tRev\ TKHtlliam :JBarfecr Daniel 109 



best, or worst, of the laity. I am not sure that the 

 parson who could hold his own at all these pastimes 

 with the doughtiest was not regarded with more 

 reverence and respect than he could have commanded 

 by the most blameless and saintly life. 



In that wonderfully graphic picture of the fox-hunters' 

 orgies which James Thomson gives in " The Seasons," 

 the hero of those drunken revels, when all the rest are 

 stretched upon the floor " drench' d in potent sleep till 

 morn," is the sporting parson : 



Perhaps some Doctor of tremendous paunch, 

 Awful and deep, a black abyss of drink, 

 Outlives them all: and from his buried flock 

 Retiring, full of rumination sad, 

 Laments the weakness of these later times. 



Not a creditable triumph, you will say. Well, perhaps 

 not ; but still, in an age when manliness was measured 

 by the standard of capacity for liquor, the man, cleric 

 or lay, who could put away more than his fellows 

 without losing his reason was a man looked up to 

 with respect, not to say reverence ; and Thomson's 

 reverend doctor may have utilised the influence 

 thus gained to work out some good purposes of his 

 own. Who knows ? Let us, at any rate, give him the 

 benefit of the suggestion. 



For my own part, I confess that I find it difficult 

 to feel any tolerance for sporting parsons of the type 

 of Bate Dudley, the fighting editor of the Morning Post, 

 though he was a baronet to boot ; or Parson Ambrose, 

 the rector of Bletchley, who never missed a prize-fight ; 

 or the notorious " Billy Butler," rector of Frampton, in 



