13 



THE HUNTING-FIELD. 



It is all very well in a pastoral poem to use a 

 kind of clap-trap for tlie applause of a certain 

 grade, to carp at the noble as requiring 



" Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 

 Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds." 



Our poet quite overlooked the number of persons 

 employed, and the money circulated by the pur- 

 suits requiring the space he grudges the noble 

 possessor. 



What he says of their usurping the space that 

 "many poor supplied/' is sheer nonsense; such 

 Utopian ideas alone would have been sufficient to 

 prove him what he was, a very pretty poet and a 

 very weak man. 



" A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 

 When every rood of ground maintain'd its man." 



A very catching couplet to those who can 

 believe such a state of things practicable or pos- 

 sible. Poets certainly have a licence, and the 

 poet in question has used it most freely, for when 

 England's griefs began is rather an indefinite period 

 to hit upon, and when every rood of ground main- 

 tained its man is a state of things that never did 

 exist, will exist, or could exist. 



As one of these domains, where there is space 

 for all those appurtenances to a nobleman that 

 are so reproachfully alluded to by the poet, and 



