, hat mich gewarmt ?
Wer hat mit mir, wann ich hungrig gemurrt,
Getrost gehuugert und nicht geknurrt.
Es geht zur Neige mit uns zweiu,
Es muss, mein Thier, geschieden sein,
Dn bist, wie ich nun alt und krank
Ich soil dich ersiiufen, das ist der Dank !
Das ist der Dank, das ist der Lohn !
Dir geht's wie manchem Erdensohn !
Zuni Teufel ! ich war bei maucher Schlacht
Den Henker hab' ich noch nicht gemacht.
Das ist der Stuck, das ist der Stein,
Das ist das Wasser- — es muss ja sein !
Komm her du Koter und sieh' mich nicht an,
Nur noch ein Fuss-stoss, so ist es gethan
Wie er in die Schlinge den Hals ihm gesteckt,
Hat wedelnd der Hund die Hand ihm geleckt
Da zog er die Schlinge sogleich zuriick
Und warf sie schnell um sein eigen Geuick
M
166
THE FKIEND OF IMAN.
Und that einen Fluch, gar schauderliaft
Und raflflte zusammen die letzte Kraft
Und stiirzt in die Flutli sicli, die tciueud stieg
Im Kreise sich zog und ilber ihm scliwieg
Wohl sprang der Huud zur Rettuug liinzu,
Wohl heult er die Scliiffer aus ihrer Ruh',
"Wohl zog er sie winselud uud zerrend her,
Wie sie ihn fauden. da war er nicht mehr.
Er war verscharret in stiller Stund',
Es folgt ihm winselud nur der Huud,
Der hat, wo den Leib die Erde bedeckt,
Sich hingestreclvt nud ist da verreckt !
WORKS BY THE AUTHOR.
*•. d.
THE HOPES OF THE HUMAN RACE. Second
Edition. Williams & Norgate ... ... 5
THE PEAK IN DARIEN. William^^ & Norg.atk 7 6
THE DUTIES OF WOMEN. Eightli American,
Tliird English Edition. Williajis k Norgate 2 6
ALONE TO THE ALONE. (A Collection of
Prayers.) Third Edition. Williams it Nor-
gate ... ... ... ... ... ... 5
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT OF THE AOE. One
Vol., Svo., pp. 242. Smith, Elder & Co. 1888
THE MODERN R\CK. One Vol., 8vo., pp. 272.
Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1882 ... ... 3 6
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