62 NIMROD'S HUNTING TOUR 



no part of the lesson. Thus, I am told, some of Rotfey's answers 

 and remarks are uncommonly good. Being sent one day with his 

 hounds into the wildest and most remote parts of Surrey, where the 

 Colonel took good care not to go himself, he asked him, when he 

 returned, how he liked the country? "Why, Sir," said Eoftey, 

 " they just Imows when Ws day-liglit, and that's all." Now had 

 Aristotle been asked to define the first link in the chain between 

 barbarian ignorance and a faint dawn of knowledge, could he have 

 done it better ? 



I must now return to the hounds. As the Poet says— 



*' Number and rhyme, and tliat harmonious sound 

 Which never does the ear with harshness wound, 

 Are necessaxy, though but vulgar arts : " 



and there is a sort of prosody to be observed even in a kennel. 

 Names which caress the ear, and words of emphatic meaning, should 

 be chosen in the first place ; and, in the next, the cadence and 

 quantity of them should be considered. A spondee, for instance, as 

 Trojan; a trochee, as Stormer; or a dactyle, as Lucifer, can only 

 be allowed with propriety. I was told that Colonel Jolliffe was 

 particular, and happy, in his choice of his hounds' names ; and on 

 looking at his list, I think them very good, with the exception of 

 Belinda, which will not do at all. Thalia or Granicus w^ould sound 

 very well for hounds' names if the i could be pronounced short 

 instead of long. Mr. Chute has a bitch called Penelly, which is still 

 worse. We might as well call one Aurora. 



The Colonel had a famous hound in his kennel, from which he has 

 bred much, called Chatterer/'- This name is new to me ; but there 

 is no objection to it, provided the hound do not sympathize with the 

 meaning of it. The Colonel seems also partial to the names of 

 towns and cities. He has Appleby, Coventry, Lancaster, Lough- 



* I observed two remarkably clever hounds. Conqueror and Corridor 

 (second season), by him out of Belinda — one of the best-bred bitches in 

 England. Chatterer was by Mr. Leigh's Chanticleer out of Dainty ; Chanticleer, 

 by Lord Vernon's Biirster out of Careless ; Dainty, by Mr. Corbet's Fearnought 

 out of Mr. Jolliife's Damsel ; Fearnought, by Lord Fitzwilliam's Admiral out of 

 Sir Kichard Puleston's Famous ; Famous, by Sir Richard's Dromo out of his 

 Fashion. In the entry of puppies this season, I observed two couple and a half 

 by Chatterer. 



