e with Reineke, being but an animal, we forget to make ourselves up,
and for once our genuine tastes show themselves freely. Some degree of
truth there undoubtedly is in this. But making all allowance for
it--making all and over allowance for the trick which is passed upon our
senses, there still remained a feeling unresolved. The poem was not
solely the apotheosis of a rascal in whom we were betrayed into taking
an interest; and it was not a satire merely on the world, and on the men
whom the world delight to honour. There 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 this 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,
mo