BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 295 



pected at the hands of his descendants. My intimacy with the 

 son of one of this great man's most intimate and valued friends, 

 C Loraine Smith, Esq. — himself of no little celebrity in his 

 day — has enabled me, through that assistance, to lay before my 

 readers some few points connected with his history, which, not 

 having yet been published, may be interesting to those who 

 are disposed, with myself, to regard with reverence all associa- 

 tions of the times to which they refer. 



It is to the present Mr. Loraine Smith that I am indebted 

 for the sketch of the chief, which has supplied the frontis- 

 piece to this volume, in the act of a colloquy with his hunts- 

 man, Jack Raven, upon the merits of a hound called Glider 

 (also introduced in the picture), in the year 1794, by the pencil 

 of his father, of whom he has also afforded me a likeness. 

 The name of Loraine Smith has been so blended, in the course 

 of my researches, with all that I have been able to collect of 

 Meynell, that I have thought it advisable to offer the present- 

 ment of both these heroes of the olden time, conjointly, as 

 brethren of the same school, with the following particulars.* 



Mr, Meynell had, at no time, more than three or four sub- 

 scribers to his hounds, and at first only two — Lord K. Cavendish 

 and Mr. Boothby. With Prince Boothby he lived for some 

 time at Langton Hall, and the hounds in those days were kept 

 at Great Bowden Inn, a most convenient place for the Langton 

 and Harborough countries. Mr, Me3'nell considered horses 

 merely as vehicles to the hounds — in which his heart and soul 

 were centred — in the field ; but he well knew the necessity of 

 having beneath him the means of being with them upon all 

 occasions ; and, even in those days, when three hundred guineas 

 were considered as an ultra price for a hunter, he did not hesi- 

 tate to possess himself of South,f a little horse, barely exceed- 



* These remarks were written in 1839. 



t Mr. Meynell sold this famous horse, South, for 500 guineas, to Sir 

 Harry Fetherstonhaugb, who subsequently exchanged him with Lord 

 Maynard for the celebrated race-horse, Surprise— another instance of the 

 value of some hunters of those days. Surprise, a gray horse, by Gini- 

 crack out of Snapdragon, when the property of Lord Grosvenor, won the 



