Heads And Tales Part 7

[43] "My Schools and Schoolmasters; or, The Story of my Education," by Hugh Miller, fifth edition, 1856, pp. 321-323.

[44] "Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character," tenth edition, 1864, p. 183.

POLE-CAT.

An equally blood-thirsty member of the weasel family, with the subject of the preceding paragraph.

FOX AND THE POLE-CAT.--(POLL-CAT.[46])

Francis Grose relates the following as having happened during one of the famous Westminster elections:--"During the poll, a dead cat being thrown on the hustings, one of Sir Cecil Wray's party observed it stunk worse than a fox, to which Mr Fox replied, there was nothing extraordinary in that, considering it was a poll-cat."

FOOTNOTES:

[45] "Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, R.A," by his son, W.

Wilkie Collins, i. p. 222.

DOGS.

One who seems to love the race of dogs, and who has written a most readable book on them,[47] remarks, that the dog "even now is rarely the companion of a Jew, or the inmate of his house." He quotes various terms of reproach still common among us, and which seem to have originated from a similar feeling to that of the Jew. For instance, we say of a very cheap article, that it is "dog cheap." To call a person "a dog," or "a cur," or "a hound," means something the very opposite of complimentary. A surly person is said to have "a dogged disposition."

Any one very much fatigued is said to be "dog weary." A wretched room or house is often called "a dog hole," or said to be only fit for "a dog."

Very poor verse is "doggerel." It is told of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, that when a young n.o.bleman refused to translate some inscription over an alcove, because it was in "dog-latin," she observed, "How strange a puppy shouldn't understand his mother tongue."

What, too, can be more expressive of a man being on the verge of ruin, than the common phrase, that "such a one is going to the dogs." Of modern describers of the very life and feelings of dogs, who can surpa.s.s Dr John Brown of Edinburgh? His "Rab," and his "Our Dogs," are worthy of the brush of Sir Edwin Landseer. Who has not heard the answer _said_ to have been given by Sydney Smith to the great painter, when he wanted to make a portrait of the witty canon, "_Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?_"

There is great diversity of standard in matters of taste. In China, a well-roasted pup, of any variety of the very variable _Canis familiaris_, is a dainty dish. In London the greatest exquisite delights in the taste of a half-cooked woodc.o.c.k, but would scruple to eat a lady's lap-dog, even though descended, by indubitable pedigree, from a genuine "liver-and-tan" spaniel, that followed King Charles II. in his strolls through St James's Park; and which was given to her ladys.h.i.+p's ancestress on a day recorded, perhaps, in the diary of Mr Samuel Pepys.

Again, in the country of the Esquimaux, who has not read in the intensely interesting narratives of the Moravian missionaries, how the dogs of the "Innuit"--of "the men," as they call themselves--are, in winter, indispensable to their very existence? Parry, Lyon, Franklin, Richardson, Ross, Rae, Penny, Sutherland, Inglefield, and Kane, have told us what excellent "carriage"-pullers these hardy children of the snow become from early infancy; and how the more they work, like the wives of savages in Australia, the more they are kicked. Pa.s.sing over the dogs of the Indian tribes of North America and the gaunt race in Patagonia, the reader may remember that the Roman youth, like the young Briton, had, in the days of Horace, his outer marks--one was, that he loved to have a dog, or a whole pack beside him--"_gaudet canibus_."

This attachment to the dog is given us "from above," and is one of the many "good gifts" which proceed from Him, who made man and dog "familiar," as the apt specific name of Linnaeus denominates the latter.

One of our greatly-gifted poets, in a cynical mood, could write an epitaph on a favourite Newfoundlander, and end it with the dismal lines on his views of "earthly friends"--

"He never knew but one,--and here he lies."

Our genial and home-loving Cowper has made his dog Beau cla.s.sical. We must beg our readers to refresh their memories, by looking into the Olney bard's exquisite story,

"My spaniel, prettiest of his race, And high in pedigree,"

and they will find that _that_ story of "The Dog and the Water-lily" was "no fable," and that Beau really understood his master's wish when he fetched him a water-lily out of "Ouse's silent tide." How graceful are the last two stanzas of that sweet little poem--

"Charm'd with the sight, 'The world,' I cried, 'Shall hear of this thy deed; My dog shall mortify the pride Of man's superior breed.

'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.'"[48]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEAU.]

That the world might know the very "mark and figure" of this spaniel, the late able ill.u.s.trator of so many topographical works (Mr James Storer) published in his "Rural Walks of Cowper"[49] a figure of Beau, from the stuffed skin in the possession of Cowper's kinsman, the Rev.

Dr Johnson.

Mr Montague, in a letter to the son and biographer of Sir James Mackintosh,[50] gives many reminiscences of that eminent man, who was much attached to the memory of Cowper. He says, "We reached Dereham about mid-day (it was in 1801), and wrote to Mr Johnson, the clergyman, who had protected Cowper in the last years of his life, and in whose house he died. He instantly called upon us, and we accompanied him to his house. In the hall, we were introduced to a little red and white spaniel, in a gla.s.s case--the little dog Beau, who, seeing the water-lily which Cowper could not reach, 'plunging, left the sh.o.r.e.'"

