IMIEFACK. 17 



But there are those who anathematize huntini:; and coursing, 

 and other rural recreation, either as sinful, * or indicative of 

 barbarism and mental degradation, in the ratio of the pursuit. 

 Like Cornelius Agrippa, they view venation in genere as the ^^ Incert. et 

 worst occupation of the worst of mankind ; and say with lxxvh, 

 Philip Stubbes, that ** Esau was a great hunter, but a re- The Anatomie 



of Abuses. 



probat J Ismael, a great hunter, but a miscreant ; Nemrode, 

 a great hunter, but yet a reprobat, and a vessell of wrath ; " 

 and bid us, in the poetic badinage of the poet of Cyrene, leave 

 off coursing : 



fa ■Kp6Kas f)5« \wywovs Callimachus, H. 



oi/pea ^SffKfffdai- t( S4 ksu irpdKes iiSe \ayo}o\ '" Dian. vs. 154. 



lie^eiay ; 



swearing, with the melancholy Jaques, 



that we As You Like It. 



Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse, 

 To fright the animals, and to kill them up, 

 In their assign'd and native dwelling-place. 



But if " some habites and customes of delight" are allow- 

 able and indispensable to the " contentment" of the human 



1. The reader will be amused with Simon Latham's epilogue to the third edition 

 of his " Faulconry," wherein he combats (for he wrote in ticklish times, 1G58) with 

 his usual quaintness of style and illustration, the notion of the sinfulness of rural 

 sports : inferring that they may " be lawfully and conscientiously used with modera- 

 tion by a magistrate or minister, or lawyer or student, or any other seriously em- 

 ployed, which in any function heat their brains, waste their bodies, weaken their 

 strength, weary their spirits ; that as a means (and blessing from God) by it their 

 decayed strength may be restored, their vital and animal s|)iiits quickened, refreshed, 

 and revived, their health preserved, and they better enabled (as a bow unbended for 

 shooting) to the discharging of their weighty charges imposed upon them." 



