The magnanimity of the Lion is a very well-worn theme. Every one knows all about Androcles and the Lion; “the tale is somewhat musty” by this time. All the older poets have something about it—the writers of the golden age—before natural selection was thought of, and when animals of many kinds were credited with a vast amount of idyllic amiability, of which, alas! nobody believes them capable now.
In the exquisite woodland scenery of “As You Like It,” a hungry Lioness that has just suckled her whelps, is accredited with a nobility to which she, assuredly, had no title. “A green and gilded Snake” has been frightened from the sleeping Oliver by Orlando—
“—— it unlinked itself,
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush: under which bush’s shade
A Lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay couching, head on ground, with Cat-like watch,
When that the sleeping man should stir, for ’tis
The royal disposition of that beast
To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.”