THE AUTHORS GENERAL APOLOGY 273 



though ten packs of hounds were kept in the neigh- 

 bourhood. This gentleman, surely, must have been 

 much out of luck, or hunting cannot be so dangerous 

 as it is thought : besides, they are all timid animals 

 that we pursue ; nor is there any danger in attacking 

 them : they are not like the furious beast of the 

 Gevatidan, which, as a French author informs us, an 

 army of twenty thousand French chasseurs went out 

 in vain to kill. 



If my time in writing to you has not been so well 

 employed as it might have been, you at least will not 

 find that fault with it : nor shall I repent of having 

 employed it in this manner, unless it were more certain 

 than it is, that I should have employed it better. It is 

 true, these Letters are longer than I first intended 

 they should be : they would have been shorter, could 

 I have bestowed more time upon them. Some techni- 

 cal words have crept in imperceptibly, and with them, 

 some expressions better suited to the field than to the 

 closet : nor is it necessary, perhaps, that a sportsman, 

 when he is writing to a sportsman, should make excuses 

 for them. In some of my Letters you have found 

 great variety of matter : the variety of questions con- 

 tained in yours, made it sometimes unavoidable. I 

 know that there must be some tautology. It is scarcely 

 possible to remember all that has been said in former 

 Letters ; let that difficulty, if you please, excuse the 

 fault. I fear there may be some contradictions for the 

 same reason ; and there may be many exceptions. I 

 trust them all to your candour ; nor can they be in 

 better hands. I hope you will not find that I have at 



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