CHAPTER IV 



MAJOR WHYTE MELVILLE 



DURING fifty-seven years of life, beginning in 1821, 

 Major George John Whyte Melville saw more of 

 hunting, soldiering, and fashion than most people. 

 He entered the Coldstream Guards in 1839, and served 

 with the Turkish Cavalry in the Crimean War. He knew 

 every one in the British Isles who was worth knowing, 

 and his novels were read by a considerable public as well 

 as by a large circle of friends. He wrote verses as well 

 as novels. Some of his contemporaries have gone so far 

 as to call him the Poet Laureate of the hunting-field. Yet 

 ' Drink, Puppy, Drink,' perhaps the best known of his hunt- 

 ing-songs, leaves something to be desired. Indeed, he con- 

 fessed to a friend who was sitting next to him at a dinner- 

 party that he would have sacrificed all his other writings 

 if only he could have written ' John Peel,' which had just 

 been sung. Although he did not write ' John Peel,' he 

 wrote the words to Tosti's ' Good-bye,' which, at other 

 functions than hunt-dinners, is quite as hackneyed as the 

 favourite old hunting-song. 



The two chapters that are chosen as specimens of his 

 work are both admirable monographs, the one on a run 

 with the Pytchley Hounds and the other on a day's horse- 

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