:\rE. JOHN MYTTON. 61 



enabled him to shine as a senator and a scholar. He read with 

 unusual rapidity and evidently retained what he read ; for his 

 literary acquisitions were surprising, considering the life of tumult 

 and restlessness he had led. He had always a quotation at hand 

 from a Greek or Latin author, and there was a conscious feeling of 

 ability about him which he was rather apt to display. His off-hand 

 addresses to his constituents during his first contest for Shrewsbury 

 in 1819, were particularly neat, appropriate and spirited, though 

 they were composed on the spur of the moment and sent to the 

 press before the ink with which they were written was dry. As to 

 his politics it is difficult to express an opinion, as he never uttered a 

 word on the subject. It was, however, rather a mad thing for him to 

 spend, as he actually did, £'10,000 to obtain a seat in Parliament, in 

 which he is said to have sat but half-an-hour, and for the duties of 

 which he was and must have known himself to be wholly unfitted. 

 Without appearing to care about it, Air. Mytton was the best farmer 

 in his part of the country, where he tilled between three and fom* 

 hundred acres of land ; indeed, at one of the Shropshire agricultural 

 meetings he gained every prize for clean crops save one, a field of 

 barley, his claim for which was rejected from a cause highly typical 

 of the man — it was found to contain tvild oats. 



But we have given a sufficient number of anecdotes in illustration 

 of John Alytton's eccentricity, we might almost say madness, for the 

 most lenient view to take of his character is that he was insane and 

 not responsible for his actions. We will conclude with a brief resume 

 of his career as a sportsman. He commenced hunting the Shrop- 

 shire and Shifnal (now called the Albrighton) countries five days 

 a-week in 1817, and continued to do so until the close of the season 

 of 1821 inclusive; making five seasons in all. He appears to have 

 been as eccentric in his hunting arrangements as in others, fre- 

 quently having out horses not fit to run, and allowing his packs to 

 become a queer mixture of foxhounds, harriers or staghounds. As 

 a horseman, however, he had not many equals, and could ride over a 

 course as well as a country, whilst, making allowance for the 

 seemingly impracticable fences he would ride at, he got but few falls. 

 As a specimen of his prowess we may mention that when returning 

 home from hunting one day with his friend, " Nimrod," he, on his 

 horse. Baronet, in cold blood, leaped a brook which considerably 

 exceeded nine yards in width ; and on another occasion he cleared 

 a gate seven feet high. As a shot, both with gun and rifle, he had 

 probably no superior, some of his feats with the latter, indeed, are 

 so marvellous as to be almost, if not quite, incredible. As a game 

 shot he had plenty of scope for his talents. The average annual 

 slaughter at Halston was twelve hundred brace of pheasants, 

 partridges unlimited and numberless, and from fifteen hundred to 

 two thousand hares. The pheasants in the preserves were as thick 

 as sparrows at the barn-door, and the hares were running about like 

 rabbits. Mr. Mytton always made a point of killing fifty brace of 