"I saw him with that lily cropp'd, Impatient swim to meet My quick approach, and soon he dropp'd The treasure at my feet."

We saw the room where Cowper died, and the bell which he last touched.

We went to his grave, and to Mrs Unwin's, who is buried at some distance. I lamented this, "Do not live in the visible, but the invisible," said your father,--"his attainments, his tenderness, his affections, his sufferings, and his hards.h.i.+ps, will live long after both their graves are no more."

We could linger over a prized octavo volume, published in Edinburgh in 1787; the first poem of this, "The Twa Dogs, a Tale," occupies some thirteen pages, written with that "rare felicity" so common to _the_ Bard of Scotland. We mention it, because of the peculiar happiness with which the collie, or Scottish shepherd-dog, is described in lines that Sir Edwin Landseer alone has equalled on canvas, or his brother Thomas with the graver--

"He was a gash an' faithfu' tyke As ever lap a sheugh or d.y.k.e.

His honest, sonsie, bawsn't[51] face, Aye gat him friends in ilka place.

His breast was white, his touzie back Weel clad wi' coat of glossy black; His gaucie tail, wi' upward curl, Hung owre his hurdies wi' a swirl."

_That's_ the shepherd-dog, as we have heard him described from a specimen, which was the friend and follower of a valued one, who, when a boy ('tis many years ago), frisked with the dog, over _one_ of the many ferny haughs that margin the lovely Tweed above and below Peebles. It is _the_ collie we have seen, on one of the sheep-farms of Lanarks.h.i.+re, obey its young master by a word or two, as unintelligible to us as j.a.panese. But to the Culter "Luath," to hear was to obey; and in a quarter of an hour a flock of sheep, which had been feeding on a hillSide half a mile off, were brought back, driven by this faithful "bit doggie." We wonder not that shepherds love their dogs. Why, even the New Smithfield cattle-drovers, who drive sheep along the streets of London on a Monday or Friday, never even require to urge their faithful partners. Well may the gifted auth.o.r.ess of "The Dream" address "the faithful guardian"--

"Oh, tried and trusted! thou whose love Ne'er changes nor forsakes, Thou proof, how perfect G.o.d hath stamp'd The meanest thing He makes; Thou, whom no snare entraps to serve, No art is used to tame (Train'd, like ourselves, thy path to know, By words of love and blame); Friend! who beside the cottage door, Or in the rich man's hall, With steadfast faith still answerest The one familiar call; Well by poor hearth and lordly home Thy couchant form may rest, And Prince and Peasant trust thee still, To guard what they love best."

_Hon. Mrs Norton, "The Dream," &c._, p. 192.

No ordinary-sized volume, much less a short article, could give a t.i.the of the true anecdotes of members of the dog race. Mere references to their biography would take up a volume of Bibliography itself, just as their forms, and character, and "pose," give endless subject to the painter. Of modern authors, no one loved dogs more truly than Sir Walter Scott, as the reader of his writings and of his biography is well aware;[52] but it may not be generally known that, on the only occasion when the great novelist met the Ayrs.h.i.+re peasant,--

"Virgilium tantum vidi,"--

the poem, which had made Burns a wonder to the boy then "unknown," was that of "The Twa Dogs;" so that, even then, Scott had commenced to show his attachment to these faithful followers. It was in the house of Sir Adam Ferguson, when Scott was a mere lad; and the scene was described most vividly to the writer by the late Scottish knight, after whose battle in South Italy the author of "Marmion" named his pet staghound Maida, or, as Scott p.r.o.nounced it, "Myda." It was as the author of "The Twa Dogs" that young Ferguson and Scott regarded Burns on his entrance into the room with such wistful attention. The story is told in Lockhart, and we will not quote it further; but, leaving dogs of our own days and lands to Mr Jesse, who has given an interesting volume on them, we will close with a few paragraphs on the dog of the East--a very differently treated animal to that generally prized and esteemed "friend" of man in these lands of the West.

The Holy Scriptures show us that dogs were generally despised. We select three, out of many instances. "Is thy servant a _dog_ that he should do this thing?" was the question with which Hazael, ignorant of the deceitfulness of his own heart, indignantly replied to Elisha, when the prophet told him of the evil that he would yet do unto the children of Israel (2 Kings viii. 13). He, "who spake as never man spake," knowing the faith of the Syrophoenician woman, and giving her an opportunity of manifesting it "for our example," said, in the Syriac fas.h.i.+on of thought, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to _the dogs_" (Mark vii. 27). And the apostle John, in that wondrous close of the prophetical writings, says, "For without," _i.e._, outside of the New Jerusalem, "are _dogs_" (Rev. xxii. 5). In the East up to the present day, with but few exceptions, dogs are treated with great dislike. We might quote pa.s.sages in proof from almost every Eastern traveller, and may venture to extract one from the graphic page of the Rev. W. Graham, who lived five years in Syria, and who has given some n.o.ble word-pictures of men, and streets, and scenes in Damascus and other Turkish towns. Writing of Damascus,[53] he remarks, "The dogs are considered unclean, and are never domesticated in the East. They are thin, lean, fox-like animals, and always at the starving point. They live, breed, and die in the streets. They are useful as scavengers. They are neither fondled nor persecuted, but simply tolerated; and no dog has an owner, or ever follows and accompanies a man as the sheep do. I once went out in the evening at Beyrout, with my teacher to enjoy the fresh air and talk Arabic. My little English dog, the gift of a friend, followed us. We pa.s.sed through a garden, where a venerable Moslem was sitting on a stone, silently and solemnly engaged in smoking his pipe.

