The Indians fought for the truth
Of th' elephant and monkey's tooth;[1]
And many, to defend that faith,
Fought it out mordicus to death.[2] 780
But no beast ever was so slight,[3]
For man, as for his god, to fight;
They have more wit, alas! and know
Themselves and us better than so.
But we, who only do infuse 785
The rage in them like boutè-feus,[4]
'Tis our example that instils
In them th' infection of our ills.
For, as some late philosophers
Have well observed, beasts that converse 790
With man take after him, as hogs
Get pigs all the year, and bitches dogs.
Just so, by our example, cattle
Learn to give one another battle.
We read, in Nero's time, the Heathen, 795
When they destroy' d the Christian brethren,
They sew'd them in the skins of bears,[5]
And then set dogs about their ears;
From whence, no doubt, th' invention came[6]
Of this lewd antichristian game. 800
To this, quoth Ralpho, Verily
The point seems very plain to me;
It is an antichristian game,
Unlawful both in thing and name.
First, for the name; the word bear-baiting 805
Is carnal, and of man's creating;[7]
- ↑ The inhabitants of Ceylon and Siam worshipped the teeth of monkeys and elephants. The Portuguese, out of zeal for the Christian religion, destroyed these idols; and the Siamese are said to have offered 700,000 ducats to redeem a monkey's tooth which they had long worshipped. See Linschoten's, Le Blanc's, and Herbert's Travels.
- ↑ Valiantly, tooth and nail.
- ↑ That is, so silly.
- ↑ Incendiaries.
- ↑ See Tacitus, Annals, B. xv. c. 44. (Bohn's transl. vol. i. p. 423.)
- ↑ Alluding probably to Prynne's Histrio-mastix, p. 556 and 583, who has endeavoured to prove it such from the 61st canon of the sixth Council of Constantinople, which he has thus translated: "Those ought also to be subject to six years' excommunication who carry about bears, or such like creatures, for sport, to the hurt of simple people."
- ↑ The Assembly of Divines, in their Annotations on Genesis i. 1, assail the King for creating honours.
