From The New Quarterly Review. BY FRANCES POWER COBBE. some and loosely-conducted birds, the Doves, would coo satirically under their wings at our romantic ascription to them and all would hoot, snort, bray, and of innocence and fidelity! And how one cackle at the utter absurdity of attaching to the word "human" any other sense than that of consummate perfidy and merciless destructiveness! In default of any immediate prospect of such a modification of affairs as would result from the successful linguistic studies of Joe and his compeers, it has THERE is a fine irony in the use we make of the terms "brutal" and "beastly," "manly" and "humane." As no brute ever kicks its mate to death, nor any beast makes itself drunk, it is a happy use of language by which our Police Reports invariably qualify the first class of outrage as "brutal," and the condition of a tipsy man wallowing in the gutter as "beastly." On the other hand, it is by a pretty, if not well-de-appeared to the present writer that someserved, compliment to ourselves, that we describe the courage transcendently displayed by a hen on behalf of her chickens as pre-eminently "manly;" and when we have occasion to speak of compassionateness, complacently call the quality "Humanity," as if the race from which have sprung all the Herods, Neros, Alvas, and Majendies, of ancient and modern times, were quite incapable of cruelty. thing ought to be said on behalf of sev eral animals whom a French novelist When might justly describe as Les Bêtes Incom- and when we have discovered that the old sus human heroes were poltroons, and the old martyrs "scoundrels," we are bound similarly to expose the mean-mindedness of the Lion, and candidly avow our In one of Æsop's fables, charmingly rendered by La Fontaine, a lion is shown picions of the conjugal fidelity of the a picture wherein a man stands trium- Turtle. It is true, unfortunately, that phant over one of the animal's own kind the same slight inconvenience will atwhich he has just vanquished. The fourfooted critic in the fable simply remarks: Avec plus de raison nous aurions le dessus tend the dispelling of antique delusions in the cases of both men and animals. Modern criticism has deprived the preacher of every example wherewith he was formerly wont to point a moral, and We may readily imagine the transposi- no man can now hold up a saint for imition of terms of praise and blame which tation, or a sinner as a warning, without would follow were the promised experi- laying himself open to be checked by the ment of teaching poor Joe (the Chimpan- nearest school-boy with the volunteered zee in the Zoological Gardens) the lan- information that this saint is universally guage of the Deaf and Dumb to prove recognized now-a-days as a truculent imsuccessful, and an age of talking animals postor, and his sinner as one of the to be inaugurated. How the eminently noblest of mankind, born, unhappily, a sensible Goose, and the calm-judging Ass little too soon for the recognition of the would recalcitrate against the use of their age in which he lived. Of course, our names as synonyms of stupidity and language will be deprived of a whole catfolly! How those affectionate and faith-alogue of terms of honour or contempt if ful comrades - Rats - would repudiate the hitherto glorified beasts and birds are the use of the term "Ratting," as signi ever to suffer similar detraction, or the fying treachery! How those quarrel- long-slandered ones to be rehabilitated. Just as for the future to "out-Herod Herod" will be an expression for extreme mildness; "King Cambyses' vein " maintains that the idea of teaching the Quadrumana to will indicate bashful modesty; and the family name of De Mérode, instead of B. III. Fable x. † M. Houzeau, in his "Etudes sur les Facultés Mentales des Animaux." (Paris, 1873), Vol. 2, expressly speak, "reposes on probabilities." denoting marauders, will stand as a parallel, the further it inevitably departs Not by synonym for neighbourliness; so, in like from the veracity of nature. manner, a Goose may hereafter be recog- starting with the resolution to find human nized as the type of Wisdom; and a character in animals, but by studying Raven, of a sanguine temperament and them carefully and dispassionately till we fastidious appetite. Philology will long come down to the ground of common bear the traces of such an event, as it feeling where they and we are alike, and bears that of the great pre-historic schism, where Nature is neither Human nor Beswhen the Vedic and Persian Aryans ex- tial, can we hope to obtain a real knowlchanged their gods and devils, their edge of them. So far as can now be "Asuras" and their "Devs." We have seen, Bidpai, Æsop, and the other animal despised the brutes and dealt cruelly fabulists, must have proceeded very much with them, but we betray how much they on the principle on which the old Egyp‐ interest