[Footnote 74: "Only by the way, before we bring D. against D. to the stake, I would fain know how Mr Bayes, that so well understood the nature of beasts, came to pitch upon the Hind and the Panther, to signify the church of Rome and the church of England? Doubtless his reply will be, because the hind is a creature harmless and innocent; the panther mischievous and inexorable. Let all this be granted; what is this to the author's absurdity in the choice of his beasts? For the scene of the persecution is Europe, a part of the world which never bred panthers since the creation of the universe. On the other side, grant his allusion passable, and then he stigmatizes the church of England to be the most cruel and most voracious creature that ranges all the Lybian deserts;--a character, which shows him to have a strange mist before his eyes when he reads ecclesiastical history. And then, says he, The panther, sure the noblest next the hind, And fairest creature of the spotted kind. Which is another blunder, _cujus contrarium verum est_: For if beauty, strength, and courage, advance the value of the several parts of the creation, without question the panther is far to be preferred before the hind, a poor, silly, timorous, ill-shaped, bobtailed creature, of which a score will hardly purchase the skin of a true panther. Had he looked a little farther, Ludolphus would have furnished him with a zebra, the most beautiful of all the four-footed creatures in the world, to have coped with his panther for spots, and with his hind for gentleness and mildness; of which one was sold singly to the Turkish governor of Suaquena for 2000 Venetian ducats. There had been a beast for him, as pat as a pudding for a friar's mouth. But to couple the hind and the panther was just like _sic magna parvis componere_; and, therefore, he had better have put his hind in a good pasty, or reserved her for some more proper allusion; for this, though his nimble beast have four feet, will by no means run _quatuor pedibus_, though she had a whole kennel of hounds at her heels."--_The Revolter, a Tragi-comedy._] [Footnote 75: The following justification of their plan is taken from the preface, which is believed to have been entirely the composition of Montague.