PREFACE. 25 



authorized in tlie law of his creation to subdue the beasts of 

 tlie field, so to tyrannize over them is plainly brutisli." 



Ou Noah, and in him on all mankind Cowper's Task, 



15. VI. 

 The charter was conferr'd, by wliicli we hold 



The flesh of animals in fee, and claim 



O'er all we feed on pow'r of life and death. 



But read the instrument, and mark it well : 



Th* oppression of a tyrannous controul 



Can find no warrant there. Feed then, and yield 



Tlianks for thy food. Carnivorous, through sin, 



Feed on the slain, but spare the living brute. 



When field amusements are allowed to engross the whole of 

 om' attention, and in their pursuit to enslave, as it were, the 

 mind to the body ; when they become the sgya of life instead of 

 the 'TTocpspya, its daily occupation, instead of the occasional 

 recreation of its leisure hours ; * they constitute, as Ritters- 

 husius has well observed, a culpable 5rjgOjtAav/a, and certainly 

 tend, by devoting the attention exclusively to inferior objects, 

 to abridge the intellect of that sustenance which it should 

 occasionally derive from more refined and important studies. 

 " Fateor insitam esse nobis corporis nostri caritatem : fateor Seneca; Epist. 



XIV. 



nos hujus gerere tutelam: non nego indulgendum illi, servi- 

 endum nego." 



With such ultra-sportsmen the translator has no commu- 

 nity of sentiment : nor will they experience from common 

 sense less severity of reproof than '' Reason" bestows on 



Petrarcha; Re- 



them in the dialogue with " Joy" in Petrarch's ** Remedia med. Utriusque 



Fortune, Lib.i. 

 ^^^ Dial. 32. 



1. " In using either of these games observe that moderation," says King James to haaiXiKhv AcD- 

 Prince Henry, " that ye slip not therewith the houres appointed for your affaires, P'"'i ^- '"• 

 which ye ought ever precisely to keepe ; remembering that these games are but or- 

 dained for you, in enabling you for your office, for the which ye are ordained," &c. 



