Chapter XLIX: Lines on Leigh Hunt

Suggested by Hunt's _Byron and his Contemporaries_.

Next week will be published (as "Lives" are the rage)
The whole Reminiscences, wondrous and strange,
Of a small puppy-dog that lived once in the cage
Of the late noble lion at Exeter 'Change.

Though the dog is a dog of the kind they call "sad",
'Tis a puppy that much to good breeding pretends;
And few dogs have such opportunities had
Of knowing how lions behave--among friends.

How that animal eats, how he moves, how he drinks,
Is all noted down by this Boswell so small;
And 'tis plain, from each sentence, the puppy-dog thinks
That the lion was no such great things after all.

Though he roar'd pretty well--this the puppy allows--
It was all, he says, borrow'd--all second-hand roar;
And he vastly prefers his own little bow-wows
To the loftiest war-note the lion could pour.

'Tis indeed as good fun as a cynic could ask,
To see how this cockney-bred setter of rabbits
Takes gravely the lord of the forest to task,
And judges of lions by puppy-dog habits.

Nay, fed as he was (and this makes it a dark case)
With sops every day from the lion's own pan,
He lifts up his leg at the noble beast's carcase,
And--does all a dog, so diminutive, can.

However the book's a good book, being rich in
Examples and warnings to lions high-bred,
How they suffer small mongrelly curs in their kitchen,
Who'll feed on them living, and foul them when dead.

GEORGE CANNING.

(1770-1827.)