i6 MEMOIR OF 



Cicero has said that without the divine 

 afflatus no one has ever become a distinguished 

 man ; and it has been long accepted, but by 

 whose authority I beheve is unknown, that a 

 poet must be born a poet, or he can never 

 become one either by education or art. So the 

 talent required by a huntsman must be inborn 

 — the gift of Nature alone — or the very founda- 

 tion on which he builds, no matter how^ he 

 may labour, or what experience he may have, 

 will be defective and unreliable to the end. 



Endowed, then, by Nature with the first and 

 most essential element required in a huntsman, 

 Russell, as might be expected, lost no chance 

 of improving the gift, and gaining by experience 

 a sound practical knowledge of the infinite 

 mysteries pertaining to the " noble science." 



If, however, the University, otherwise so 

 liberal with respect to its pupils, had omitted 

 the duty of providing instruction in that de- 

 partment, Russell, at least, found no lack of 

 first-class professors in the surrounding neigh- 

 bourhood. Philip Payne and Will Long were 

 at Heythrop, huntsman and first whip to his 

 Grace the sixth Duke of Beaufort, who, in 

 addition to his "home country," hunted the 

 Oxfordshire hills in those days with his grand 

 badger-pies ; while at Bicester, Stephen Goodall, 

 and Tom Wingfield, under Sir Thomas Mostyn, 

 possessed a knowledge of woodcraft second to 



