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172 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
orderly rankes about the torn be. The men that serve
us doe it better cheape, and for a lesse curious and
favourable entreating than we use unto birds, unto
horses, and unto dogges. What carke and toile apply
we not ourselves unto for their sakes ? Me thinks the
vilest and basest servants will never doe that so willingly
for their masters which princes are glad to doe
for their beasts. Diogenes, seeing his kinsfolks to take
care how they might redeeme him out of thraldome ;
r they are fooles,' said he, ' for it is my master that
governeth, keepeth, feedeth, and serveth me:' and
such as keepe or entertaine beasts may rather say they
serve them than that they are served of them. And
yet they have that naturall greater magnanimity, that
never lyon was seen to subject himselfe unto another
lyon, nor one horse unto another horse, for want of
heart. As wee hunt after beasts, so tygers and lyons
hunt after men, and have a like exercise one upon
another : hounds over the hare ; the pike or luce over
the tench; the swallowes over the grasse-hoppers, and
the sparrow-hawkes over blacke-birds and larkes.
serpente ciconia pullos
Nutrity et inventa per devia rura lacei ta,
Et leporem aut capream famulce Iovis, et generosm
In saltu venantur aves. 1
The storke her young-ones feeds with serpents prey,
And lyzarts found somewhere out of the way.
Joves servants—Eagles, hawkes of nobler kinde,
In forrests hunt, a hare or kid to finde.
We share the fruits of our prey with our dogges and
hawkes, as a meed of their paine and reward of their
industry. As about Amphipolis, in Thrace, faulkners
and wilde hawks divide their game equally: and as
about the Mseotid fennes, if fishers doe not very honestly
leave behind them an even share of their fishings for
the woolves that range about those coasts, they presently
run and teare their nets. And as we have a
kinde of fishingrather managed by sleight than strength,
1 Juv. Sat. xiv. 74,