PREFACE. 



Gloss. 



Greek and Latin Cynegetica ; for tliough it be true that the 

 barbarian codes of hivv, the Salic, Burg-undian, and German, Spelman.G 



' ' o ' ' pp. 113. et 



extended their protection to our variety of Canis Venaticus, ^^lojs^in voclf ^ 



about the year 500, under the title of Veltris and its synonyms ; 



and some of the Cynegetical writers appear to have been well 



known in the dark ages, and so highly valued in the eighth 



century, as to be read among the higher Greek and Roman 



classics, in the time of Charlemagne ; and we believe coursing 



and other sports were as attractive in the field, as the writers 



upon such subjects were in the schools, (for the court of this 



pnnce had its Veltrani, oincers oi the greyhound-kennel, qui voce. 



veltres custodiebant,") still, instead of any formal treatise of 



this date upon the pastime of the leash, we find for several 



centuries, only incidental allusions to the greyhound, and his 



high repute, principally as distinctive of the gentiUty of his 



possessor, until the publication of *' The Booke of Hawkyng, 



Huntyng, 8cc." by Dame Juliana Berners, in the fifteenth 



century. 



The didactic discourse of hunting, contained in this volume, 



Haslewood's 



commonly known by its territorial appellation of " The Book Prolegomena to 



•^ -^ ^^ BookofSt. Al- 



of St. Albans," may be an amplified versification of the prosaic ^^^^s. 

 *' Venery of Mayster John GyfFord and Will™ Twety, that 

 were with Kyng Edward the Secunde ;" or possibly a compila- 

 tion and translation by the sister of Lord Berners, or the " one 

 sumtyme schole mayster of Seynt Albons " from earlier Latin Warton's Hist. 



of Engl. Poetry, 



and French writers : but such authorities are as yet, I believe, ^'''- "• P- ^'^^■ 

 unknown to Antiquaries. Excepting, therefore, the few lines, 

 before alluded to, in the latest of the Latin Cynegetica, and 

 the earlier portrait of Oppian, which I consider referable to the 



