MONTENEGRO. How now, are thy arrows feathered?
VELASCO. Well enough for roving.
MONTENEGRO. Shoot home then.
SHIRLEY.
It is only when Man interferes, that the system of progression which the All Father has established throughout the living and sentient world, is interrupted, and Man, our Philosopher would sorrowfully observe, has interrupted it, not only for himself, but for such of the inferior creatures as are under his controul. He has degraded the instincts of some, and in others, perhaps it may not be too much to say that he has corrupted that moral sense of which even the brute creation partakes in its degree; and has inoculated them with his own vices. Thus the decoy duck is made a traitor to her own species, and so are all those smaller birds which the bird-catcher trains to assist him in ensnaring others. The Rat, who is one of the bravest of created things, is in like manner rendered a villain.
Upon hunting and hawking the Doctor laid little stress, because both dogs and falcons in their natural state would have hunted and fowled on their own account. These sports according to his “poor way of thinking,” tended to deprave not so much the animals, as the human beings employed in them; for when they ceased to be necessary for the support or protection of man, they became culpable. But to train dogs for war, and flesh them upon living prisoners, as the Spaniards did, (and as, long since the decease of my venerable friend, Buonaparte's officers did in St. Domingo),—to make horses, gentle and harmless as well as noble in their disposition as they are, take a part in our senseless political contentions, charge a body of men, and trample over their broken limbs and palpitating bodies;—to convert the Elephant, whom Pope, he said, had wronged by only calling him half-reasoning, the mild, the thoughtful, the magnanimous Elephant, into a wilful and deliberate and cruel executioner, these he thought were acts of high treason against humanity, and of impiety against universal nature. Grievous indeed it is, he said, to know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain; but more grievous to consider that man, who by his original sin was the guilty cause of their general deprivation, should continue by repeated sins to aggravate it;—to which he added that the lines of the Roman Satirist, though not exactly true, were yet humiliating and instructive.
Mundi
Principio indulsit communis conditor illis
Tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos
Adfectus petere auxilium et præstare juberet,
Dispersos trahere in populum, migrare vetusto
De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere silvas;
Ædificare domos, Laribus conjungere nostris
Tectum aliud, tutos vicino limine somnos
Ut conlata daret fiducia; protegere armis
Labsum, aut ingenti nutantem vulnere civem,
Communi dare signa tubâ, defendier îsdem
Turribus, atque unâ portarum clave teneri.
Sed jam serpentum major concordia; parcit
Cognatis maculis similis fera; quando leoni
Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam
Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?
Indica tigris agit rabidâ cum tigride pacem
Perpetuam: sævis inter se convenit ursis.
Ast homini ferrum lethale incude nefandâ
Produxisse parum est; quum rastra et sarcula tantum
Adsueti coquere, et marris ac vomere lassi
Nescierint primi gladios excudere fabri.
Adspicimus populos, quorum non sufficit iræ
Occidisse aliquem: sed pectora, brachia, vultum
Crediderint genus esse cibi. Quid diceret ergo
Vel quo non fugerit, si nunc hæc monstra videret
Pythagoras: cunctis animalibus abstinuit qui
Tanquam homine, et ventri indulsit non omne legumen.1
1 The reader may call to mind the commencement of the Third Canto of Rokeby.
The hunting tribes of air and earth
Respect the brethren of their birth;
Nature, who loves the claim of kind,
Less cruel, chase to each assigned.
The falcon, poised on soaring wing,
Watches the wild-duck by the spring;
The slow-hound wakes the fox's lair;
The greyhound presses on the hare;
The eagle pounces on the lamb;
The wolf devours the fleecy dam:
Even tiger fell and sullen bear
Their likeness and their lineage spare.
Man, only, mars kind Nature's plan
And turns the fierce pursuit on man;
Plying war's desultory trade,
Incursion, flight, and ambuscade,
Since Nimrod, Cush's mighty son
At first the bloody game begun.