“Why, you cannot complain of our father’s predilection, when it is shared to so great an extent by your silly favourite,” remonstrated Tot. “It is on the principle of Carlyle’s admiration of Frederick the Great, and of the present furor for Bismarck,” added Tot, who was fond of historical parallels. “What do you mean by putting away?” he pressed Nelly with pitiless directness. “I have no patience with euphemisms, Nell. Say at once that you would have Cæsar shot or hanged, in order to protect Dash from the natural consequences of his folly. Well, though I must say that is a queer kind of justice, by way of mercy, too——”
“Oh! not shot or hanged, Tot. You know I did not mean that,” exclaimed Nelly piteously, interrupting her brother; “and you do not like Cæsar yourself.”
“I am perfectly aware that he is a truculent ruffian,” said Tot, composedly. “He has grossly imposed on the governor. I would see him despatched with all the pleasure in life——”
“I don’t believe you,” Nelly interrupted him again with energy.
“Wait till I have finished my sentence,” complained Tot. “I was going to say that while I should have no objection to Cæsar’s meeting his deserts, I really cannot recognise the propriety of his falling a sacrifice to the stubborn idiotcy of Dash.”
Cæsar was a truculent ruffian, with hardly a redeeming trait; though, from his life as a chained-up watch-dog—which, to give the beast his due, might have helped to brutalise his disposition—he was removed from the opportunity of doing much mischief, and though he was able with all his stupidity—and he was as stupid as he was savage—to throw dust in his master’s eyes. He ought not to have been named for a brave Roman soldier, granting he did overthrow a republic. Timour or Tippoo was too good a name for the dog.
You may see him in the illustration—a huge, half-bred brute, without any of the nobility or magnanimity of the true mastiff. There he lies sprawling, half out of his den, with his muzzle and his unwieldy paws guarding a piece of meat, while he glares at you with a jealous scowl. There is no harmony in his bulk, which, in place of being imposing, is simply repulsive. The girth of his neck is tremendous, while his bull head is furnished with comparatively short, thick ears. His broad, flat, black and red nose is stolid in the extreme, and destitute of speculation apart from its animal scent.
Yet Cæsar is not without his admirers; not only does his master, worthy gentleman, refuse to believe that the dog is coarser, more insensate and vicious than other dogs—there is a poor little weak-minded spaniel Dash, that hankers after the ugly, hard, selfish tyrant, haunts his den, and makes timid advances to him.
Dash also is to be seen in the illustration, bowing and begging to Cæsar. Dash’s silky, wavy hair, prominent eyebrows, pendant ears, the abject inclination of his head, the slobbering of his tongue in sneaking kindness—half for Cæsar, half for his piece of meat—are all keenly characteristic of the spaniel, with his fawning, frightened ways; and alas! alas! there are in him, along with his gentleness and surface amiability, the elements of a liar and a traitor.
There cannot be a wider distinction in dog-life, and in the human life of which, in Landseer’s hands, the first was the type, than that which exists between the despicable, precarious relations of Cæsar and Dash, and the chivalrous enduring connection that knit together two such dogs as figure in the group, “Dignity and Impudence.”