Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary
With spritely fire and motion.”
The fox, indeed, has always been a popular animal, and is the subject of many fables which are glanced at by Shakespeare;—as in the Two Gentlemen of Verona (act iv. sc. 4, l. 87, vol. i. p. 143), when Julia exclaims,—
“Alas, poor Proteus! thou hast entertained
A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs.”
Or in 2 Henry VI. (act iii. sc. 1, l. 55, vol. v. p. 153), where Suffolk warns the king of “the bedlam brain-sick duchess” of Gloucester,—
“Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.”
“The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb.”
And again, in 3 Henry VI. (act iv. sc. 7, l. 24, vol. v. p. 312), the cunning creature is praised by Gloucester in an “aside,”—
“But when the fox hath once got in his nose,