18 -HOUNDS, GENTLEMEN, PLEASE! " 



us by burning words to further deeds of " derring do." 

 Sings Kingsley in immortal verse : — 



" They're running ; they're running, go hark ! 

 One fence, and we're out of the park. 

 Sit down in your saddles and race at the brook, 

 Then smash at the bullfinch — no time for a look. 

 Leave cravens and shirkers to dangle behind ; 

 He's away for the moors in the teeth of the wind, 

 And they're running, they're running, go hark ! " 



In his prose descriptions of hunting, some of which 

 are as near poetry as prose can be, Kingsley never 

 lets himself go in this fashion, but describes the sport 

 from a sportsman's view. So with Whyte-Melville, 

 who in Tilbury Nogo, Market Harhorough, and many 

 other works, gives us the truest bits of genuine hunting 

 picturesquely described that have ever been written ; 

 but when he launches into verse, it is the excitement 

 of the opening moments of a quick thing that his 

 glowing muse has seized upon to celebrate in couplets 

 that ring again " where'er the English tongue is 

 spoken." Here is a verse: — 



"We threw off at the castle, we found in the holt, 

 Like wildfire the beauties went streaming away ; 

 From the rest of the field he came out like a bolt. 

 And he tackled to work like a schoolboy at play." 



And here is the "find" in "The Galloping Squire": — 



" One wave of his arm, to the covert they throng. 



' Yoi 1 wind him ! and rouse him I By Jove he's away ! ' 

 Through a gap in the oaks see them speeding along. 



O'er the open like pigeons : ' They mean it to-day ! ' 

 You may jump till you're sick, you may spur till you tire ! 



For it's ' Catch 'em who can 1 ' says the Galloping Squire." 



