Arrian on coursing

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The following version does not aim at pleasing the mere literary man. It was not undertaken with the ambitious expectation of being generally acceptable. It is addressed to the coursing public alone—to the amateurs of the leash; for whom the original was written, seventeen centuries ago, by their representative of old, a courser of Nicomedia in Asia Minor; and for whose amusement and instruction the same now assumes an English garb.

The general reader will find little in it to interest him. He will perhaps consider it altogether unworthy of his notice. The sportsman, fond of

will read it with indifference, as treating of a branch of rural sport, not congenial to his taste; and wonder that an attempt should be made to bring under public notice so ancient a treatise on a subject of such partial interest. But the courser, it is humbly conceived, the active patron of the κύνες Κελτικαὶ proud of his greyhounds, that

will peruse it con amore, and find in its pages much that is entertaining and practically useful, and that utility enhanced in the department of annotation.

The literary courser, whose attention it more particularly solicits, will reap the additional benefit of the light which is thrown on Arrian’s text by the ancient authors of Greece and Rome; and be ready to yield to the translator the humble merit of having collected in one point of view the classical elucidations of the Cynegeticus,⁠[1] and the pertinent observations of writers of a later period.

The original manual is conversant with coursing, as practised in the age of Hadrian and the Antonini, at which period the Celtic hound was well known, and highly prized: but the annotations of the translator have a more extensive range, being selected from various Cynegetica in print and manuscript, from the first institution of coursing to the present time.⁠[2]

The imperfect poem of Gratius, the Faliscian, on hunting, and the often-cited simile of his contemporary Ovid, afford the earliest notice of the canis Gallicus—for he was unknown to ancient Greece.⁠[3] The description of a single-handed course by the poet of the Metamorphoses, as it is the first attempt of the kind by any classic author, so is it unrivalled in the accuracy of its technical phraseology, and the beauty of its poetry. Intermediate in point of time between the vivid Ovidian sketch, and the full and perfect picture of Arrian, are the faint outlines of the epigrammatist Martial:Martial. L. iii. Epig. 47. et L. xiv. Epig. 200. and subsequent to the Bithynian’s, the somewhat doubtful portrait of the philologist Julius Pollux,Polluc. Onomast. L. v. Præf. presented to the Emperor Commodus; and yet later, that of Oppian,Oppian. Cyneg. L. i. vs. 401. the Greek poet of Anazarbus, of the reigns of Severus and Caracalla.—In these authors alone do we find any allusion to the courser’s hound, till towards the close of the third century, when he again appears in the Cynegeticon of Nemesian;Nemesian. Cyneg. vs. 106. who has cleverly struck out in a few lines the elegant symmetry of his shape, and added thereto some peculiar remarks on the selection, feeding, and entrance of puppies. With the scanty portraiture of the Carthaginian poet we are brought down to the reigns of Carus,Ejusd. vs. 64. his sons, “Divi fortissima pignora Cari,” and Diocletian: at which epoch, memorable alike in the annals of the world and its literature, the classical history of the leash may be said to terminate, and therewith all notice of the Celtic hound.⁠[4]

We have no ancient records of the chase⁠[5] to succeed the Greek and Latin Cynegetica; for though it be true that the barbarian codes of law, the Spelman. Gloss. pp. 113. et 551. Du Cange Gloss. in voce.Salic, Burgundian, and German, extended their protection to our variety of Canis Venaticus, about the year 500, under the title of Veltris and its synonyms; and some of the Cynegetical writers appear to have been well known in the dark ages, and so highly valued in the eighth century, as to be read among the higher Greek and Roman classics, in the time of Charlemagne; and we believe coursing and other sports were as attractive in the field, as the writers upon such subjects were in the schools, (for the court of this prince had its Veltrarii,Spelman. in voce. officers of the greyhound-kennel, “qui veltres custodiebant,”) still, instead of any formal treatise of this date upon the pastime of the leash, we find for several centuries, only incidental allusions to the greyhound, and his high repute, principally as distinctive of the gentility of his possessor, until the publication of “The Booke of Hawkyng, Huntyng, &c.” by Dame Juliana Berners, in the fifteenth century.

