210 FOEEST CREATUKES. 



And this leads me at once to the honoured name at 

 the head of this chapter. Homer's description of 

 certain animals of chase, of their behaviour when 

 attacked, and that of the men and hounds that are 

 attacking them, is so exact, so true to the life, so 

 thoroughly characteristic always of the creature pursued, 

 that it is absolutely impossible such knowledge could 

 be obtained otherwise than by personal experience. 

 He himself must have been present ; he must have 

 been alive to all the developed instincts of the game, 

 and have watched every feature and every act as he 

 only will do whose whole heart is in the sport. 



Throughout the Iliad are continual recurrences to 

 the chase, and from it Homer draws his most dramatic 

 and stirring similes. 



First as to his acquaintance with the wild boar, 

 book xvii. The progeny of Panthus are said to be 



Seasons ; " whilst, when touching on those matters of which he has but 

 vague notions, he is all ^v^ong. The hounds, we are told, " sure, adhe- 

 sive to the track, hot-steaming up behind him come." Thomson had 

 seen the pack following the stag when the scent was good, and hence 

 this perfect picture ; but he did not know that the contests, which take 

 place between the stags in the rutting-season, are not ^^ kind contests," 

 but deadly jousts with hated foes, not " friends." He did not know 

 either that the animals he had seen in parks were not stags ; and being 

 ignorant of the difference between red deer and fallow deer, he speaks 

 of the pack, now that the stag is at bay, marking "his beauteous 

 chccJcer'd sides with gore." The fallow bucks he had admired being 

 checkered, he believed that the stag thus hunted was dappled too. 



