3i6 The Poets Beasts. 



influences them in their opinion of the animals which man 

 has taught to kill those quadrupeds ; but it really does 

 seem as if the poets' aversion to foxes, wolves, otters, 

 badgers, boars, and their indifference to rabbits and hares, 

 made them rather unfairly partial to their destroyers. In 

 the single case of the deer (for which they have a very 

 sincere admiration), there arose an obvious difficulty, which 

 the poets have audaciously met by exulting with the hounds, 

 and weeping with the deer. They " hang on the haunches " 

 of stags, while tears chase each other " down the innocent 

 noses " of their victims. 



Some poets of the chase, however, have very decided 

 opinions as to its morality generally. On the one side are, 

 as examples, Somerville and Gay, on the other Thomson 

 and Cowper. These, being altogether on the side of the 

 victims, hold with the hares. Those, affecting a prodigious 

 indignation against the robbers of hen-roosts and consumers 

 of sprouting wheat, hunt with the hounds. These exhaust 

 their satire and denunciation against the hunters. Those 

 against the hunted. And neither are just. 



Yet the just middle of sport is an easy one to hit, and 

 the significances of our national pastime are admirable 

 themes for the moralist and poet. It is not necessary for 

 poetical fidelity to be either cruel with the one or gush with 

 the other. It is not more remarkable that foxes should eat 

 geese than that geese should eat grass, nor more culpable ; 

 and for the men whom England has been most proud of, 

 they are rather those who have ridden straight to hounds 

 with Somerville, not those who went nutting with Thomson. 

 We can never have too many fox-hunting youths, but a very 

 few Cowpers are enough. For myself, all sport has a dark 

 side in the death of the victim. I eat the lamb with 

 equanimity, and " the pullet of tender years " without 

 mingling my tears with its sauce. But I regret the death 

 of the fox and the otter. My sympathy is with Nature, and 



