THE WILD BOAR IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. 301 
Meleager, with the help of Theseus, Jason, and other renowned 
heroes. Such, indeed, was the nature of the Wild Boar, that 
most of the early poets have chosen it as the fittest animal to 
illustrate the indomitable courage of their heroes; thus Homer :— 
“Forth from the portals rushed the intrepid pair, 
Opposed their breasts, and stood themselves the war. 
So two wild-boars spring furious from their den, 
Roused with the cries of dogs and voice of men ; 
On every side the crackling trees they tear, 
And root the shrubs, and lay the forest bare ; 
They gnash their tusks, with fire their eyeballs roll, 
Till some wide wound lets out their mighty soul.” 
And Spenser, perhaps not without the charge of plagiarism, has 
the same illustration :— 
So long they fight, and fell revenge pursue, 
That fainting, each themselves to breathen let, 
And oft refreshed, battle oft renew, 
As when two boars with rankling malice met. 
Their gory sides fresh bleeding fiercely fret, 
Till breathless both, themselves aside retire, 
Where foaming wrath their cruel tusks they whet, 
And trample the earth the while they may respire ; 
Then back to fight again, new breathed and entire.” 
Such animals were most dangerous, not only to travellers and 
unarmed rustics, but to the hunting expeditions of the King and 
his nobles. It need not, therefore, surprise us to find that the 
destruction of a Wild Boar ranked, in the Middle Ages, among 
the deeds of chivalry, and won for a warrior almost as much — 
renown as the slaying of an enemy in the open field. So 
dangerous, indeed, was the hunting of Wild Boars, even when the 
hunter was armed for the purpose, that Shakespeare represents 
Venus as dissuading Adonis from the practice :— 
“OQ, be advised! Thou knowest not what it is 
With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore, 
Whose tushes never-sheath’d, he whetteth still, 
Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill. 
His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm’d, 
Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter ; 
His short thick neck cannot be easily harm’d ; 
Being ireful, on the lion he will venture.” 
