190 A SPORTING POET 



Our poet then (who had evidently some good sporting 

 blood in his veins), after lamenting that the wolf and 

 the wild boar no longer exist in our British Isles, to test 

 the courage and daring of our sylvan youth, thus recom- 

 mends as worthy of pursuit bold Reynard : — 



Give ye, Britons, then 



Your sportive fury, pitiless, to pour 



Loose on the nightly robber of the fold ; 



Him from his craggy winding haunts unearthed, 



Let the thunder of the chase pursue ; 



Throw the broad ditch behind you ; o'er the hedge 



High bound, resistless ; nor the deep morass 



Refuse, but through the shaking wilderness 



Pick your nice way into the perilous flood ; < 



Bear fearless, of the raging instinct full ; 



And, as you ride the torrent to the banks, 



Your triumph sounds sonorous, running round 



From rock to rock in circling echoes toss'd ; 



Then scale the mountains to their woody tops ; 



Rush down the dangerous steep ; and o'er the lawn, f 



In fancy swallowing up the space between. 



Pour all your speed into the rapid game ; jj 



For happy he ! who stops the wheeling chase, ^^ 



Has every maze evolved, and every guile f 



Disclosed ; who knows the merit of the pack ; '■. 



Who saw the villain seized, and d5ring hard | 



Without complaint, though by a hundred mouths '} 



Relentless torn. 



This is rather a long-winded quotation, but I have 

 given it at length, to show that our bard entertained 

 tolerably correct ideas of what a fox-hunter ought to 

 be. His description of the Bacchanalian orgies, which 

 are said to be enacted in the evening, may have been 

 applicable to the dark ages, but certainly does not belong 

 to fox-hunters of our day. Shooting, however, is our 

 proper theme, although an old fox-hunter may be 

 pardoned this digression. 



Grouse- and partridge-shooting entails a considerable 



