Of this regrettable possibility there is as yet no sign. The hound, Argus, beating the ground with his feeble tail in an expiring effort to welcome the disguised Odysseus, is a prototype of his successor to-day. Scattered here and there in the pages of history are instances of unfaithfulness; but their rarity gives point to their picturesqueness. Froissart tells us that the greyhound, Math, deserted his master, King Richard the Second, to fawn on the Duke of Lancaster who was to depose and succeed him; and that a greyhound belonging to Charles of Blois fled on the eve of battle to the camp of John de Montfort, seeking protection from the stronger man. These anecdotes indicate a grasp of political situations which is no part of the dog’s ordinary make-up. Who can imagine the fortunate, faithful little spaniel that attended Mary Stuart in her last sad months, and in her last heroic hours, fawning upon Queen Elizabeth? Who can imagine Sir Walter Scott’s dogs slinking away from him when the rabble of Jedburgh heaped insults on his bowed grey head? The most beautiful words ever written about a dog have no reference to his affectionate qualities. Simonides, celebrating the memory of a Thessalian hound, knows only that he was fleet and brave. “Surely, even as thou liest in this tomb, I deem the wild beasts yet fear thy white bones, Lycas; and thy valour great Pelion knows, and the lonely peaks of Cithæron.” This is heroic praise, and so, in a fashion, is Byron’s epitaph on Boatswain. But Byron, being of the moderns, can find no better way of honouring dogs than by defaming men; a stupidity, pardonable in the poet only because he was the most sincere lover of animals the world has ever known. His tastes were catholic, his outlook was whimsical. He was not in the least discomposed when his forgetful wolf-hound bit him, or when his bulldog bit him without the excuse of forgetfulness. Moore tells us that the first thing he saw on entering Byron’s palace in Venice was a notice, “Keep clear of the dog!” and the first thing he heard was the voice of his host calling out anxiously, “Take care, or that monkey will fly at you.”