HUNTING THE FOX 133 



The Mace and the Speaker and House disappearing, 

 Tlie leather-clad bench is a thoroughbred horse, 

 'Tis the whimpering cry of the foxhound I'm hearing. 

 My " seat " is a pigskin at Ranksborough Gorse. 



How he heard the voices of his dead friends now 

 riding by his side, how he got a start, how he rode 

 his young horse over the Whissendine, how the 

 bitches raced into their Fox outside Woodwellhead 

 Covert, all this is told in fifteen throbbing stanzas, 

 the very best of their kind. There is an exquisite 

 sense of pace about the whole thing, and a gather- 

 ing note of triumph that cannot be described in 

 writing, but can only be felt by reading the epic 

 itself. 



In a different vein, subtle and satirical, is Mr. 

 Bromley Davenport's " Lowesby Hall," a parody on 

 Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," pronounced by Whyte- 

 Melville to be the best parody in the English 

 language. The burlesque is so fine that, in some 

 passages, it is hardly distinguishable from the 

 original. It is as fresh to-day as on the day on 

 which it was written, and is startling in its pro- 

 phecies of modern events. There are some shafts 

 of satire levelled at the Cobdenites and the Radicals, 

 and that school of thought which we now call 

 Pacifists : 



But the gentle voice of Cobden drowns the fierce invader's 



drum, 

 And the Frenchmen do but bluster, and Napoleon funks 



to come. 