and concern us by using their tians chose the figures of their gods. names to express almost every quality of They picked out the animals which exhuman nature. No phrases convey half hibited some obvious approach to a given as forcible or definite meaning as simply human characteristic, and made it thencecalling a man or woman a Bear, an Ass, forth a mere type of that attribute. It a Lamb, a Shark, a Cur, a Fox, a Wolf, was not a real Fox, Ass, or Lion which a Pig, a Lion, a Tiger, a Book-Worm, a the fable-makers sought to portray, but a Chameleon, a Gorilla, a Snake, a Viper, a purely conventional creature, intended to Serpent, an Adder, a Raven, a Vulture, a exhibit Cunning, Folly, or Courage ; in Toad, a Donkey, an Owl, a Cormorant, a fact, as strictly an allegorical figure as a Parrot, a Magpie, an Ostrich, a Worm, a statue of Justice with her Scales, or of Even a tree Dog, a Wasp, a Calf, a Pigeon, a Sheep, Hope with her Anchor. a Mule, a Lynx, a Vixen, or a Harpy. would answer the purpose as well as an Nor could we easily dispense with such animal, and might no less plausibly be verbs as to Dog, to Hound, to Lark, to made to speak, as we see in the very anRat; such adjectives as Waspish, Vixen- cient fable propounded by Jotham to the ish, Apish, Wolfish, Fishy, Parrot-wise, Israelites (Judges ix. 9). The Cedar was Ostrich-like, Elephantine, Oxlike, Swin- a natural emblem of dignity, and the ish, Spaniel-like, Serpentine, Monkeyish, Bramble of insignificance, and that was Dove-like, Eagle-eyed; or such similes all which was required. It is hard for as are afforded by the Busy Bee, the In- us, with our more critical minds, to undustrious Ant, the Sloth, the Glutton, the derstand how all the absurdities and Scapegoat, the laughing Hyæna, and the mixed metaphors which thence ensued chattering Magpie. Fortunately, only a could have been condoned. But obvicertain number out of these household ously this sort of reflections never ocwords are misused to any considerable curred to men of remoter times; or perdegree, and it will be very still fewer with haps we should say there was a tacit unwhose exactitude we shall at present con- derstanding that, as nothing was meant cern ourselves. but an illustration, provided the illustration was good, as such, everything else in the story should pass unchallenged. The radical mistake in all our writing and painting of animals from very early ages has been the semi-serious effort to see human nature in the brute and bird, and to describe it as, in fact, a Man in fur or in feathers. The process, though at first sight similar to the true method, is in reality the very converse of it, and, beginning at the wrong end, diverges wider from the truth at every step. The more elaborate the story or the picture so constructed, and the more wire-drawn the A curious exemplification of the peculiarity of this ancient literary treatment of animals, is the fact that each species is continually described as if it consisted of one individual. There is The Wolf, The Fox, The Cock (in the German Thier * An effort to accomplish such a study in the case of one animal was made by the present writer in an article in the "Quarterly Review," October, 1872, “On the Consciousness of Dogs." epos, "Sir Isengrim," "Sir Reynard," and stones, which are evermore spoken and "Chanticleer "), and so on through of poetically as if each were the person all the other beasts and birds. And this who had been so transformed. Such are single creature, this Representative Ani- the stories of Daphne changed into a mal, by a still more singular play of the Laurel. Lyrinx into Reeds, Cyanus into a antique mind, is frequently erected into a Swan, Ocyrrhoë into a Mare, the MariFederal Head of his race, and in the my-ners into Dolphins, Alcithoë and her sisthology of the Metamorphoses (which ters into Bats, Cadmus and his Queen into runs parallel with the Fables) is made to Serpents, Atlas into a Mountain, Cyane merit reward or incur punishment on into a Fountain, Niobe into a Statue of their behalf for all succeeding time, with- Stone, the Pierides into Magpies, Arachout even being supposed to be their pro- ne into a Spider, Philomela into a Nightgenitor. There are, for example of such ingale, Procne into a Swallow, Lichas into Adamitic creatures and plants, the Raven a Rock, Hyacinthus into the Flower which turned black for betraying secrets; the bears his name, Cœneus into an Eagle, Rose which changed from white to red and Egeria into the sweet Fountain when the tears of Eve fell on it; the which we have all visited outside the Cross-bill which bears the sanguine mark walls of Rome. Of course we, dull modof its efforts to tear out the nails on erns, in dealing with myths of any kind, Calvary; the Ass whose back keeps are always in danger of committing the the sign of the Cross in memory of the egregious mistake of taking the old Entry