Part 28

"In devotion to his dogs, Dr Whately continued true to the end of his life, and during the winter season might be daily seen in St Stephen's Green, Dublin, playing at 'tig' or 'hide and seek' with his canine attendants. Sometimes the old archbishop might be seen clambering up a tree, secreting his handkerchief or pocket-knife in some cunning nook, then resuming his walk, and, after a while, suddenly affecting to have lost these articles, which the dogs never failed immediately to regain.

"That he was a close observer of the habits of dogs and other quadrupeds we have evidence in his able lecture on 'Animal Instinct.' Dr Whately, when referring to another subject, once said not irrelevantly, 'The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind: a narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are great things.' Dr Whately was of opinion that some brutes were as capable of exercising reason as instinct. In his 'Lectures and Reviews' (p. 64) he tells of a dog which, being left on the bank of a river by his master, who had gone up the river in a boat, attempted to join him. He plunged into the water, but not making allowance for the strength of the stream, which carried him considerably below the boat, he could not beat up against it. He landed, and made allowance for the current of the river by leaping in at a place higher up. The combined action of the stream and his swimming carried him in an oblique direction, and he thus reached the boat. Dr Whately adopts the following conclusion--'It appears, then, that we can neither deny reason universally and altogether to brutes, nor instinct to man; but that each possesses a share of both, though in very different proportions.'"

SIR DAVID WILKIE COULD NOT SEE A PUN.--"A DOG-ROSE."

The son and biographer of William Collins, the Royal Academician, quotes from a manuscript collection of anecdotes, written by that charming painter of country life and landscape, the following on Sir David Wilkie:--"Wilkie was not quick in perceiving a joke, although he was always anxious to do so, and to recollect humorous stories, of which he was exceedingly fond. As instances, I recollect once when we were staying at Mr Wells's, at Redleaf, one morning at breakfast a very small puppy was running about under the table. 'Dear me,' said a lady, 'how this creature teases me!' I took it up and put it into my breast-pocket. Mr Wells said, 'That is a pretty nosegay.'--'Yes,' said I, 'it is a dog-rose.' Wilkie's attention, sitting opposite, was called to his friend's pun, but all in vain. He could not be persuaded to see anything in it. I recollect trying once to explain to him, with the same want of success, Hogarth's joke in putting the sign of the woman without a head ('The Good Woman') under the window from which the quarrelsome wife is throwing the dinner into the street."

ULYSSES AND HIS DOG.

Richard Payne Knight, in his "Inquiry into the Principles of Taste," when treating of the "sublime and pathetic," quotes the story of Ulysses and his dog, as follows:--"No Dutch painter ever exhibited an image less imposing, or less calculated to inspire awe and terror, or any other of Burke's symptoms or sources of the sublime (unless, indeed, it be a stink), than the celebrated dog of Ulysses lying upon a dunghill, covered with vermin and in the agonies of death; yet, when in such circumstances, on hearing the voice of his old master, who had been absent twenty years, he pricks his ears, wags his tail, and expires, what heart is not at once melted, elevated, and expanded with all those glowing feelings which Longinus has so well described as the genuine effects of the true sublime? That master, too--the patient, crafty, and obdurate Ulysses, who encounters every danger and bears every calamity with a constancy unshaken, a spirit undepressed, and a temper unruffled--when he sees this faithful old servant perishing in want, misery, and neglect, yet still remembering his long-lost benefactor, and collecting the last effort of expiring nature to give a sign of joy and gratulation at his return, hides his face and wipes away the tear! This is true sublimity of character, which is always mixed with tenderness--mere sanguinary ferocity being terrible and odious, but never sublime. [Greek: Agathoi polydakrytoi andres]--Men prone to tears are brave, says the proverbial Greek hemistich; for courage, which does not arise from mere coarseness of organisation, but from that sense of dignity and honour which constitutes the generous pride of a high mind, is founded in sensibility."

FOOTNOTES:

"The Olio," by the late Francis Grose, Esq., F.A.S., p. 203.

"Dogs and their Ways;" illustrated by numerous anecdotes, compiled from authentic sources, by the Rev. Charles Williams. 1863.

It may interest the reader, who does not dive deep into literary curiosities, to refer to the original edition of Hayley's "Cowper" (4to, 1803, vol. i. p. 314), where the poet, in a letter to Samuel Rose, Esq., written at Weston, August 18, 1788, alludes to his having "composed a spick and span new piece called 'The Dog and the Water-lily;'" and in his next letter, September 11, he sent this piece to his excellent friend, the London barrister. Visitors to Olney and Weston, who have gone over the poet's walks, cannot but have their love for the gentle and afflicted Cowper most deeply intensified.--See Miller's "First Impressions."

This book, like Storer's other illustrations of the scenes of the poems of Burns and Bloomfield, drawn immediately after the death of these poets, will become year by year more valuable.

"Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh," edited by his son, Robert James Mackintosh, Esq., vol. i. p. 164.

"Bawsn't," having a white stripe down the face.--Glossary to Burns's Poems.

See an extract farther on, in proof of this.

"The Jordan and the Rhine" (1854), p. 46, and pp. 91-93.

See Layard's "Nineveh and its Remains," vol. ii. (1849), p. 425.

"Ladak, Physical, Statistical, and Historical," p. 218.

"Memoir of Bishop Blomfield," by his son, i. 220.

Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 177.

A selection from the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London, 1866, pp. 134-138.

"Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart.," edited by his son, Charles Buxton, Esq., B.A., third edition, p. 139.

Moore's "Life of Byron," chap. vii. p. 74.

Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 279.

"Memoirs of the Life of Wm. Collins, R.A.," by his Son, i. 105.

Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 203.

Loc. cit. p. 213.

"The Life, Character, and Literary Labours of Samuel Drew, A.M.," by his eldest son, p. 66.

"Memoirs of Samuel Foote, Esq.," &c., by W. Cooke, Esq., vol. ii. p. 36.