THE ROYAL LION AND UNICORN.
A DIALOGUE.
“GROUND ARMS!”—Birdcage Walk.
LION.—So! how do you feel now?
UNICORN.—Considerably relieved. Though you can’t imagine the stiffness of my neck and legs. Let me see, how long is it since we relieved the griffins?
LION.—An odd century or two, but never mind that. For the first time, we have laid down our charge—have got out of our state attitudes, and may sit over our pot and pipe at ease.
UNICORN.—What a fate is ours! Here have we, in our time, been compelled to give the patronage of our countenance to all sorts of rascality—have been forced to support robbery, swindling, extortion—but it won’t do to think of—give me the pot. Oh! dear, it had suited better with my conscience, had I been doomed to draw a sand-cart!
LION.—Come, come, no unseemly affectation. You, at the best, are only a fiction—a quadruped lie.
UNICORN.—I know naturalists dispute my existence, but if, as you unkindly say, I am only a fiction, why should I have been selected as a supporter of the royal arms?
LION.—Why, you fool, for that very reason. Have you been where you are for so many years, and yet don’t know that often, in state matters, the greater the lie the greater the support?
UNICORN.—Right. When I reflect—I have greater doubts of my truth, seeing where I am.
LION.—But here am I, in myself a positive majesty, degraded into a petty-larceny scoundrel; yes, all my inherent attributes compromised by my position. Oh, Hercules! when I remember my native Africa—when I reflect on the sweet intoxication of my former liberty—the excitement of the chase—the mad triumph of my spring, cracking the back of a bison with one fillip of my paw—when I think of these things—of my tawny wife with her smile sweetly ferocious, her breath balmy with new blood—of my playful little ones, with eyes of topaz and claws of pearl—when I think of all this, and feel that here I am, a damned rabbit-sucker—
UNICORN.—Don’t swear.
LION.—Why not? God knows, we’ve heard swearing enough of all sorts in our time. It isn’t the fault of our position, if we’re not first-rate perjurers.
UNICORN.—That’s true: still, though we are compelled to witness all these things in the courts of law, let us be above the influence of bad example.
LION.—Give me the pot. Courts of law? Oh, Lord! what places they put us into! And there they expect me—me, the king of the animal world, to stand quietly upon my two hind-legs, looking as mildly contemptible as an apoplectic dancing-master,—whilst iniquities, and meannesses, and tyranny, and—give me the pot.
UNICORN:—Brother, you’re getting warm. Really, you ought to have seen enough of state and justice to take everything coolly. I certainly must confess that—looking at much of the policy of the country, considering much of the legal wickedness of law-scourged England—it does appear to me a studied insult to both of us to make us supporters of the national quarterings. Surely, considering the things that have been done under our noses, animals more significant of the state and social policy might have been promoted to our places. Instead of the majestic lion and the graceful unicorn, might they not have had the—the—
LION.—The vulture and the magpie.
UNICORN.—Excellent! The vulture would have capitally typified many of the wars of the state, their sole purpose being so many carcases—whilst, for the courts of law, the magpie would have been the very bird of legal justice and legal wisdom.
LION.—Yes, but then the very rascality of their faces would at once have declared their purpose. The vulture is a filthy, unclean wretch—the bird of Mars—preying upon the eyes, the hearts, the entrails of the victims of that scoundrel-mountebank, Glory; whilst the magpie is a petty-larceny vagabond, existing upon social theft. To use a vulgar phrase—and considering the magistrates we are compelled to keep company with, ’tis wonderful that we talk so purely as we do—’twould have let the cat too much out of the bag to have put the birds where we stand. Whereas, there is a fine hypocrisy about us. Consider—am not I the type of heroism, of magnanimity? Well, compelling me, the heroic, the magnanimous, now to stand here upon my hind-legs, and now to crouch quietly down, like a pet kitten over-fed with new milk,—any state roguery is passed off as the greatest piece of single-minded honesty upon the mere strength of my character—if I may so say it, upon my legendary reputation. Now, as for you, though you are a lie, you are nevertheless not a bad-looking lie. You have a nice head, clean legs, and—though I think it a little impertinent that you should wear that tuft at the end of your tail—are altogether a very decent mixture of the quadrupeds. Besides, lie or not, you have helped to support the national arms so long, that depend upon it there are tens of thousands who believe you to be a true thing.