He observed the dog _following_ us, and was astonished at it, as something new and extraordinary; and rising, and making out of the way, he cried out, 'May his father be accursed! Is that a dog or a fox?'"

Again, in Damascus, should a worn-out horse, donkey, or camel die in the streets, in a few hours the dogs have devoured it; and the powerful rays of the sun dry up all corrupt matter. Mr Graham tells us that the dogs of Damascus are brown, blackish, or of an ash colour, and that he saw no white or spotted specimens. He never saw a case of hydrophobia, nor did he hear a _bark_. The dogs "howl, and make noise enough," he continues, "but the fine, well-defined _bow-wow_ is entirely wanting." With a quiet humour, he hints at the bark being a mark of the civilised, domesticated dog, and as denoting, apparently, "the refinement of canine education."

We have been struck with the attempts of Penny's Esquimaux dogs, deposited by the gallant Arctic mariner in the Zoological Gardens, to _get up_ a bark somewhat like the "well-bred" dogs in the cages near them. Mr Graham tells us of the Damascus dogs having established a kind of police among themselves, and, like the rooks, driving all intruders far from their district.

Dogs were not always disregarded in the East. Herodotus informs us,[54]

during the Persian occupation the number of Indian dogs kept in the province of Babylon for the use of the governor was so great, that four cities were exempted from taxes for maintaining them. In the mountain parts of India, travellers describe the great dogs of Thibet and Cashmere as being much prized.

"The domestic dog of Ladak," says Major Cunningham,[55] "is the well-known shepherd's dog, or Thibetan mastiff. They have s.h.a.ggy coats, generally quite black, or black and tan; but I have seen some of a light brown colour. They are usually ill-tempered to strangers; but I have never found one that would face a stick, although they can fight well when attacked. The only peculiarity that I have noticed about them is, that the tail is nearly always curled upward on to the back, where the hair is displaced by the constant rubbing of the tail." And that the same ma.s.sive variety was also prized in ancient times we know, by a singularly fine, small bas-relief in baked clay, found in 1849 in the Birs-i-Nimrud, Babylon, by Sir Henry Rawlinson, which is preserved in the British Museum, to which it was presented by the late Prince Albert, and an outline of which, reduced one-half, will convey a good idea to the reader of its form. We may add that this bas-relief was first noticed and figured, in 1851, in the third edition of a truly learned and excellent work on "Nineveh and Persepolis," by Mr Vaux of the British Museum (p. 183). These dogs, then, were nothing else than big, "low jowled" Thibetan mastiffs, such as we occasionally see brought over by some Indian officer; and the use for which they were employed by the ancient kings and their attendants is strikingly exhibited on some slabs from a chamber in the north palace of Koujunjik, a part of the great Nineveh. On some of these slabs, dogs are seen engaged in pulling down wild a.s.ses, deer, and other animals; and they were evidently kept also to a.s.sist in securing n.o.bler game--"the king of beasts;"--the sport of which animals shows how truly the a.s.syrian king was named "Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord."--_Adam White, in "Excelsior" (with additions)._

[Ill.u.s.tration]

BISHOP BLOMFIELD BITTEN BY A DOG.

His natural temperament was quick, and he was fond of authority. "A saying of Sydney Smith's has been preserved, humorously ill.u.s.trative of the view which he took of Bishop Blomfield's character. The bishop had been bitten by a dog in the calf of the leg, and fearing possible hydrophobia in consequence, he went, with characteristic prompt.i.tude, to have the injured piece of flesh cut out by a surgeon before he returned home. Two or three on whom he called were not at home; but, at last, the operation was effected by the eminent surgeon, Mr Keate. The same evening the bishop was to have dined with a party where Sydney Smith was a guest. Just before dinner, a note arrived, saying that he was unable to keep his engagement, a dog having rushed out from the crowd and bitten him in the leg. When this note was read aloud to the company, Sydney Smith's comment was, '_I should like to hear the dog's account of the story_.'

"When this accident occurred to him, Bishop Blomfield happened to be walking with Dr D'Oyly, the rector of Lambeth. A lady of strong Protestant principles, mistaking Dr D'Oyly for Dr Doyle, said that she considered it was a judgment upon the bishop for keeping such company."[56]