Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

132 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
dee Manuscript the comparatively harmless descrip-
tion of the two beasts.
" The man who was crafty "
found that another beast had joined the first two in
his momentary absence :
—
Now the other beast was a beast that he loved not : a beast
of burden which he had in his courts to hew wood and to draw
water and to do all manner of unclean things. His face was
like unto the face of an ape, and he chattered continually, and
his nether parts were uncomely. Nevertheless his thighs were
hairy, and the hair was as the shining of a satin raiment, and
he skipped with the branch of a tree in his hand, and he chewed
a snail between his teeth. ... If thou lookest upon him and
observest his ways, behold he was born of his mother before the
months were fulfilled, and the substance of a living thing is
not in him, and his horns are like the potsherd which is broken
against any tree.
We may allow that this is not the kind of thing
which it would be tolerable to have said of one, and
admire the courage of the man who applied it to
himself. It is to be presumed that the contemptuous
description was so true to the life that no one could
mistake it. We may allow even that it was, as he
said, " a cruel, malicious, and wanton injury," and
that " holding up in a style of mockery and derision
the personal infirmities under which the said pursuer
labours, impiously scoffing at what is the visitation
of Heaven alone, and no fault of him the sufferer,"
was as cruel and unseemly in point of morals as it
was bad taste and impossible in literature. Whether
the poor man's feelings could be salved and his honour
vindicated by the award of damages was of course for
him to judge.
The Chaldee Manuscript, however, we are sorry to
say, was the least of the sins of which the new number