Part 7 (1/2)

[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.