Ube IRev. Jobn IRussell 327 



But he can hardly be said to have set a very edifying 

 example to his flock. 



' Jack ' Russell, however, was of a different sort — an 

 altogether lovable man, who set his flock an admir- 

 able example of the cardinal Christian virtues. I only 

 had the pleasure of meeting him once, and that was at 

 the house of the late Mr Edmund Tattersall, but I 

 retain a lively recollection of his kindliness, courtesy, 

 and manliness. He struck me as being a fine specimen 

 of the English clergyman and gentleman. 



The love of sport with ' Jack ' Russell was an inherited 

 passion. His father, the Rector of Iddesleigh, in Devon, 

 where Jack was born on the 2ist of December 1795, 

 was a keen sportsman, and kept a small pack of hounds, 

 to support the expenses of which he took pupils, who 

 imbibed from their tutor both scholarship and sports- 

 manship. Jack was sent to school at Plympton, and 

 thence to Blundell's school at Tiverton, a noted seminary, 

 familiar to all readers of ' Lorna Doone,' of which Dr 

 Richards was head-master. When he was but sixteen, 

 this precocious young Nimrod, in company with a chum 

 named Bob Bovey, conceived the daring and brilliant 

 idea of keeping a pack of hounds. They managed to 

 muster a scratch lot of four-and-a-half couple, which 

 they kept at a sporting blacksmith's on the outskirts of 

 Tiverton. Is there any other instance on record, I 

 wonder, of a sixteen-year-old Master of Hounds ? 



This flagrant breach of school discipline reached the 

 ears of Dr Richards, who promptly expelled Bovey, but 

 Russell saved his bacon by winning an exhibition of 

 ;^30, tenable for four years at Oxford. 



At Oxford, Russell, like most young men of his day, 

 combined the mininmvi of work with the viaximum of 



