THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



such exliibitious are useless. Men are more upon an equality 

 in lighting than they were in the early ages of the world. He 

 admitted, however, that the spirit-stirring descriptions of single 

 combats with the fist or the cestus — those between Pollux and 

 Amycus, so admirably told by Theocritus in his twenty-second 

 Idyllium, and between Dares and Entellus, in the fifth ^neid 

 of Virgil, especially — had induced him to be present at a 

 sparring- match between two celebrated boxers of his younger 

 days. " The attitude of these men," said he, " excited my 

 highest admiration ; that of one of them, in particular, remind- 

 ing me of Milton's description of the angel, whose 



' starry lielin unbuckled, show'd him prime 



In manhood.'^ 



The firm and erect posture of the body, the head drawn a 

 little back, the expanded chest, and the judicious position of 

 the brawny arms, certainly display the human form to the 

 greatest possible advantage ; and, in this particular instance, 

 I was favoured by a private display, by one of the performers, 

 of the grand and powerful expression of his muscles, together 

 with the agility and suppleness of his movements. Having 

 been instructed for the occasion, he successively placed himself 

 in the attitudes of the fighting and dying gladiators, of the 

 Hercules Farnese, and other antique statues, as well as in that 

 of the Atlas of Michael Angelo ; finishing by exhibitions of 

 strength and activity beyond what I considered to exist in the 

 human form. This man became the champion of England ; 

 and, like the invincible Pancratiast of ancient Greece, finally 

 retired to his native place, not only with honours well deserved 

 by his bravery and good conduct in the ring, but with a com- 

 petency sufficient to render his situation agreeable to him. 

 Unwilling to be idle, however, he became a teacher of gym- 

 nastic exercises, and was, in his own person, the best example 



^ What can be liner, or more true to the life, than Virgil's description, in the 

 fifth /Eneid, of Entellus stripping in the ring ? — 



' Hie fatus, duplicem ex humeris refecit amictum ; 

 Et magnos membrorum artus magna ossa lacertosque 

 Exuit ; atqiie ingens media consistit arenii.' 



The same may be said of the set-to between Hector and Ajax, in the fifth Hiad 

 of Homer, and of tlie wrestling-match in the twenty-third. 



23(J 



