nd as to geese metaphorical, at least the whole
visible world lies down complacently at his feet. Nor
does Mr. Carlyle's expressed language on this very poem
serve any better to help us--nay, it seems as if he feels
uneasy in the neighbourhood of so strong a rascal, so
briefly he dismisses him. "Worldly prudence is the
only virtue which is certain of its reward." Nay, but
there is more in it than that: no worldly prudence
would command the voices which have been given in to
us for Reineke.

Three only possibilities lay now before us: either we
should, on searching, find something solid in this Fox's
doings to justify success; or else the just thing was not
always the strong thing; or it might be, that such very
semblance of success was itself the most miserable
failure; that the wicked man who was struck down and
foiled, and foiled again, till he unlearnt his wickedness,
or till he was disabled from any more attempting it, was
blessed in his disappointment; that to triumph in
wickedness, and to continue in it and to prosper to the
end, was the last, worst penalty inflicted by the divine
vengeance. Hin' athanatos e adikos on--to go on with
injustice through this world and through all eternity,
uncleansed by any purgatorial fire, untaught by any
untoward consequence to open his eyes and to see in
its true accursed form the miserable demon to which he
has sold himself,--this, of all catastrophes which could
befal an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most
savouring of hell, which the purest of the Grecian
moralists could reason out for himself,--under which
third hypothesis many an uneasy misgiving would vanish
away, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorism be accepted
by us with thankfulness.

It appeared, therefore, at any rate, to have come to
this--that if we wanted a solution for our sphinx enigma,
no OEdipus was likely to rise and find it for us; and
that if we wanted help, we must make it for ourselves.
This only we found, that if we sinned in our regard for
the unworthy animal, we shared our sin with the largest
number of our own sex; and, comforted with the sense
of good fellowship, we went boldly to work upon our
consciousness; and the imperfect analysis which we
succeeded in accomplishing, we here lay before you,
whoever you may be, who have felt, as we have felt, a
regard which was a moral disturbance to you, and which
you will be pleased if we enable you to justify--

Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Ca