Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/184

 158 Turn where we may in this Augustan age, we see the same consoling picture,—from Sterne's cat purring by the fire, to Charles Lamb's faithful old Pussy decorated with green ribbons to fit her for her pastoral part in Edmonton. Lamb, as we know, admired Miss Grey's "kitten eyes," with their sweet pretence of innocence; and offered his own solution of a hitherto unanswered problem. "I made a pun the other day," he writes to Manning, "and palmed it upon Holcroft, who grinned like a Cheshire cat. (Why do cats grin in Cheshire?—Because it was once a county palatine, and the cats cannot help laughing whenever they think of it, though I see no great joke in it.)"

Even Christopher North, guilty as he appears in the matter of that brutal sport, cat-worrying, had a sincere and well-founded admiration for his own puss, who was a Nimrod among hunters, a Cœur de Lion among fighters, and an Autolycus among thieves. The genial depravity of this gifted cat, and his wonderful readiness of resource, delighted Wilson's soul. He it was who, having adroitly removed the pigeon from a well-built pie, stuffed up the hole with his master's ink-sponge, as matter better suited to the literary appetite. He it was whose clamorous battle-cry, ringing through the frosty night, summoned all the warriors of the wall to mortal combat, until Wilson's back green