MR. MEYNELL 63 



Close behind poor Pilgarlic ' in charging the same 

 Cleared the rail and the gulf, but alas ! headlong came 

 Horse and all, for the novice unpractised to land, 

 From want of Exertion, was sadly trepanned ; 

 Though to make as amends for this trifling faux pas 

 (A completer capsize no man living e'er saw) 

 On the brow of the hill, where the grass lay but thin, 

 A most opportune half- minute's check let us in. 

 Let that poet be therefore no longer believed 

 Who averred that "one false step can ne'er be retrieved." 

 Yet, had he been pressed, 2 perhaps again he'd have come, 

 Since he gallantly faced two-and-twenty miles home. 

 How he met with fair play, there's no reason to doubt. 

 But the whole of this trimmer he'd fairly seen out ; 

 For to covert being fanned, as a hackney apace, 

 He directly supplied, too, a hunter's hard place. 



This horse Palatine must have been an exceedingly 

 good one ; but though raw and unfit, as was supposed, he 

 must have been kept in some condition by being hacked 

 about. Blood will tell, they say, and it was so in this 

 case ; moreover, he was ridden by a superlative feather- 

 weight horseman. 



About a couple of hundred started from the Coplow, 

 on their second horses, of course, for the first horses 

 had been sent home before the Coplow fox was found 

 at two o'clock. This fox ran about twenty-eight miles, 

 and eventually beat both hounds and horses. 



On giving up actual management of the hounds Mr. 

 Meynell built himself a cottage near the kennels, with a 

 passage running into them from his house ; and in 1800 

 he sold his hounds and Quorndon Hall to Lord Sefton, 

 who succeeded him, and for five years maintained the 

 Quorn hounds in princely fashion. Mr. Meynell con- 

 tinued to go out with Lord Sefton, as mentioned by 

 " Nimrod," and after he had parted with his hounds it 

 was found that his correctness of ear was by no means 

 impaired by his advancing years. While a small covert 



1 The author. - The author's horse, 



