THE FATHER OF MODERN HUNTING 



One can imagine the jolly squire sallying forth soon 

 after dawn some three mornings a week in winter — they 

 hunted very early in those days — and making his way 

 with a whipper-in and his ten or twelve couple of 

 hounds to some trysting-place, where a sprinkling of 

 neighbouring landowners, a few hearty yeomen and 

 farmers, and perchance a doctor and parson or two, 

 rode to meet him. One sees him with his fair, fresh 

 face, florid (too florid, one fears) in his later years, 

 long, but straight and well-formed nose, and pleasant, 

 sensitive mouth, clad in hunting-cap, long-waisted 

 coat, leather breeches, and boots fastened over the 

 knee by the excellent, old-fashioned boot-garter, which 

 in the last dozen or so of years has come into vogue 

 again. It would almost seem, from his descriptions, 

 that he hunted with the winding French horn, and not 

 with the short, straight horn, which has long since 

 ousted the old and cumbrous instrument of the chase. 

 This point, however, is not quite clear. It is bad 

 enough to fall upon a straight hunting-horn, but falls 

 sustained while carrying the great curved horn of our 

 forefathers must have broken many a rib. In spring, so 

 soon as he had finished fox and hare-hunting, the 

 poet took up the chase of the otter, and with his big, 

 rough hounds whiled away many a pleasant summer's 

 morning. 



Somervile, even in his Oxford days, seems to have 

 been always a bit of a litterateur^ as well as a keen and 

 bold sportsman. He was, undoubtedly, an excellent 

 classical scholar, and the fact that he translated Vol- 

 taire's Alzira indicates that he had a taste also for 

 modern languages. He published, among other efforts, 

 an ode "Occasioned by the Duke of Marlborough's 

 embarking for Ostend," in 1712. And he dedicated 

 various poems to Addison, Pope, Thomson (of The 

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