2i8 The Poets Beasts. 



boar, should have the eyes put out, and sometimes the 

 penalty appears to have been a painful death. It appears," 

 continues Bell, " that Charles I. turned out some wild swine 

 in the New Forest for the purpose of restoring the breed to 

 that royal hunting-ground, but they were all of them de- 

 stroyed during the civil war. A similar attempt was made 

 in Bere Wood in Dorsetshire, but one of the boars having 

 injured a valuable horse belonging to the wealthy Nimrod 

 who exhibited this specimen of sporting epicurism, he 

 caused them to be destroyed." 



The wild boar probably became extinct in Britain before 

 the reign of Charles I. ; while in Ireland it was abundant as 

 late as the seventeenth century. 



Spenser's touches and descriptions are from the life, no 

 doubt. He must have seen Leicester, Essex, Sidney, 

 Raleigh, and others go out hunting, perhaps went with 

 them, and on his estate (some 3000 acres, with a rental of 

 ;^i7) in Ireland must have been familiar enough with the 

 wild boar as a tenant. 



Somerville, therefore, wrote too late to speak of the animal 

 — " churning his foam, and on his back erect his pointed 

 bristles rising" — except from hearsay, and "young Red- 

 mond" of Rokeby, that "gallant boy in hunter's green" 

 who 



" Loved to wake the felon boar 

 In his dark lair on Greta's shore," 



lived barely in time to save Sir Walter from an anachronism. 

 The genius of Shakespeare presents the fierce beast to the 

 life, " with frothy mouth bepainted all with red, like milk 

 and blood being mingled both together." The " blunt " 

 boar he calls it, "the foul, grim, urchin-snouted boar, whose 

 downward eyes still looketh for a grave." But Venus' 

 description is matchless. It hns all the majesty of Job's 

 poem on Ixviathan. 



