ANTESCRIPT

To the Sixtieth Thousand of' Rab and his Friends.'

My dear Publisher—and Friend, for I don't agree with Tom Campbell's grim joke about Napoleon and the bookseller,1—what business has this inquisitive simpleton with his tongue out, this cordial little ruffian,—what has he to do on the cover of Rab and his Friends'? Rightly he is one of Our Dogs,' and wasn't born for many a year after Rab was dead(ed). Nevertheless I like to see him looking out of the carriage-window at the general world of dogs and men. He was a queer fellow, a thoroughbred 'mustard' Dandie Dinmont of the old breed, big enough to tackle with an otter. His great-grandsire was the famous ‘Crib,' whom Sir Walter got from Davidson of Hyndlee (the original Dandie Dinmont), and gave to his Constable, as his son, my Constable (tam carum caput !) told me. 'Bob' was like King James 1st and V1th, and Oliver Goldsmith—an inspired idiot' -he could do little that other dogs did, and much that no other dog ever did,- —a sort of bornnatural. If Bob had known Rab, he would have respected him, but, being irritable and plucky, he might have run the risk of being throttled by that unceremonious old warrior-whose temper, like his tail, was of the shortest; and so I allow you your frontispiece under protest-denying the railevancy, as Dr. Chalmers would say.

1 At a booksellers' dinner Campbell proposed Napoleon's health, 'for he hanged a bookseller.

23 RUTLAND Street,

August 8, 1881.

MORE OF 'OUR DOGS.'

THE

'HE printer's devil-a very small and black and gentle one, whose name is Snowdon, whom I like to tease before he is off by giving him a small coin and then taking it and seeing how he looks, ending with making him haul it out of my fingers with his teeth, a great joke to us two-was asleep in the lobby, and I was trying to be pleased with the last sheet of Our Dogs, when the door opens and in trots a hairy little fellow, with all the gaiety and assurance proper to puppies, responsible and not. He, at one bound, for he is as springy as Jock, was on the table, and staring at me and then at the proof, with his head on one side, as much as to say, 'Oh! do put me in,-Cur non?' whisking off my spectacles with an ingenious jerk of his tail, which same tail I have no doubt he will soon be able to crack like a whip, so long, so plentiful, so handy it is already. Who could resist him? Recovering my spectacles and my understanding, for if not identical they are

with me co-existent, I sketch him as he is now asleep at the fireside.

Knowing the pangs of bereavement and under the dread of that ineluctabile fatum which compels dogs and men, we have often spoken of appointing an assistant and successor to Dick; but we were ill to please, and we felt a delicacy as to him, for he is as compact of love and jealousy as was the Moor, or the elder Peter or Fussy or Wasp-to whose memory and to whose Mistresses and Master I dedicate Our Dogs. One day lately, however, a friend sent in a young Skye puppy for our judgment. We kept him for a day to study him, and the upshot is that we keep him still. He was so funny, so confidential, so plucky, his nose and the roof of his mouth were so black and comely, his genius for oddity, for unexpectedness so decided, his tail so glorious, that we could not let him go; and then, best of all, Dick tolerated him, adopted him, allowed him to take liberties with his tail that no mortal dog had ever before dared to do unbitten. Not that Dick played with him, or showed any approach to hilarity or acute interest, but he permitted himself and his dignity and his tail to be interfered with by this inveterate imp in a way that made the question of succession clear. You'll observe that I give him no name; this was our distress-no name would fit him. You know doubtless what one comes through in selecting a

name for a dog; it is infinitely worse than doing the same by a child; if it is your seventeenth, you can fall back upon Scripture, or the Anglo-Saxons, or the cardinal virtues; but with a dog there must be what Goethe calls an elective affinity between the dog and the name. Well, we tried him for a week in vain with all sorts of compact and cordial words, till one evening after dinner, when we were sleepy and the room darkening, this young and genial ruffian was seen perched in the arm-chair. 'Peter!' we all

exclaimed, and Peter he is not any particular Peter, but Peter absolute. I don't know him well enough yet to speak definitely, but I incline to think well of him, he is an original, and stands on his own bottom. Dogs, like men, have generally some dominant quality; thus Toby was eminently wide-awake, though he was much else; Wylie, in the same way, was more eident than any one other thing; Wasp more impassioned; Jock more daft; Crab more deep-a very deep dog was Crab; John Pym more full o' fechtin ; Puck more of a simpleton; Rab more huge (in head, in heart, and in affliction); and Dick, like another Richard, more judicious; but Peter is, in his essence and in every action-especially of his tail-which he waves aloft like a feather or banner-ludicrous, he can't help it, he does not mean it, he is it; he is like the great actor Liston, his mere look makes you laugh; not that you laugh at him, or in any way