250 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



fatigue a sonner de la trompe a la cliasse du cerf, qui luy 

 avait trop gate son pauvre corps.' The king's ' trompe,' it 

 appears, was larger than anybody's, and quite an encumbrance 

 to his person ; but the note could be distinguished above all 

 the others, and the temptation to rally and direct the hunt, 

 says a contemporary authority, was too great for him to 

 resist.' 



However, the hunting literature of the day was not con- 

 fined to serious prose. The Pleiad deigned to shine upon 

 the chace ; its poets illuminated its triumphs, hazards, and 

 delights. Baif extols the feat of his royal patron, who brought 

 a stag to bay with a single hound, ' sans levriers, sans clabots.' 

 Ronsard immortalised the drive and stoutness of a bitch 

 hound called Courte and a dog called Beaumont, and bewails 

 in an elegy Charles IX. 's untimely end. Even the High 

 Almoner, Gaucher, who should have known better and minded 

 other things, spent much of his time, and indirectly, no doubt, 

 much of the king's money, in composing bad verses on the 

 different kinds of hunting. 



During his captivity in England, Sir John Chandos made 

 King John of France a present of a brace of greyhounds.^ 

 There is a curious letter in the British Museum from 

 Louis XIII. to the King of Aragon, thanking him for the 

 gift of a white falcon. ' II m'a plut,' he writes, ' tant par la 

 beaute et I'estrangete qu'aussi il vient de vous.' Royal per- 

 sonages have always been great hands at this admirable sort 

 of intercourse. They have always been willing to receive 

 such presents from their subjects — sometimes they have 



' I remember hearing Mr. Browning say, in conversation with Mr. Gladstone 

 upon the particular point whether or not many great men had been great chess- 

 players, that Charles XII. of Sweden was a great chess-player, but spoiled his 

 game by insisting on always making use of his king, and refusing to recognise 

 the limits of his possibilities ; and I dare say Charles IX. often played the mis- 

 chief with what might otherwise have been a good day's sport. 



- Notes et Documents relatifs a Jean, Roi de France, et sa captivite en 

 Angleterre, par S.A.E. le Due d'Aumale. Philobib. Soc. 



