THE QUORN HUNT 



Yet prithee, dear Charles ! why rash vows will you make, 



Thy leave of old Billesden 1 to finally take? 



Since from Legg's Hill,' 2 for instance, or perhaps Melton Spinney, 



If they go a good pace, you are beat for a guinea ! 



'Tis money, they say, makes the mare to go kind ; 



The proverb has vouched for this time out of mind ; 



But though of this truth you admit the full force, 



It may not hold so good of every horse. 



If it did, Ellis Charles need not bustle and hug, 



By name, not by nature, his favourite Slug. 3 



Yet Slug as he is — the whole of this chase 



Charles ne'er could have seen, had he gone a snail's pace. 



Old Gradus, 4 whose fretting and fuming at first 



Disqualify strangely for such a tight burst, 



Ere to Tilton arrived, ceased to pull and to crave, 



And though freshis/i at Stretton, he stepped a pas grave ! 



Where, in turning him over a cramp kind of place, 



He overturned George, whom he threw on his face ; 



And on foot to walk home it had sure been his fate, 



But that soon he was caught, and tied up to a gate. 



Near Wigston occurred a most singular joke, 

 Captain Miller averred that his leg he had broke, — 

 And bemoaned, in most piteous expressions, how hard, 

 By so cruel a fracture, to have his sport marred. 

 In quizzing his friends he felt little remorse 

 To finesse the complete doing up of his horse. 

 Had he told a long story of losing a shoe, 

 Or of laming his horse, he very well knew 

 That the Leicestershire creed out this truism worms, 

 " Lost shoes and dead beat are synonymous terms." 

 So a horse must here learn, whatever he does, 

 To die game — as at Tyburn — and " die in his shoes." 

 Bethel Cox, and Tom Smith, Messieurs Bennett and Hawke, 

 Their nags all contrived to reduce to a walk. 

 Maynard's Lord, who detests competition and strife, 

 As well in the chase as in social life, 

 Than whom nobody harder has rode in his time, 

 But to crane here and there now thinks it no crime, 

 That he beat some crack riders most fairly may crow, 

 For he lived to the end, though he scarcely knows how. 



1 He had threatened never to follow the hounds again from Billesden, on 

 account of his weight. 2 A different part of the hunt. 



3 Mr. Charles Ellis's horse. 4 Mr. George Ellis's horse. 



