ere was still something which really deserved to be
liked in Reineke, and what it was we had as yet failed
to discover.

"Two are better than one," and we resolved in our
difficulty to try what our friends might have to say
about it; the appearance of the Wurtemburg animals
at the Exhibition came fortunately apropos to our
assistance: a few years ago it was rare to find a person
who had read the Fox Epic; and still more, of course,
to find one whose judgment would be worth taking
about it; but now the charming figures of Reineke
himself, and the Lion King, and Isegrim, and Bruin,
and Bellyn, and Hintze, and Grimbart, had set all the
world asking who and what they were, and the story
began to get itself known. The old editions, which had
long slept unbound in reams upon the shelves, began
to descend and clothe themselves in green and crimson.
Mr. Dickens sent a summary of it round the households
of England. Everybody began to talk of Reineke; and
now, at any rate, we said to ourselves, we shall see
whether we are alone in our liking--whether others
share in this strange sympathy, or whether it be some
unique and monstrous moral obliquity in ourselves.

We set to work, therefore, with all earnestness,
feeling our way first with fear and delicacy, as conscious
of our own delinquency, to gather judgments which
should be wiser than our own, and correct ourselves, if
it proved that we required correction, with whatever
severity might be necessary. The result of which labour
of ours was not a little surprising; we found that women
invariably, with that clear moral instinct of theirs, at
once utterly reprobated and detested our poor Reynard;
detested the hero and detested the bard who sang of
him with so much sympathy; while men we found
almost invariably feeling just as we felt ourselves, only
with this difference, that we saw no trace of uneasiness
in them about the matter. It was no little comfort to us,
moreover, to find that the exceptions were rather among
the half-men, the would-be extremely good, but whose
goodness was of that dead and passive kind which
spoke to but a small elevation of thought or activity;
while just in proportion as a man was strong, and real,
and energetic, was his ability to see good in Reineke.
It was really most strange, one near friend of ours, a
man who, as far as we knew (and we knew him well)
had never done a wrong thing, when we ventured to
hint something about roguery, replied, "