IN HIS LIBRARY 275 



to me a most delightful and interesting study ; but I 

 think that I have demonstrated that fox-hunters do 

 not possess those uncultivated minds with which they 

 have been endowed by the enemies of sport. Mens 

 Sana in corpore sano is the primary rule of life with all 

 sporting authors who have won any renown. They 

 have not been carpet-slippered men, sitting in their 

 studies over tobacco smoke, but men who have gained 

 practical experience in the hunting-field. That men 

 holding such high positions in society, as the late Duke 

 of Beaufort and the late Earl of Suffolk, should have 

 deemed it an accession to their dignity to join the ranks 

 sporting literature ; that men, to whom money was no 

 object, should have employed their leisure time in 

 writing about their favourite pursuit ; and that men to 

 whom money was an object should have found hunting 

 literature to be both a congenial and a profitable pur- 

 suit, as is witnessed by the large number of editions of 

 their works, proves beyond all doubt that fox-hunting 

 still holds a firm grasp on the affections of the English 

 reading public, in spite of the evil prognostications of 

 those faddists to whom any outdoor healthy exercise is 

 a bugbear. But the popularity of hunting literature is 

 not only due to the love of fox-hunting. With few 

 exceptions the books which I have mentioned betray 

 signs of classical scholarship, which we rarely perhaps 

 find in the bibliography of any other subject. The 

 novels of Major Whyte-Melville have been read by 

 thousands of people who have never been on the back 

 of a horse. The same is the case with the novels of 

 Mr. Surtees. In the case of both authors, cheap 