The didactic discourse of hunting, contained in this volume, commonly known by its territorialHaslewood’s Prolegomena to Book of St. Albans. appellation of “The Book of St. Albans,” may be an amplified versification of the prosaic “Venery of Mayster John Gyfford and Will^m Twety, that were with Kyng Edward the Secunde;” or possibly a compilation and translation by the sister of Lord Berners, or the “one sumtyme schole mayster of Warton’s Hist. of Engl. Poetry, Vol. ii. p. 172.Seynt Albons” from earlier Latin and French writers: but such authorities are as yet, I believe, unknown to Antiquaries. Excepting, therefore, the few lines, before alluded to, in the latest of the Latin Cynegetica, and the earlier portrait of Oppian, which I consider referable to the hound in question, it may be said that we do not possess in print any full description of “the propriteeBook of St. Albans.s of a good Grehounde” ἐκ τῶν ποδῶν ἐς τὴν κεφαλὴν, from the time of the learned Courser of Nicomedia, till that of the sporting prioress of Sopewell.

Not that I am ignorant of the curious early treatise of Gaston Phœbus, the celebrated Comte de Foix, written in the middle of the fourteenth century, entitled “Des Deduitz de la Chasse de Bestes Sauvaiges et des Oyseaux de Proye;”Ms. Cotton. Vesp. B. xii. Brit. Mus. nor of a more rare work in manuscript, The Mayster of Game, composed by Edmund Duke of York,Henry VI. pt. ii. act ii. “Edmund Langley, Edward the Third’s fifth son,” in the latter part of the fourteenth century; and therefore, in point of date, claiming a priority to the book of St. Albans, as do, of course, the lucubrations of the Second Edward’s attendants before mentioned. But these enchiridia of field sports preceded the Sopewell collection only a few years; and in the Count de Foix’s manual, as given by Fouilloux under the title of “La Chasse du Roy Phebus,” there is nothing on our subject worth noticing.

In The Crafte of Hontyng⁠[6] by Gyfford and Twety, the greyhound is mentioned only once; and hare-coursing is not recorded at all.

The unpublished labours of the Duke of York,⁠[7] “Edmonde, hyght of Langley,” contain much original and valuable information: and it is to be regretted that it is not rendered more available to coursers by being committed to the press. With copious general descriptions of our ancient field-sports, and animals obnoxious to the chase, The Mayster of Game unites specific delineations of the shape of each variety of canis venaticus, employed by British sportsmen of past days, with occasional references to the chace practices of foreign countries “by yonde the see.” The chapter of greyhoundes and of here nature, as cited hereafter in illustration of Arrian, will be read with pleasure. Indeed the Duke’s portrait of the Celtic hound is even more minutely accurate and precise than its Grecian prototype, and her manners as they are quaintly termed, and briefly sketched in the royal Cynegeticus, establish many of the remarks of the younger Xenophon περὶ τῆς γνώμης τῶν κυνῶν.

Still Dame Julyan’s compilation being, at least, the first of the kind that issued from the English press, and the type of our modern works of Venery, may be viewed as the earliest attempt, since the revival of letters, to certify by intelligible canons, the corporeal characteristics of a good greyhound. With the traditionary dogmata of Sir Tristrem de Liones,⁠[8] who was the reputed “begynner of all the termes of huntynge and hawkynge,” it incorporates the accumulated knowledge of many centuries. Script. illust. M. B. auct. I. Baleo Cent. 8. 611.And the Dame⁠[9] being no ordinary personage—“Illustris fœmina, corporis et animi dotibus abundans,Oldys in Biograph. Britannica, in voce Caxton, note. ac formæ elegantiâ spectabilis—heroica mulier, ingeniosa virago”—“a second Minerva in her studies, and another Diana in her diversions”—her contemporaries would doubtless receive a cynegetical treatise from her cloister at Sopewell, with gratitude and admiration.

After the publication of the book of St. Albans, other cynegetica poetical and prosaic, in various languages, followed in rapid succession; of which the earliest in my possession are from the presses of Aldus and Feyerabendi; but collectively they afford very scanty instruction on the history and practice of the leash.