into Jerusalem; and the John mythologists au grand sérieux, when Dory, whereon the black stains of St. they meant nothing but play; and arguPeter's fingers are still visible. As Sir ing gravely about what they said so Henry Maine, Mr. Tylor, and Mr. lightly, that it is to break a butterfly upon M'Lellan have SO well proved, in the wheel to bring down our ponderous primitive society, the individual was criticism upon it. How Æsop would have nothing, the Family-and, before the laughed at a solemn German Professor Family, the Tribe - everything. All who, spectacles on nose and book in hand, rights were common, and the punishment should ask him "whether he conscienincurred by one member might be justly tiously believed that the Frogs had eninflicted on another, or (as continually treated Jupiter to grant them a King?" happened under the great Eastern mon- or at Rousseau's virtuous indignation at archies) on the whole tribe or village of the deception he had practised on the inthe offender. Obviously men could not nocent mind of Childhood with his stories lend to the brutes any higher idea of indi- of talking beasts and birds! The whole vidual responsibilities than their own region we are treading is the great playstate of society realized, and it is easy to ground of the human imagination in its imagine them describing a pack of wolves boyhood, and it is utterly idle to ask how destroyed for one wolf's theft, or a whole we come to find a hoop here, a ball there, rookery turned black for one rook's in- and a painted kite a little further off. It discretion. But the poetical extension of is not too soon for mankind to begin this idea in such a multitude of cases, studying the brutes and birds by the true both in Heathen and Christian mytholo- method, not as if each were a little pool gy, to the entire species of the Adamitic in which we can see ourselves mirrored, animal, seems surely to prove a mistiness but as if it were one into whose depths of conception concerning personality in we would penetrate to behold the lovely general, not to speak of an immaturity of and mysterious things which are surely the moral sense, which needs to be kept lying below; to take each animal, not as in mind, if we would in thought occupy a tale told by an idiot, full of sound an the old standpoint. Beyond these trans- fury, signifying nothing," but as a Verse formations again of actual animals, there of the great Bible of the Universe, to be is a vast store of myths of men and read thoughtfully and treated tenderly. women changed into beasts, birds, plants, | The day must come, if not in this genera 66 tion, yet before long, when many species And through the wide and sultry East, cerned at all about giving true pictures of animal character, but only having used certain animals as allegorical figures, to stand for certain human qualities. It was, indeed, no part of their aim or object to write on Natural History, but only on human morals and politics; and far be from us the presumption of meddling with them in their proper capacity or raising our puny voice in the Babel of critics who have discussed with such profound erudition the difference between the Eastern Thier-fabel (Brute-Fable) and the Gothic Thier-epos (Brute-Epic). A whole literature of its own is devoted to them, with Lessing's great work on the sopic Fables at the head, Jones and Wilkins, Gervinus and Grimm, and scores of others dealing with each department of the subject, from the Hitopadesa to "Reineke Fuchs." The translations and editions of the same fables, from Babrius and Phædrus to La Fontaine and Florian, L'Estrange and Gay, would alone fill a library. Our subject, happily, only requires us to skirt this tangled grove of fable-literature, and then turn to note the part which Art has played in modifying our ideal of such animals as it has condescended to touch. Undoubtedly this influence of Art, like that of Fable, has been warped by the same error that of trying to see Human nature in the beast or bird, and importing into its representation a foreign element. In this respect the greatest of all animal painters has been the chief offender. The intense fun of the thing was too great a temptation for Landseer. While Rosa Bonheur sees in her horses and her dogs only a horse or a dog, Landseer, on the contrary, too often sits down resolutely, and of malice prepense, before an animal, determined to see in him something quite else beside a dog — a King, a Philosopher, a Courtier -a Man, in short; nay, even a specialized man with a profession. Such are the pictures of Alexander and Diogenes, A Jack in Office, Laying Down the Law, In the present paper no attempt can and The Travelled Monkey. Now, it be made to deal exhaustively with the must be admitted that dogs do, by their idiosyncrasy of any animal, but a few re- inconceivable sympathy, come in a cermarks on the misconstruction to