6 THE LIFE OF A FOX 



contrivances above referred to. It is on this account, my 

 Lord, that I have done you the honour to dedicate to you the 

 following narrative of my eventful life. 



Many are the happy hours that I have spent, some years 

 since, in the neighbourhood of your Lordship''s hen-roost in 

 Hampshire, and latterly many a tender rabbit, etc., have I 

 carried home from the plantations and fields which you now 

 so handsomely preserve for the use of myself and my kindred 

 at Wimpole ; this conduct on your part would have ensiu-ed 

 my lasting gratitude, could I forget how frequently I have 

 been driven by hound and horn from those treacherous coverts. 

 Although, from the above reasons, there cannot be friendship 

 between us, there may, I trust there does, exist some feeling 

 of mutual respect ; you and your brethren are not insensible 

 to those merits in our species which you affect to depreciate. 

 Fabulists and other writers, in all languages, have quoted the 

 sayings and doings of my ancestors, as lessons of instruction 

 for youth ; while the craft and cunning of your ablest states- 

 men have been, in many instances, entirely derived from our 

 acknowledged principles and practice. Our heroism in the 

 endm-ance of a violent and cruel death is equalled only by our 

 dexterity in avoiding it. It was only last winter that a cousin 

 of mine led a gallant field of two hundred horsemen over thirty 

 miles of the finest country in England ; and when at length 

 overtaken by twenty couple of his enemies, each one larger 

 and stronger than himself, he died amid their mm'derous 

 fangs, without suffering a yell or cry to escape him ! Yet 

 do the poets of your race celebrate as a hero, one Hector, a 

 timid biped, who, after a miserable run round the walls of 



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