3Iajor Whyte Melville 



coping. His account of a run is characteristic of him, in 

 that he always seems to make riding to Hounds a much 

 more desperate and blood-curdUng affair than it really is. 

 He deals in sweat and dirt and tired horses and crashing 

 falls, and gigantic fences, and bottomless brooks. 



His * Riding Recollections ' is an excellent text-book, and 

 wears well. Yet, after reading it, one wonders how one 

 ever got over a fence at all. This is the kind of thing. 

 In his chapter on ' Valour ' he tells that a lady * who had 

 not quite succeeded in clearing a high post-and-rail with 

 a boggy ditch on the landing side was down and under 

 the horse. The animal's whole weight rested on her legs, 

 so as to keep her in such a position that her head lay between 

 its fore and hind feet, where the least attempt at a struggle, 

 hemmed in by those four shining shoes, must have dashed 

 her brains out.' It is true that he is paying a chivalrous 

 tribute to the lady's courage in this very trying position, 

 but the mere description of the thing is enough to prevent 

 one ever riding at a post-and-rail again. All the same, 

 ^Riding Recollections,' as well as his other works, is full of 

 good things. And the charm of the author is that he must 

 have loved the horses and the Hounds and the men and the 

 women who followed them very dearly to have been able 

 to write of them as he did. He is always so gentle ; always 

 the ' sahib.' He speaks of the Chase and all that belongs 

 to it with the respect and the affection that entitles him to 

 a place among the authors who have addressed themselves 

 to the Sport of our Ancestors. 



63 



