176 mnQB Of tbe Ibutitina^jflelb 



was a famous and fearless Alpine climber. But I can 

 hardly believe that when he abandoned that perilous 

 pastime a// sympathy with sport evaporated from him. 

 And, therefore, I am the more perplexed at the omission 

 of Charles James Apperley and Henry Hall Dixon 

 from a work of which in other respects it would be 

 impossible to speak too highly. It is true that, under 

 Mr Sidney Lee's editorship, the later volumes have not 

 been closed to the celebrated representatives of sport in 

 various branches. But how George Borrow, for example, 

 would have marvelled to see the names of pugilists like 

 Tom Paddock and the * Tipton Slasher ' figuring in a 

 Dictionary of Biography, 'which contains no reference to the 

 immortal Jem Belcher, 'The Napoleon of the Prize Ring!' 

 But enough, liberavi animam 7?ieain, and there's an end 

 of it. I will now to the more congenial task of showing 

 how worthy of a place in any bead-roll of English 

 notabilities are the two writers whose names have 

 been omitted from the Dictionary of National Biography. 



Charles James Apperley, known to all students of the 

 literature of sport by his pseudonym of ' Nimrod,' was 

 the second son of Thomas Apperley, who came of a good 

 old Hertfordshire family, though he had early pitched his 

 tent at Plasgronow in Denbighshire, where the future 

 journalist was born in 1778. 



Of his father, ' Nimrod ' says that he was the author of 

 a volume of ' Moral Essays,' ' he corresponded with Dr 

 Johnson, read Greek before breakfast, and being himself 

 a scholar, he fondly hoped he should have made one of 

 me, but in the weakness of his affection being unable to 

 say " No," he suffered me to follow foxhounds in a red 

 coat and cap, like Puss-in-Boots, before I was twelve 

 years old.' 



