MEMOIR 



men have seen into this passion, therefore every 

 man knows all about it. 



It is otherwise with fox-hunting. In modern 

 communities hunters form a minority, chiefly drawn 

 from a class which does not habitually seek expres- 

 sion in verse ; wherefore prose predominates in the 

 literature of the chace {pace the didactic Somervile). 

 Nevertheless it happens once in a generation or so 

 that enthusiasm, experience, and the poetic faculty 

 are concentrated in a single fox-hunter ; and then 

 how many memories are stirred — how many hearts 

 are thrilled — by the verse that needs but be set in 

 the alembick of good music to be handed down from 

 sire to son ad mjinitum. 



It was by a happy dispensation that in the reign 

 of Queen Victoria, three or four bards, competently 

 gifted, rivalled each other in the grace and fire with 

 which they celebrated the charms of the chace ; for 

 it was midway in that reign that fox-hunting attained 

 perfection. Foreign competition had not stinted 

 the resources and strained the relations of squire and 

 farmer ; railways had facilitated access to the flying 

 shires without fulfilling C. J. Apperley's boding by 

 proving a death-blow to sport ; fences were as yet 

 free from the insidious peril of wire, and the death- 

 duties had not yet laid their blight on the country 

 homes of England. So John Woodcock Graves was 

 devoid of all gloomy apprehension for the future 

 welfare of his favourite sport when he matched " D'ye 

 ken John Peel?" to an old Cumberland "rant"; 

 so was Whyte-Melville when he brought us to 

 " The Place where the Old Horse died " ; Bromley 

 xvi 



