Chapter Bead-house to Bear of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

squeezed it against his breast. This, of course, made matters worse, for the boiling water scalded him terribly, and he growled in agony till some neighbours put an end to his life with their guns.
   A bear sucking his paws. It is said that when a bear is deprived of food, it sustains life by sucking its paws. The same is said of the English badger. Applied to industrious idleness.
   As savage as a bear with a sore (or scalt) head. Unreasonably ill-tempered.
   As a bear has no tail, for a lion he'll fail. The same as Ne sutor supra crepidam, “let not the cobbler aspire above his last.” Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, being a descendant of the Warwick family, changed his own crest, which was “a green lion with two tails,” for the Warwick crest, a “bear and ragged staff.” When made governor of the Low Countries, he was suspected of aiming at absolute supremacy, or the desire of being the monarch of his fellows, as the lion is monarch among beasts. Some wit wrote under his crest the Latin verse, “Ursa caret cauda non queat esse leo.”

“Your bear for lion needs must fail,
Because your true bears have no tail.”

   To take the bear by the tooth. To put your head into the lion's mouth; needlessly to run into danger.
   You dare as soon take a bear by his tooth. You would no more attempt such a thing, than attempt to take a bear by its tooth.