viii preface 



to the Badminton volumes on " Big Game Shooting " 

 are as fascinating reading as any sportsman could 

 desire. Then again, Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, Lord 

 Walsingham, Earl de Grey, and Mr. A. J. Stuart- 

 Wortley are knights of the trigger whose prowess 

 may bear comparison with that of Colonel Hawker, 

 Captain Ross, or Lord Kennedy ; whilst in the domain 

 of angling Mr. Cholmondeley-Pennell (poet and crack- 

 shot to boot), Major Traherne, Mr. R. B. Marston, 

 Mr. Christopher Davies, and many other expert 

 fishermen of to-day can make good their claim against 

 the best of their predecessors to be regarded as 

 " Kings of the Rod." 



" Kings," be it understood, according to Thomas 

 Carlyle's definition of the word, " Konning, *'.*., can-mng 

 Able-man." The latest philologists, I believe, scout 

 that definition ; but let it stand : it was good enough 

 for the sage of Chelsea, and it will serve for me, 

 especially as it makes the title undeniably applicable 

 to all and sundry in these pages. For in this sense 

 the Shoemaker of St. Boswell's is as much a King 

 as the Lord of Holkham. 



Artists and men of letters, poets, painters, philo- 

 sophers, sculptors, chemists are all to be found in the 

 Valhalla of sportsmen, and the field-sports which 

 Britons love gain additional lustre and dignity from 

 the fact that men of genius have found them objects 

 worthy of enthusiastic pursuit 