The Epicedium of the Florentine poet, Hercules Stroza, addressed to the Duchess of Ferrara; the hendecasyllables of Adrian Castellesi, and the quatrains of John Adam Lonicer, with their accompanying “icones artificiosissimæ ad vivum expressæ,” add nothing to our stock of information. And the same may be said of the chaste cynegetical eclogues, “Sarnis et Viburnus,” of Petrus Lotichius Secundus,

I have in vain examined the four books of “Natalis Comes de Venatione” for more than the name of the canis Celticus—probably to be interpreted of the war-dog of Gaul, rather than the Vertragus.

The Cynegeticon of Peter Angelio, commonly called, from his Tuscan birth-place, Bargæus, is said to have been the labour of twenty years. It is a splendid specimen of modern Latinity, in beautiful Virgilian hexameters, to which the literary courser will award their merited meed of praise. The most approved shape of the “canis cursor” is correctly portrayed, with a reference to the fabulous tale of the Ovidian Lælaps. Nor has the poet disdained to enter on the minute and necessary details of breeding, and kenneling the pack. Indeed the whole of his fifth book is devoted to the “blanda canum soboles;” and the reader will find incorporated in the instructions therein given, nearly all the arcana of the Greek and Latin Cynegetica, excepting these of Arrian’s Manual, which do not appear to have been known to the poet of Barga. He employs the greyhound in coursing the fox, wolf, deer, and goat, but gives no description of hare-coursing in any of the six books of his Cynegeticon; nor in the eclogues entitled “Venatoria,” forming part of the fifth book of his “Carmina.” Had the manuscript of Arrian’s Cynegeticus been known to him, he would, doubtless, have entered as fully into hare-coursing, as he has into every other variety of chase.

Of Conrad Heresbach’s compendium of fishing, fowling, and hunting,⁠[10] attached to his larger work “de Re Rusticâ,” I have in vain endeavoured to procure a copy. It is a prosaic work, treating more of animal history, as I am informed, than of venation: still as this abbreviator of the labours of his predecessors was a man of various acquirements, and extensive erudition, it would have been satisfactory to me to have examined his “Compendium Thereuticæ Universæ;” or at least the first part of it, devoted to the hunting of terrestrial animals.

The Alcon of Fracastor is in every one’s hands; being annexed to the editions of the Poetæ Venatici by Johnson and Kempher. It contains nothing on the subject of coursing.

To Michael Angelo Blondus or Biondi, we are indebted for the first hint on clothing greyhounds in the field, and for other matters connected with the discipline of the kennel and its inmates; and to Joannes Darcius, a truly classic poet of Venusium, not unworthy the natal town of Horace, for an elegant sketch of a hare-course, cited in the subsequent annotations.

It is singular that the greyhound, indigenous as we suppose him of Gallia Celtica, should have been so little noticed by his countrymen—that a variety of chase heretofore peculiar to Gaul should have been omitted in almost all the cynegetical works of Frenchmen of the olden time; and that the same omission should be chargeable on the moderns,—on the “Venerie Normande” of M. Le Verrier de la Conterie, the “Traité de Vénerie” of M. D’Yauville, and even, to a great extent, on the volume of the Encyclopédie Méthodique, which professes to be a “Dictionnaire de toutes les espèces de Chasses.”

Savary of Caen published a Latin poem on hare-hunting in seven books,⁠[11] entitled “Album Dianæ Leporicidæ, sive Venationis Leporinæ leges,” of some rarity, but of little merit. He appears to have had an especial dislike to the canis Gallicus, anathematizing the ancient Celtic recreation in the very style of our own Somerville, who in many parts of “The Chase” seemingly had his eye on the poet of Caen:

The courser will scarce recognize his favourite dog in the slanderous abstract misnomer of “Lacedæmonii pernix violentia monstri.”

