1 1 6 The Poets Beasts. 



Let all the thunders of the chase pursue, 

 Happy he . . , 



Who sees the villain seized and dying hard, 

 Without complaint, though by an hundred mouths 

 Relentless torn ! " 



Cowper is bad enough, but read Leyden. The fox is 

 supposed to have gone to earth, but a terrier turns him 

 out — 



" His guilt glares hideous when, in open day, 

 The villain stands revealed, with dumb dismay, 

 When guileful rapine's hoarded spoils are viewed, 

 And guilty caverns stained with guiltless blood. 

 None grieve when low the trembling felon lies, 

 Who unlamenting,^ unlamented dies ; 

 His limbs the hungry brood of ravens feed, 

 Abhorred alive, more loathsome still when dead." 



And all this about a fox ! The innocence of the poet as to 

 the procedure and incidents of "the thunders of the chase" 

 are as delightful as his animus is discreditable above all to 

 a poet. But Somerville is, perhaps, the most brutal of the 

 versifying fox-hunters, for he rejoices alike over the "greedy 

 transport " of a score of big hounds swallowing one small 

 fox, and over the killing of foxes in traps ! So that he not 

 only brutalises the sport which he professes to enjoy, but 

 sins against it in the worst manner a fox-hunter can. 



" Nor hounds alone the noxious brood destroy. 

 The plundered warrener full many a wile 

 Devises to entrap his greedy foe. 

 Fat with nocturnal spoils. At close of day 

 With silence drags his trail, then from the ground 

 Pares thin the close-grazed turf, and with nice hand 



^ On this point of the silence with which the fox handsomely meets 

 death, compare Scott's "he look a hundred mortal wounds as mute 

 as fox 'mongst mangling hounds," and Thomson's " dying hard, with- 

 out complaint, thougli by an hundred mouths relentless torn," 



