THE LONG MINORITY 



different view of life, for in Sporting Anecdotes^ by an 

 Amateur Sportsman, the second edition of which is dated 

 1807, the compiler publishes an account, written by a Mr. 

 Pratt, of a huntsman of the old school, who was in turn a 

 runner, a whipper-in, a huntsman, a gamekeeper, and a mole- 

 catcher. The sketch of this old huntsman is an interesting 

 one, and we are told he ended his days in Lincolnshire, at 

 Warboys, near Wisbeach, where he was parish mole-catcher, 

 receiving twopence for every mole he caught. When he was 

 visited by the son of his old master, Mr. Pratt, he dressed 

 himself in the hunting livery of his time, and his appearance 

 is thus described : " It was an ancient domestic of the old 

 English gentleman, dressed cap-a-pee for the field. A painter, 

 faithful to the apparel of other times, would have noticed the 

 specific articles that formed this kind of character : the short 

 green coat, the black velvet cap, with its appropriate gold 

 band and tassel, and buck-skin gloves and breeches, the belt 

 with its dependent whistle, and the all-commanding whip." ^ 

 Nor was there anything remarkable in this fall, for in a sport- 

 ing novel by John Mills an ex-huntsman is represented as 

 staying on in his own country as earth-stopper, without being 

 at all disturbed at the change in his position. 



Such then were the huntsmen of the first half of the 

 eighteenth century. But no sooner was the chase of the 

 hare given up for that of the fox than a different stamp of 

 man was required, and Mr. Meynell's Jack Raven, Lord 

 Spencer's Dick Knight, Mr. Perceval's Newman, and the 

 older Mr. Musters' Shaw, not to mention other celebrities of 

 the time, were men who might have carried the horn with the 

 Quorn, the Belvoir, or the Pytchley to-day. They could get 

 away as quickly with a fox, lift hounds past a flock of sheep, 

 or go to a holloa as readily as any huntsman we have now. 

 They were, of course, less liable to have their hounds driven 

 over the line than they would be at the present time, but still 

 then, as now, the cry of a huntsman was " Forrard on," and 

 hounds were no more allowed to hang and potter, as they 

 will do if permitted, than they are to-day. Mr. Meynell has 

 * Sporting Anecdotes^ p. 40. 

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