The celebrated works of Jaques du Fouilloux, and his contemporary Jean de Clamorgan, do not treat of the use of the greyhound, except merely “in setting back-sets, or receytes for deare, wolfe, foxe, or such like:” but in “the noble art of Venerie” by Turbervile and Gascoigne, in “the Jewell for Gentrie,” and the compilations of Gervase Markham, we find much illustration of the science and history of the leash in Great Britain.⁠[12]

Turbervile, or whoever be the translator of Fouilloux, has appended an admirable breviary of coursing to “the booke of hunting:” and Wase’s Illustrations of Gratius p. 74.Wase notifies of Gervase Markham, that “he hath reported the fruits of his own experience, as in the whole cycle of husbandry accurately; so in Cynegetiques excellently.” His chapter on coursing with greyhounds⁠[13] is well worthy perusal; as is also the description of the “Leporarius” by Dr. Caius in his “Libellus de canibus Britannicis.”—Need I stop to remark the doubtful features of the “canis alter præpete cursu” of Vanière’s Prædium Rusticum?—Some few points belong apparently to the Celtic hound,

but his latrancy (“insequitur claris lepores latratibus”) would rather assign him to a different kennel. Works of a later date are too well known to need particular notice.

Very few are the improvements, either in the discipline of the courser’s kennel, or his practice in the field, transmitted to us by these collective cynegetica; and modern ingenuity has added little to our knowledge in any department of coursing, as the reader of the Nicomedian’s Manual will readily acknowledge. His remarks on the physical indications of excellence in greyhounds, and of speed and good blood,—derived from external shape and character generally,—on the unimportance of colour,—on the indications afforded by temper, tractability in the field, mode of feeding, &c. are perfect as far as they go. Arriani de VenationeNor can we improve on his kennel management, in feeding, bedding, (εὐνὴ μαλθακὴ καὶ ἀλεεινὴ), c. ix.rubbing down, (τρίψις τοῦ σώματος παντὸς,) exercising, c. x.alternated with confinement, &c. &c. As to slipping-law,c. xv. and the number of hounds to be slipped at once, his injunctions μήτε ἐγγύθεν ἐπιλύειν τῷ λαγῷ, μήτε πλείους δυοῖν, are strictly complied with at present by all fair sportsmen.

The Celts, it appears, had four different ways of coursing, all of which are practised by modern amateurs, according to their several tastes, and the nature of the countries in which they follow their sport.

The superior class of Celtic gentlemen, ὅσοι μὲν πλουτοῦσιν αὐτῶν καὶ τρυφῶσιν, employed persons to look out for hares in their forms, early in the morning, and to inform them by a messenger what success they had met with, before they left home themselves.

A second class, probably less opulent, and not able to afford the expense of hare-finders, mustered all their brother-amateurs, and beat the ground in regular array, abreast of each other. Both these parties were mounted on horseback; but a third class sallied forth on foot, and these, Arrian says, were really workmen at the sport, αὐτουργοὶ κυνηγεσίων: if any person accompanied the latter on horseback, he was ordered to keep up with the greyhounds. A fourth mode of coursing, sometimes adopted by them, was that of first loosing dogs of scent to find,c. xxi. and start the game, and then slipping the greyhounds, as soon as it came within sight.

Upon all of these different practices the father of the leash has entered most fully in his classical Manual: and if to these points we add his sensible remarks on the entering of puppies, on breeding, management after whelping, feeding and naming of young dogs, comparison of sexes, &c.; his merit will be allowed to be commensurate with his antiquity, and his enchiridion not only the earliest in the annals of the leash, but altogether the most abundant in valuable information.

It is foreign to my purpose and inclination to enter into a prolix defence of the courser’s pursuit, against the objections of its adversaries in the field or closet.Countrey Contentments, B. i. c. i. “I would not goe about,” in the words of Gervase Markham, “to elect and prescribe what recreation the husbandman should use, binding all men to one pleasure—God forbid! my purpose is merely contrary: for I know in men’s recreations, that nature taketh to herselfe an especiall prerogative, and what to one is most pleasant, to another is most offensive; some seeking to satisfie the mind, some the body, and some both in a joynt motion.”

We of the coursing fraternity prefer the “canis Gallicus,” and “arvum vacuum” of Ovid, as instrumental to our choicest diversion;

but we do not forbid others

For the refined diversion of coursing may be as disagreeable to the fox-hunter, whose only joy is when

