Note 190 — Chapter V
Reading edition
We have it on Coleridge's authority that "Lord Erskine, speaking of animals, hesitating to call them brutes, hit upon that happy phrase—'the mute creation.'" Would this were true! exclaims some invalid, nervously agonized by cats and dogs, cocks and hens, and listening with horror to their various cries and noises. But strictly speaking Lord Erskine was right,—for the animal world is mute as far as real language is concerned. Compare Max Müller on the "Bow-wow Theory." Lectures on Language, Series I. Lecture ix.