HISTORY AND LITERATURE. ^ 



Somewhere between these two comes ' The Maister of the 

 Game,' not mentioned by Strutt, but a copy of which 'Cecil ' 

 says he had seen in the possession of a Mr. Richard Dansey, 

 of Herefordshire. He supposes it to have been written by 

 Edmund de Langley, Duke of York, son of Edward III., who 

 was noted among his contemporaries for his delight and skill in 

 hunting and hawking, and was made by his father, as Harding 

 tells us in his Chronicle, 



Maister of the mewhouse, and of hawkes feire, 

 Of his Venerie, and maister of his game. 



From the extracts quoted by ' Cecil ' it seems to be superior in 

 point of style to Twici's work, and also more exhaustive and 

 practical, but to those extracts our knowledge is confined. 



In the following century our bibliography appears to have 

 been enriched by only two writers, George Turberville, and Sir 

 Thomas Cockaine. Of the latter history is silent, but Turber- 

 ville, or Tuberville, was a personage of some note, a poet and 

 diplomatist, as well as a sportsman. He was educated at 

 Winchester, and at New College, of which he was a Fellow. He 

 went to Russia as secretary to Randolph, Elizabeth's famous 

 ambassador, and published a poetical description of ih'at 

 country, besides other volumes of verse, songs, sonnets, and 

 translations. Anthony Wood in his ' Athenae Oxonienses ' de- 

 scribes him as a most accomplished gentleman, and ' much 

 admired for his excellencies in the art of poetry.' 



As far as we have got hitherto, there is certainly some colour 

 for Beckford's contemptuous dismissal of all writers before 

 Somerville. It is certainly not easy to gather from these books 

 any very precise idea of the way our forefathers took their 

 pleasure in the field. Turberville's and Cockaine's the latter 

 but a small pamphlet are worth looking at chiefly for the 

 quaintness of the woodcuts, and also of their language. Twici 

 busies himself chiefly with the different notes to be sounded on 

 the horn, according to the game being hunted and the state of 

 the chase ; but he also gives the names of the various beasts 



