IN DAYS OF YORE 199 



1 Phoebus,' to use the name by which the Comte 

 de Foix is most frequently mentioned and quoted, 

 opens with an explicit declaration that the chase 

 is the exercise by which we may best keep clear of 

 the seven deadly sins, nothing being more opposed 

 to idleness and indolence than the exciting life of the 

 sportsman : and as he that shuns the seven deadly 

 sins will be saved, the advantages of sport, combining 

 enjoyment in this world with eternal happiness in the 

 next, are more than obvious. 



Jacques du Fouilloux, nearly two hundred years 

 later, puts sport on a less lofty pedestal ; he has 

 come to the same conclusion as Solomon, that all 

 things which are under the sun are but idle vanity. 

 * Wherefore, Sire ' (he is dedicating his book to the 

 boy King Charles IX.) 'methinks that the best 

 knowledge which we can learn (after the fear of God) 

 is to keep us and each man his neighbour in cheerful- 

 ness by the practice of honourable pastimes, among 

 which I have found none nobler or more to be 

 commended than the art of venery.' To develop this 

 knowledge then, especially among the rising genera- 

 tion, he gives, partly from his own observation, partly 

 by quotation from that noble hunter the Count of 

 Foix, very full and exact instructions on every form 

 of hunting. First comes a disquisition on hounds \ 