UNICORN.—I have often flattered myself with that consolation.
LION.—A poor comfort: for if you are a true beast, and really have the attributes you are painted with, the greater the insult that you should be placed here. If, on the contrary, you are a lie, still greater the insult to leonine majesty, in forcing me for so many, many years to keep such bad company.
UNICORN.—But I have a great belief in my reality: besides, if the head, body, legs, tail, I bear, never really met in one animal, they all exist in several: hence, if I am not true altogether, I am true in parts; and what would you have of a thick-and-thin supporter of the crown?
LION.—Blush, brother, blush; such sophistry is only worthy of the Common Pleas, where I know you picked it up. To be sure, if both of us were the most abandoned of beasts, we surely should have some excuse for our wickedness in the profligate company we are obliged to keep.
UNICORN.—Well, well, don’t weep. Take the pot.
LION.—Have we not been, ay, for hundreds of years, in both Houses of Parliament?
UNICORN.—It can’t be denied.
LION—And there, what have we not seen—what have we not heard! What brazen, unblushing faces! What cringing, and bowing, and fawning! What scoundrel smiles, what ruffian frowns! what polished lying! What hypocrisy of patriotism! What philippics, levelled in the very name of liberty, against her sacred self! What orations on the benefit of starvation—on the comeliness of rags! Have we not heard selfishness speaking with a syren voice? Have we not seen the haggard face of state-craft rouged up into a look of pleasantness and innocence? Have we not, night after night, seen the national Jonathan Wilds meet to plan a robbery, and—the purse taken—have they not rolled in their carriages home, with their fingers smelling of the people’s pockets?
UNICORN.—It’s true—true as an Act of Parliament.
LION.—Then are we not obliged to be in the Courts of Law? In Chancery—to see the golden wheat of the honest man locked in the granaries of equity—granaries where deepest rats do most abound—whilst the slow fire of famine shall eat the vitals of the despoiled; and it may be the man of rightful thousands shall be carried to churchyard clay in parish deals? Then in the Bench, in the Pleas—there we are too. And there, see we not justice weighing cobwebs against truth, making too often truth herself kick the beam?
UNICORN.—It has made me mad to see it.
LION.—Turn we to the Police-offices—there we are again. And there—good God!—to see the arrogance of ignorance! To listen to the vapid joke of his worship on the crime of beggary! To see the punishment of the poor—to mark the sweet impunity of the rich! And then are we not in the Old Bailey—in all the criminal courts! Have we not seen trials after dinner—have we not heard sentences in which the bottle spoke more than the judge?
UNICORN.—Come, come, no libel on the ermine.
LION.—The ermine! In such cases, the fox—the pole-cat. Have we not seen how the state makes felons, and then punishes them for evil-doing?
UNICORN.—We certainly have seen a good deal that way.
LION.—And then the motto we are obliged to look grave over!
UNICORN.—What Dieu et mon droit! Yes, that does sometimes come awkwardly in—“God and my right!” Seeing what is sometimes done under our noses, now and then, I can hardly hold my countenance.
LION.—“God and my right!” What atrocity has that legend sanctified! and yet with demure faces they try men for blasphemy. Give me the pot.
UNICORN.—Come, be cool—be philosophic. I tell you we shall have as much need as ever of our stoicism?
LION.—What’s the matter now?
UNICORN.—The matter! Why, the Tories are to be in, and Peel’s to be minister.
LION.—Then he may send for Mr. Cross for the oran-outan to take my place, for never again do I support him. Peel minister, and Goulburn, I suppose—
UNICORN.—Goulburn! Goulburn in the cabinet! If it be so, I shall certainly vacate my place in favour of a jackass.