HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 19 



as well as a disquisition on the arts and sciences, so that we 

 may reasonably conclude that more than one hand went to its 

 composition. Still, despite Wood's objurgations, the book is 

 really both a curious and valuable one, in the department of 

 field-sports at any rate, whatever may have been Blome's precise 

 share in it. It contains, moreover, a number of plates, which 

 are not only good specimens of the engraving of the day, but 

 useful as showing the costume in which our fathers took the 

 field. On the whole it may be said of all our early works on 

 sport to be the one which gives the fullest and most practical 

 information on the subject. Markham is practical, tco, but he 

 occupies himself more with the breeding, training, and manage- 

 ment of horses and hounds, than with the actual pursuit of the 

 game, though he does not altogether neglect that. Blome is 

 naturally, moreover, less archaic in his language and style than 

 the elder writer, about whom still hangs that flavour of quaint- 

 ness which belonged to English prose down to the age of 

 Dryden. Hunting, for example, he defines as ' a curious search 

 or conquest of one beast over another, pursued by a naturall 

 instinct of enmitie, and accomplished by the diversities and 

 distinctions of smells onelie, wherein nature equallie deviding 

 her cunning giveth both to the offender and offended strange 

 knowledge both of offence and safety.' He writes of ' high- 

 way dogges,' hounds, that is to say, which will carry the scent 

 along a high road ; of 'dogges of nimble composure,' meaning 

 quick and well-made ; and of certain others being ' the most 

 principall best to compose your kennell off.' In Blome's book 

 of course we get much less of this style of writing, though 

 he, too, can amuse as well as instruct us ; by warning, for ex- 

 ample, those who go forth to hunt the hare, that it is ' a very 

 melancholy beast,' and therefore ' very fearful and crafty.' 



First in the next century comes that anonymous author of 

 that ' Essay on Hunting ' which Beckford's editor declares, as 

 we have seen, to have been the only book written on the subject 

 prior to the famous letters. It was published in 1773 and is 

 said by the same authority to be full of 'good sense and 



c 2 



