“The ass learnt metaphors and tropes,
But most on music fixed his hopes.”—
And merry Peter Pindar thus apostrophises his asinine namesake:—
“What tho’ I’ve heard some voices sweeter;
Yet exquisite thy hearing, gentle Peter!
Whether a judge of music, I don’t know—
If so—
Thou hast th’ advantage got of many a score
That enter at the open door.”——
What an unfounded calumny then must it have been on the part of the Romans, to declare these “Roussins d’Arcadie” (as La Fontaine calls them) so deficient in their aural faculties, that “to talk to a deaf ass” was proverbial for “to labour in vain!”—Perhaps it was under the same delusion that, as Goldsmith says,—
“John Trott was desired by two witty peers,
To tell them the reason why asses had ears.”
John owns his ignorance of the subject, and facetiously exclaims—
“Howe’er, from this time, I shall ne’er see your graces,
As I hope to be saved! without thinking on asses!”
Which joke, by the bye, the author of “Waverley” has deigned to make free with, and thrust into the mouth of a thick-headed fellow, in the fourth volume of the “Crusaders.”
Gesner says he saw one leap through a hoop, and, at the word of command, lie down just as if he were dead.
Mahomet had an excellent creature, half ass and half mule: for if we may take his word for it, the beast carried him from Mecca to Jerusalem in the twinkling of an eye in one step!—“It is only the first step which is difficult,” says the French proverb, and here it is undoubtedly right.