MAJOR WHYTE-MELVILLE. 



Amongst the men of letters who have figured in the 

 hunting-field and celebrated with their pens the glories 

 of the Chase, I think the highest place must be assigned 

 to Whyte-Melville. He never, indeed, wrote anything 

 comparable to that beautiful prose-poem, * My Winter 

 Garden,' in which Charles Kingsley has given us the 

 most glowing rhapsody ever penned on the Fox and his 

 Hunters. But then Kingsley, though he loved the 

 sport, was too conscientious a pastor to let it interfere 

 with his higher duties and therefore with noble self- 

 sacrifice renounced it, whilst Whyte-Melville was an 

 enthusiastic foxhunter all his life. Anthony Trollope, 

 again, was a keen hunting-man, but his knowledge of 

 the Chase was superficial and his descriptions are never 

 convincing, they are too palpably mere tours de force, 

 whereas Whyte-Melville writes of hunting like one to 

 the manner born. You feel that, as the Yankees say, he 

 ' has been there.' In humorous delineation of character 

 and in boisterous appreciation of the funny side of 

 hunting, the author of ' Digby Grand ' and * Market 

 Harborough ' cannot, of course, stand a moment's com- 

 parison with the creator of the immortal ' Jorrocks.' 

 But then Mr Surtees could not have written ' Holmby 

 House,' ' The Interpreter,' and ' The Gladiators.' There 

 is an aroma of distinction about Whyte-Melville's style 



