Part 30 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[255] ”Life and Correspondence of Charles Lord Metcalfe,” by John William Kaye, vol. i., p. 8.

[256] ”The Art of Deer-Stalking,” p. 33.

[257] ”Deer-Stalking,” p. 229.

[258] ”Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” vol. i., p. 124.

[259] ”Truth and Poetry from my own Life; the Autobiography of Goethe,”

edited by Parke G.o.dwin, part i., p. 3.

SHEEP AND GOATS.

These are animals, at least the former, which seem to have been created in a domestic state. They are represented on the most ancient monuments. A head of a Lybian ram of very large size, in the British Museum, has great resemblance to nature, and there is one slab at least among the a.s.syrian monuments where sheep and goats, as part of the spoil of a city, are rendered with great skill. In the writings of the Ettrick Shepherd, many curious anecdotes of Scottish sheep are given.

HOW MANY LEGS HAS A SHEEP?

When the Earl of Bradford was brought before the Lord Chancellor to be examined upon application for a statute of lunacy against him, the Chancellor asked him, ”How many legs has a sheep?”--”Does your lords.h.i.+p mean,” answered Lord Bradford, ”a live sheep or a dead sheep?”--”Is it not the same thing?” said the Chancellor.--”No, my lord,” said Lord Bradford, ”there is much difference: a live sheep may have four legs, a dead sheep has only two; the two fore-legs are shoulders; there are only _two legs of mutton_.”[260]

GOETHE ON ROOS'S ETCHINGS OF SHEEP.

In the ”Conversations of Goethe with Eckerman and Soret”[261] in 1824, he handed me some etchings by Roos, the famous painter of animals; they were all of sheep, in every posture and position. The simplicity of their countenances, the ugliness and s.h.a.gginess of the fleece--all was represented with the utmost fidelity, as if it were nature itself.

”I always feel uneasy,” said Goethe, ”when I look at these beasts. Their state--so limited, dull, gaping, and dreaming--excites in me such sympathy, that I fear I shall become a sheep, and almost think the artist must have been one. At all events, it is most wonderful how Roos has been able to think and feel himself into the very soul of these creatures, so as to make the internal character peer with such force through the outward covering. Here you see what a great talent can do when it keeps steady to subjects which are congenial with its nature.”

”Has not, then,” said I, ”this artist also painted dogs, cats, and beasts of prey with similar truth; nay, with this great gift of a.s.suming a mental state foreign to himself, has he not been able to delineate human character with equal fidelity?”

”No,” said Goethe; ”all that lay out of his sphere, but the gentle, gra.s.s-eating animals--sheep, goats, cows, and the like--he was never weary of repeating; this was the peculiar province of his talent, which he did not quit during the whole course of his life. And in this he did well. A sympathy with these animals was born with him, a knowledge of their psychological condition was given him, and thus he had so fine an eye for their bodily structure. Other creatures were perhaps not so transparent to him, and therefore he felt neither calling nor impulse to paint them.”[262]

LORD c.o.c.kBURN AND THE SHEEP.

Lord c.o.c.kburn, the proprietor of Bonaly, that pretty place on the slopes of the Pentlands, was sitting on the hill-side with the shepherd, and, observing the sheep reposing in the coldest situation, he observed to him, ”John, if I were a sheep, I would lie on the other side of the hill.” The shepherd answered, ”Ay, my lord, but if ye had been a _sheep_, ye would hae had mair sense.”[263]

WOOLSACK.

Colman and Banister, dining one day with Lord Erskine, the ex-chancellor, amongst other things, observed that he had then about three thousand head of sheep. ”I perceive,” interrupted Colman, ”your lords.h.i.+p has still an eye to the woolsack.”[264]

SANDY WOOD AND HIS PETS, A SHEEP AND A RAVEN.

Alexander Wood, a kind-hearted surgeon, who died in his native town of Edinburgh in May 1807, aged eighty-two, is alluded to by Sir Walter Scott in a prophecy put into the mouth of Meg Merrilees in ”Guy Mannering”--”They shall beset his goat; they shall profane his raven,”

&c.