FAMOUS MASTERS 59 



MR. JOHN MYTTON 



A character similar to Mr. Forester's, if we omit the 

 amorous procHvities, was that of Mr. John Mytton, 

 who died at the early age of thirty-eight. His biography 

 was written by "Nimrod " (Mr. C. J. Apperley) within 

 a year of his death, and is doubtless known to many of 

 my readers, but it contains many misleading statements, 

 some of which have caused pain to Mr. Mytton's 

 descendants and to the descendants of Mr. Mytton's 

 friends. As I have more to say of " Nimrod " else- 

 where, I shall content myself with saying, that he was 

 signally oblivious of the Latin proverb — 



" De mortuis nil nisi bonuni." 



But to return to John Mytton. Born on September 

 30, 1796, and left fatherless before he was two 

 years of age, John Mytton became a mother's spoilt 

 darling. At the age of nineteen he was gazetted a 

 cornet in the 7th Hussars and joinedthe Army of Occu- 

 pation in France. But the fighting was over, and 

 young Mytton was advised to resign his commission. 

 On May 21, 1818, he married Harriet Emma Jones, the 

 eldest daughter of Sir Tyrwhitt Jones, Bart. Previous 

 to his marriage he had undertaken the Mastership of 

 the Shropshire and Shifnal Hounds (now the Albrighton 

 Hounds) on the resignation of Mr. Cresset Pelham in 

 1817, and he continued to hunt the country till the 

 spring of 1821, that is to say, he hunted the present 



