SPOETING LITEEATURE. 5 



The work in question is Le Art de Venerie, par 

 mestre Guyllame Twici, Venour le Roy 

 d'Engletere. William Twici, who wrote in 

 Norman French about 1327, was huntsman to 

 Edward II., and we can still read in the Close 

 Rolls and Exchequer Accounts that he received 

 a wage of 9d. a day, with 3^d. a day for 'Littel 

 Will' and ^d. for the keep of each greyhound 

 and staghound. His book is one of instruction 

 both in practice and in a knowledge of hunting 

 terms, written for an age which esteemed this 

 not the least part of a polite education. The 

 proper way to hunt the hart, the buck, the boar, 

 the hare and the fox, what names to apply to 

 them at different ages, what notes to sound on 

 the horn in order to signify different incidents 

 in the chase of each, these and other matters 

 of diverse and curious learning are to be read 

 in Le Art de Venerie. It is easily accessible in 

 Miss Alice Dryden's inyalnahle Art of Hunting, 

 issued a few years ago. It was for long a 

 standard work, was early translated into 

 English, and formed the basis of the treatise on 

 Hunting in the Book of St. Albans, of which 

 more later. 



The next book also hails from France : the 

 Livre de la Chasse was written some time 

 between 1387, when the author tells us he began 

 it, and 1391, when he died of apoplexy brought 

 on by a bear hunt on a hot August day. Its 

 author was Gaston III., Comte de Foix and 

 Vicomte de Beam, who, as well as his book, is 



