hardly worth the candle, or that poaching on a large scale was as reprehensible ethically as poaching on a little one. This sort of insight was left for the nineteenth-century philosopher, and the nineteenth-century moralist. In earlier, easier days, the last thing that a poet troubled himself about was a defensible motive for the battle in which his soul exulted. His business was to describe the fighting, not to justify the fight, which would have been a task of pure supererogation in that truculent age. Fancy trying to justify Kinmont Willie or Johnie of Braedislee, instead of counting the hard knocks they give and the stout men they lay low!
"Johnie's set his back against an aik,
His foot against a stane;
And he has slain the Seven Foresters,—
He has slain them a' but ane."
The last echo of this purely irresponsible spirit may be found in the "War Song of Dinas Vawr," where Peacock, always three hundred years behind his time, sings of slaughter with a bellicose cheerfulness which only his admirable versification can excuse:—
"The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
