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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1660-1785] Enlightenment: » Percival Stockdale

Percival Stockdale

An Elegy on the Death of Dr. Johnson's Favorite Cat

[1764] Percival Stockdale, "An Elegy on the Death of Dr. Johnson's Favorite Cat," in vol. 2 of The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale (London, 1810;Online at the University of Virginia Library) 255-7).

Let not the honest muse disdain
For Hodge to wake the plaintive strain.
Shall poets prostitute their lays
In offering venal statesmen praise;
By them shall flowers Parnassian bloom
Around the tyrant's gaudy tomb;
And shall not Hodge's memory claim
Of innocence the candid fame;

Shall not his worth a poem fill,
Who never thought, nor uttered ill;
Who, by his master, when caressed,
Warmly his gratitude expressed;
And never failed his thanks to purr
Whene'er he stroaked his sable furr?

The general conduct if we trace
Of our articulating race,
Hodge's example we shall find
A keen reproof to human kind.

He lived in town, yet ne'er got drunk,
Nor spent one farthing on a punk;
He never filched a single groat,
Nor bilked a taylor of a coat;
His garb when first he drew his breath,
His dress through life, his shroud in death.

Of human speech to have the power,
To move on two legs, not on four;
To view with unobstructed eye
The verdant field, the azure sky

Favoured by luxury, to wear
The velvet down, the golden glare—
If honour from these gifts we claim,
Chartres had too severe a fame.

But wouldst thou, son of Adam, learn
Praise from thy noblest powers to earn;
Dost thou, with generous pride, aspire
Thy nature's glory to acquire?
Then in thy life exert the man,
With moral deeds adorn the span;
Let virtue in thy bosom lodge;
Or wish thou hadst been born a Hodge. (255-7)