When some proud son of man returns to earth Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth, The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe, And storied urns record who rests below; When all is done, upon the tomb is seen Not what he was, but what he should have been. But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, the foremost to defend. Whose honest heart is still his master’s own, Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth, Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth; While man, vain insect, hopes to be forgiven, And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven. O man, thou feeble tenant of an hour, Debased by slavery or corrupt by power, Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust, Degraded mass of animated dust. Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat, Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit. By Nature vile, ennobled but by name, Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame. Ye who perchance behold this simple urn Pass on, it honours none you wish to mourn; To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise: I never knew but one, and here he lies. Walter Scott’s dogs had an extraordinary fondness for him. Swanston declares that he had to stand by, when they were leaping and fawning about him, to beat them off lest they should knock him down. One day, when he and Swanston were in the armory, Maida (the dog which now lies at his feet in the monument at Edinburgh), being outside, had peeped in through the window, a beautifully painted one, and the instant she got a glance of her beloved master she bolted right through it and at him. Lady Scott, starting at the crash, exclaimed, “O gracious, shoot her!” But Scott, caressing her with the utmost coolness, said, “No, no, mamma, though she were to break every window at Abbotsford.” He was engaged for an important dinner party on the day his dog Camp died, but sent word that he could not go, “on account of the death of a dear old friend.” He tried early one morning to make the fire of peat burn, and after many efforts succeeded in some degree. At this moment one of the dogs, dripping from a plunge in the lake, scratched and whined at the window. Sir Walter let the “puir creature” in, who, coming up before the little fire, shook his shaggy hide, sending a perfect shower bath over the fire and over a great table of loose manuscripts. The tender-hearted author, eying the scene with his usual serenity, said slowly, “O dear, ye’ve done a great deal of mischief!” This equanimity is only equalled by Sir Isaac Newton’s exclamation, now, alas! pronounced a fiction, “O Diamond, Diamond, little dost thou know the injury thou hast done!”