194 CENTURY OF ENGLISH FOX-HUNTING 



indelicate admits of little doubt ; but though the 

 very refined critics were and are calling out about 

 the vulgarity, the slang, the smoke, the loudness of 

 such writings, yet they are always willing to 

 laugh. Mr. Surtees was a satirist and a humourist, 

 and was helped in the production of his works by 

 the first caricaturist of this or any other century, 

 viz. Mr. John Leech. No wonder that fresh editions 

 of these works are being called for by the reading 

 public every year ! 



It seems an anomaly that a man possessing such 

 a fund of humour "on paper" should have been 

 taciturn in private life. Yet Mr. Surtees was not 

 only a taciturn observer, but preferred solitude to 

 company in the numerous excursions which he made 

 about the country. We cannot obscure the fact, 

 however much we may admire the author, that 

 Mr. Surtees neither cared for society nor did society 

 care for him. Satirists are seldom popular, even 

 when they confine their satire within the limits pre- 

 scribed by the usages of drawing-room society ; but 

 Mr. Surtees went further. With the single exception 

 of Jorrocks, all his characters were depicted from 

 life, and there is an absence of gentlemanly qualities 

 in all of them. It was his object to expose the 

 vulgarities and trickery of the sporting world of 

 the period. No man ever hunted with Jorrocks, or 

 Sir Harry Scattercash, or Lord Scamperdale, Jack 

 Spraggon, Soapey Sponge, and Jawleyford of Jawley- 

 ford Court, with numerous other eccentricities im- 