which tain shadowy way to resemble their massome of the most estimable have been ex- ters. They "grow like that which they posed, and the over-exaltation accorded worship," and become brave and trustby tradition to the less deserving, may ful, or sneaking and suspicious, affecbe of use in rendering some of the Bêtes tionate and demonstrative, or morose and Incomprises less uncomprehended than reserved, according to the character at present. The Fabulists, of course, as of their human associates. There is, already remarked, were the chief source then, a point up to which the painter is of our misconceptions, not being con-authorized to put human nature into the Another Cyrus may arise, but till the end of the ages no ear of man will hear a wolf's howl or a chamois' bleat again. While we have them with us, it behoves us at least to try to read these Sybilline books, so full of wisdom and of poetry, which will surely be torn up one by one before we have half fathomed the meaning of their oracles. dog, because human nature has actually, disdainful manner in which he throws by force of sympathy, got into him al- back his mane as if he were quite incapaready. It is obvious, however, that Land- ble of the pettiness (of which he is neverseer's delicious pictures have far, far theless frequently guilty) of picking up transcended the narrow margin wherein and eating a humble black-beetle. Let such blending of the human or the ani- us first glance at what Fable and Art mal nature can take place, and thus, have said and done for the Lion, and then what he has given us in the particular try to correct their misrepresentations by class of pictures in question (of course, the better witness of Natural History. nine-tenths of his works are of quite another order), are not dogs which reflect human qualities, but dogs employed arbitrarily to caricature humanity. The former would be a true study, offering deep revelations of canine nature; the latter is radically false, and its tendency altogether misleading. Having thus briefly touched on the fabulous and artistic misrepresentations of the few animals which we shall find space to notice, and the erroneous popular ideas of them thence derived, we shall merely cite a few corrective facts of natural history, and leave the reader to "look on this picture and on that," and regulate his feelings accordingly. Among the personages who ought to be dethroned from their eminence of illgotten glory are Richard of the Lion Heart, and the Lion himself. The former, faithless, covetous, and ferocious,* the latter a Bombastes Furioso of the beasts -a great carnivorous impostor ! The brute has been credited with all manner of sublime and generous qualities, simply on his own showing, his magnificent head, his impressive mane and tail, and his tremendous roar. With one consent all fabulists have crowned him King of Beasts, and taken for granted afterwards that he possesses all royal virtues and only royal failings, les défauts de ses qualités. We venture boldly to challenge his leonine majesty's right to this exalted glory, to deny his supremacy of courage among his peers, and to ask proof of his supposed magnanimity and generosity beyond the blandness of his Harold Skimpole countenance, and the He Alb. 3 We have been favoured by the historian of the Norman Kings with the following quotations from the old chroniclers regarding the character of Richard I. "To such a height of wilfulness and ferocity did he come, that all his good qualities became clouded.". (R. Coggeshall, 83. Rec. des Hist., XVIII.) was beyond human nature covetous." "He never kept pact with any."-(Ch. Havon, 415. Font., 756.) "Twice he made a new seal, to the end that every charter should be brought to new sealing, nor could the whirlpool of his covetousness be appeased thereby." (R. Coggeshall, 863.) The most delightful touch of all, however, is by Giraldus Cambrensis (Top. Hib. III. 50)-"He resembled a Lion, and like a Lion was troubled with a Quartan ague!" One of the most impressive of all the Mentre il leon dormia Gli fè sul ventre un salto. Al piccolo animale. But We strongly suspect that a dab of his formidable paw at the impertinent disturber of his imperial repose would have followed much more surely than the similar effort of the "grateful Bear" in another fable to frighten away a fly from the sleeping hermit. Still less is Clement Marot's version of the story plausible, or that the lion had won his little friend's gratitude by active interposition on his behalf when caught in a trap. Trouva moyen et manière et matière D'ongles et dents de rompre la ratière. Another impressive fable is immortalized by Gay in the shape of Counsel to Prince William, Duke of Cumberland. The Tiger roaming for his prey, Sprang on a traveller in the way. The Lion comes in, kills the Tiger, and sets the Traveller free, who reads him a lesson on true glory. |