BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HUNTING-FIELD 235 



which they have been endowed by the enemies of 

 sport. Mens sana in corpore sano is the primary 

 rule of Hfe with all sporting authors who have won 

 any renown. They have not been carpet-slippered 

 men standing in their studies over tobacco smoke, 

 but men who have gained practical experience in the 

 hunting field. That men holding such high positions 

 in society as the late Duke of Beaufort and the 

 Earl of Suffolk should have deemed it an accession 

 to their dignity to join the ranks of sporting litera- 

 ture, that men to whom money was no object should 

 have employed their leisure time in writing about 

 their favourite pursuit, and that men to whom money 

 was an object should have found hunting literature 

 to be both a congenial and a profitable pursuit, as is 

 witnessed by the large number of editions of their 

 works, proves beyond all doubt that fox-hunting 

 still holds a firm grasp on the affections of the 

 English reading public, in spite of the evil prognosti- 

 cations of those faddists, to whom any outdoor 

 healthy exercise is a bugbear. But the popularity 

 of hunting literature is not only due to the love of 

 fox-hunting. With few exceptions the books which 

 I have mentioned betray signs of classical scholar- 

 ship, which we rarely find in the bibliography of any 

 other subject. The novels of Major Whyte-Melville 

 have been read by thousands of people who have 

 never been on the back of a horse. The same is the 

 case with the novels of Mr. Surtees. In the case of 

 both authors cheap editions have been called for by 



