CHAPTER XIV 



SOME NOTED FOXHOUNDS 



" Now he pauses a while, till he's roused by the sound 

 Of the sonorous horn, and the near opening hound ; 

 Down his cheeks the big dewdrops of sorrow fast flow ; 

 As increases the clamour, increases his woe." 



The furore for hound-breeding set in during the 

 first twenty years of the eighteenth century, and 

 in fifty years more the greatest nobles and land- 

 owners were so intent on it that it became 

 more than a mere whim or hobby — a prominent 

 concern in life. Before fox-hunting came into 

 vogue in England all hunting was stag-hunting 

 on forest or moor ; the same fashion was here in 

 vogue as in France and Germany. A hound had 

 to be bred suitable for the English method of 

 fox-hunting, and the first hero of hound-worship 

 talked of in the Midlands about 1783 was Trojan. 

 Mr. J. Corbet of Sundorne, Shropshire, owned 

 him. He was a specially brilliant hound by the 

 Duke of Grafton's Tomboy ; his dam, a bitch 

 whose pedigree was not traced. Sportsmen, I 

 may add, travelled miles to see him. He led the 

 pack always, we are told. On one occasion he 



jumped a wall and killed the fox single-handed. 



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