The Plague Dogs (Richard Adams) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

Richard Adams THE PLAGUE DOGS

To Elizabeth,

with whom I first discovered the Lake District

QUEEN: I will try the forces

Of these thy compounds on such creatures as

We count not worth the hanging, but none human…

CORNELIUS: Your Highness

Shall from this practice but make hard your heart.

—Shakespeare, Cymbeline

There is in this passage nothing that much requires a note, yet I cannot forbear to push it forward into observation. The thought would probably have been more amplified, had our author lived to be shocked with such experiments as have been published in later times, by a race of men that have practised tortures without pity, and related them without shame, and are yet suffered to erect their heads among human beings.

—Dr. Johnson