More detailed and even more full of commiseration is the poet’s vivid description of the hunting of “the purblind hare.” Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles, How he outruns the wind, and with what care He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles.[25] When he has for a little succeeded in throwing the hounds off the scent, Poor Wat, far off upon a hill, Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear, To hearken if his foes pursue him still: Anon their loud alarums he doth hear, Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay.[26] The poet’s feeling of pity descends even to small and fragile forms of living things, to which most people are indifferent or even hostile. Perhaps he may sometimes have credited these feeble creatures with greater sensitiveness to pain than a modern naturalist would allow, as where Isabella in _Measure for Measure_ tells her brother that The poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.[27] [Sidenote: _Pity for the humblest Creatures_] Shakespeare elsewhere alludes to our prevalent insensibility towards the insect world, from our youth upward. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.[28] In maturer life men will do “a thousand dreadful things as willingly as one would kill a fly.”[29] But the poet’s pity extended even to the fly. In a spirited picture of a superb charger he tells how the animal proudly “stamps and bites the poor flies in his fume.”[30] The most detailed and remarkable expression of this commiseration in the whole of Shakespeare’s works, however, is to be found in the unpleasing tragedy of _Titus Andronicus_, which, though printed among his dramas, is doubtless mainly the work of another writer. Yet it contains passages of great power and beauty which are not unworthy of Shakespeare and probably came from his pen. Among these passages I would include the singular scene in which Titus is sitting at table with his brother Marcus, who strikes the dish with his knife, whereupon the following dialogue ensues: _Titus._ What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife? _Marc._ At that that I have kill’d, my lord――a fly. _Tit._ Out on thee, murderer! thou kill’st my heart; A deed of death done on the innocent Becomes not Titus’ brother: get thee gone; I see thou art not for my company. _Marc._ Alas! my lord, I have but kill’d a fly. _Tit._ ‘But’! How if that fly had a father and mother? How would he hang his slender gilded wings And buzz lamenting doings in the air! Poor harmless fly! That, with his pretty buzzing melody Came here to make us merry! and thou hast kill’d him.