The Dog in the Manger
A mean-spirited dog denies to others what he has no appetite for himself.
Lucian of Samosata (?125-180+) left us the earliest known reference to the fable of the dog in the manger, when he told a barely literate bibliophile who never lent out his books that “you neither eat the corn yourself, nor give the horse a chance”. Here is how Roger L’Estrange told the tale in the days of Charles II.
original spelling
A CHURLISH Envious Cur was gotten into a Manger, and there lay Growling and Snarling to keep the Horses from their Provender. The Dog Eat None himself, and yet rather Ventur’d* the Starving his Own Carcase then* he would suffer any thing else to be the Better for ’t.
Envy pretends to No Other Happiness then what it derives from the Misery of Other People, and will rather Eat Nothing it self then not Starve Those that Would.
original spelling
* Risked.
* L’Estrange routinely put ‘then’ where we now put ‘than’.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.