Spurning the ground the monarch stood,
  And roared aloud, ’Suspend the fight;
  In a whole skin go sleep to-night: 
  Or tell me, ere the battle rage,
  What wrongs provoke thee to engage? 
  Is it ambition fires thy breast,
  Or avarice that ne’er can rest? 
  From these alone unjustly springs
  The world-destroying wrath of kings.’
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     The surly mastiff thus returns: 
  ’Within my bosom glory burns. 
  Like heroes of eternal name,
  Whom poets sing, I fight for fame. 
  The butcher’s spirit-stirring mind
  To daily war my youth inclined;
  He trained me to heroic deed;
  Taught me to conquer, or to bleed.’ 
     ‘Cursed dog,’ the bull replied, ’no more
  I wonder at thy thirst of gore;
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  For thou, beneath a butcher trained,
  Whose hands with cruelty are stained;
  His daily murders in thy view,
  Must, like thy tutor, blood pursue. 
  Take then thy fate.’  With goring wound,
  At once he lifts him from the ground;
  Aloft the sprawling hero flies,
  Mangled he falls, he howls, and dies.

* * * * *

FABLE X.

THE ELEPHANT AND THE BOOKSELLER.

  The man who, with undaunted toils,
  Sails unknown seas to unknown soils,
  With various wonders feasts his sight: 
  What stranger wonders does he write! 
  We read, and in description view
  Creatures which Adam never knew: 
  For, when we risk no contradiction,
  It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction. 
  Those things that startle me or you,
  I grant are strange; yet may be true.
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  Who doubts that elephants are found
  For science and for sense renowned? 
  Borri records their strength of parts,
  Extent of thought, and skill in arts;
  How they perform the law’s decrees,
  And save the state the hangman’s fees;
  And how by travel understand
  The language of another land. 
  Let those, who question this report,
  To Pliny’s ancient page resort;
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  How learn’d was that sagacious breed! 
  Who now (like them) the Greek can read! 
     As one of these, in days of yore,
  Rummaged a shop of learning o’er;
  Not, like our modern dealers, minding
  Only the margin’s breadth and binding;
  A book his curious eye detains,
  Where, with exactest care and pains,
  Were every beast and bird portrayed,
  That e’er the search of man surveyed,
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  Their natures and their powers were writ,
  With all the pride of human wit. 
  The page he with attention spread,
  And thus remarked on what he read: 
     ’Man with strong reason is endowed;
  A beast scarce instinct is allowed. 
  But let this author’s worth be tried,
  ’Tis plain that neither was his guide. 
  Can he discern the different natures,