88 ANECDOTE OF A DOG. shone one of the brightest ornaments of the British peerage, if he had been guided by principle and had laid the reins upon his imagination. But to return to the immediate object of these memoirs. On leaving college, and getting rid of his shaggy chum, the noble lord adopted another favourite of the four-footed kind but of a different species. This was a large Newfoundland dog, in the instruction of which he took as much delight, as Sir Ashton Lever formerly did in the education of horses. Among the early amusements of his lordship, were swimming and managing a boat, in both of which exercises he acquired great dexterity, even in his childhood. In his aquatic exercises near Newstead Abbey, he had seldom any other companion than his dog to try whose sagacity and fidelity he would sometimes fall out of the boat, as if by accident, upon which the animal never failed to jump overboard and seizing his master, would drag him instantly to the shore. There was, however, a very prudential reason for this artifice, since the dog being practised in the performance of a necessary piece of service; might on some occasion or other prove of great benefit in saving human life. On losing this faithful creature in the autumn of 1808, his lordship caused a monument to be erected commemorative of its attachment: and bearing an inscription which is so little to the credit of the author, that four lines only, and those not the worst in the piece, must here suffice as a precious evidence of early misanthropy: "Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn, Now this panegyric upon a dog, the whole of whose virtue lay in mechanical instinct, when the writer had a parent living, with many other relatives and acquaintance, the sincerity of whose friendship he had no right to call in question, can be considered as nothing better than an intended violation of good manners, and a direct insult upon moral feeling. That this young nobleman acted well in placing a grateful token of remembrance over the remains of an affectionate animal, cannot be denied; but in doing this, he should have been careful to keep his praises within the bounds of decent propriety, and not have 90 SINGULAR CUP. made the good qualities of a dog, whatever they might be, the vehicle for pouring out the most cynical language of abuse upon the whole body of mankind. It was remarked of Sterne, who had much philanthropy in his writings and none in his heart, that a dead ass was a dearer object to him than a dying mother. Thus also in the present instance; while the noble lord was erecting a mausoleum to his dog, in the park of Newstead, he had so little respect for decorum, as to rake into the cemetery of his ancestors, for a skull sufficiently capacious and in a proper state to be converted into a carousing cup. Having found one to his liking, without troubling himself whether it had belonged to man or woman, to his grandfather or grandmother, he had it mounted upon a silver stand, with an inscription engraven round it, which for spirit might rival the Bacchanalian productions of the Teian bard; but which, for delicacy of sentiment, could only become the Scandinavian barbarians, who deemed it the highest point of felicity that they should in the future state be seated in the hall of Odin, and there get intoxicated by quaffing strong liquors from the skulls of those over whom they had triumphed in battle. But, as Sir Thomas Browne observes, "to be knaved out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations." What, however, would that energetic writer have said of a youth possessing ample means, and a lively genius, polished by education, who could so far forget the natural awe and sensibility produced by the sight of the last reliques of mortality, as to make a wassailing cup of the head of one of his progenitors, whose virtue perhaps, in a former age, had been a blessing and an example to that mansion and the neighbourhood? Anchorets have been accustomed to take a skull for their companion and monitor, to remind them of the vanity of life, and to prepare their thoughts for death, by learning from it the salutary lesson of a constant subjugation of the passions. But it is to be hoped, for the honour of humanity, that there are few or none so lost to the impression of that truth as to look upon a skull, and read these lines written beneath it, without a chill of horror and disgust: 92 INSCRIPTION. "Quaff while thou canst-another race, And rhyme and revel with the dead." Now whatever may be thought of the "rhyme," there surely cannot be two opinions among rational men, concerning that " revelry," which is promoted by the emblems of mortality. After this mockery of the great Counsellor who man inspires With every nobler thought and fairer deed, one ceases to wonder at the melancholy whinings occasioned by repeated disappointments in love, or at the frequent allusion to early riot and intemperance which abound in the juvenile productions of the noble author; for of what value could that passion be, which had nothing but external form and sensual gratification for its excitement, and which, when crossed, sought oblivion in a goblet, fetched from the charnel house? As the love that inspires poets with beautiful |