Birds and beasts of controversy

Use in the book

The birds appear early as scoffers with poisonous slander-arrows. The p. 22 marginal busybody is associated with the limed rod that traps birds, reversing the roles: an opponent can be prey or catcher. At p. 124 an uncracked nut and the critic's sharp beak dramatize an argument Khunrath says cannot be broken. The doubtful KJEsen is added in the same taunt; its identity should remain uncertain rather than become a confidently named species or person.

The test of the bird by its song at pp. 154–157234 gives the image a different, evidential use. A practitioner is to be judged by the nature-conformity of what he says or writes, not only by the transmutation he displays. The image still permits a right-singing bird; it is not always abuse. It thus belongs to the book's distinction between a spectacular result and an intelligible account of its grounds.

The most crowded animal sequence comes in the concluding attack. The scoffer is a mocking-bird and a Devil's magpie, although the latter English identification rests on an uncertain printed form. The rabble knows God's natural mysteries as well as a crow knows Sunday or a Swiss cow dancing. A featherless bird or gold-beetle arrives crying wealth, and the others tumble after him like a fly into buttermilk or a swine into a feeding dish. The figures move from incapacity to heedless appetite and capture. They ridicule susceptibility to new claims, particularly where greed has replaced reflection.

The author finally casts himself as the well-bred horse unmoved by a puppy's barking. He also says that Christian pity is more fitting than violent quarrelling with such people. The horse image is therefore a declared posture at the end of a tirade, not proof that the book has maintained equanimity throughout. Its self-conscious change of register should be heard alongside the insults that immediately precede it.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 10Mocking birds first accompany the argChymist’s slander-arrows
2. 1599 p. 124The sharp-beaked opponent is challenged to crack the argument’s nut
3. 1599 p. 157The bird’s song tests a practitioner’s account rather than merely his displayed result
4. 1599 p. 166The scoffer is addressed through a mocking-bird and uncertain magpie expression
5. 1599 p. 170The new gold-crier and his followers form a sequence of birds, insects and feeding beasts
6. 1599 p. 172The noble horse and barking puppy define the author’s professed response

Translation in this edition

Do not replace every animal with “fool,” which would erase changes in role and argument. The modern note infers “magpie” from Alister beside the mocking-bird; that is an editorial construal, not a secure reading of an ordinary word. Likewise the uncertain KJEsen at p. 124 is left without a biographical or zoological identification.