as it is delightful to the genuine amateur, on account of its chaste, and temperate, and contemplative quiet. King James, in his Βασιλικὸν Δῶρον, (himself, according to Sir Theodore Mayerne, “violentissimis olim venationis exercitiis deditus,”) praises “the hunting with running houndes, as the most honourable and noblest sort thereof,” and is supported by the high authority of Edmund de Langley, M. of G. fo. 64.Mayster of Game; adding “it is a thievish forme of hunting to shoote with gunnes and bowes, and greyhounde hunting is not so martiall a game.” B. i. c. 17.But on the other hand, Sir Thomas Elyot, in “The Governour,” speaking of “those exercises apte to the furniture of a gentylman’s personage,” and “not utterly reproved of noble autours, if they be used with oportunitie and in measure,” calls “hunting of the hare with grehoundes a ryght good solace for men that be studiouse, or theim to whom nature hathe not geven personage, or courage apte for the warres; and also for gentilwomen, which feare nether sonne nor wynde for appayryng their beautie. And peradventure they shall be therat lesse idell, than they shold be at home in their chaumbers.”—And the author of “The Booke of Hunting,” annexed to Turbervile’s Falconrie, concludes his treatise with the following singular panegyric “concerning coursing with greyhoundes”—“the which is doubtlesse a noble pastime, and as meet for nobility and gentleman, as any of the other kinds of Venerie before declared: especially the course of the hare, which is a sport continually in sight, and made without any great travaile: so that recreation is therein to be found without unmeasurable toyle and payne:⁠[14] whereas in hunting with hounds, although the pastime be great, yet many times the toyle and paine is also exceeding great: and then it may well be called, eyther a painfull pastime, or a pleasant payne.”

Coursing, more than the other laborious diversions of rural life, while it ministers to our moderate sensual enjoyment, admits also during the intervals of the actual pursuit of hound and hare, much rational reflection, opportunities of conversation with our brethren of the leash, and mental improvement. It tends, as Markham quaintly expresses himself, “to satisfie the mind and body in a joynt motion;” for in the beautiful poetry of a living patron of the Celtic dog, there is no interval of idleness with the well-read courser;

But there are those who anathematize limiting and coursing, and other rural recreation, either as sinful,⁠[15] or indicative of barbarism and mental degradation, in the ratio of the pursuit. Like Cornelius Agrippa,De Incert. et Vanit. &c. c. lxxvii. they view venation in genere as the worst occupation of the worst of mankind; and say with Philip Stubbes, that The Anatomie of Abuses.“Esau was a great hunter, but a reprobat; Ismael, a great hunter, but a miscreant; Nemrode, a great hunter, but yet a reprobat, and a vessell of wrath;” and bid us, in the poetic badinage of the poet of Cyrene, leave off coursing:

swearing, with the melancholy Jaques,

But if “some habites and customes of delight” are allowable and indispensable to the “contentment” of the human mind, and “men of exceeding strickt lives and severity of profession” have indulged in rural diversions, why need we regard the severe reflections of the sensitive Monsieur Paschal, or his more modern plagiarists? why think that wisdom loves not the courser’s sport? or that man is degraded before the tribunal of sound reason by estimating aright the instinct of any of the creatures around him? or made sinful in the eyes of his Creator by availing himself of the adapted powers of the lowliest of the brute race, for the subjugation of such wild animals as were originally designed by a bountiful Creator for the sustenance and recreation of man? Cicero de Nat. Deor. L. ii. c. 63.“Canum verò tam incredibilis ad investigandum sagacitas narium, tanta alacritas in venando, quid significat aliud nisi se ad hominum commoditates esse generatos?”

The inference in regard to the chases and field sports generally is surely just, Manchester Memoirs V. i.“that man, by co-operating with such animals, employs both his and their faculties on the purposes for which they were partially designed: tending thereby to complete the bounteous scheme of Providence, the happiness and well-being of all its creatures.”

Mr. Warton, the talented historian of English Poetry, a bookful Academic, and not a μαθητὴς κυνηγεσίων, Xenophon de Venat. c. i.acquits the hunter of the charge of barbarism, and acknowledges that Hist. of Engl. Poetry, V. ii.“the pleasures of the chase seem to have been implanted by nature; and under due regulation, if pursued as a matter of mere relaxation, and not of employment, are by no means incompatible with the modes of polished life.”

The difference of opinion on the subject of the chase has arisen entirely from the different lights in which it has been viewed; the one exhibiting its rational use, the other its intemperate abuse. Encyclopédie Méthodique sur les Chasses, avertissement.“Elle a trouvé autant de censeurs outrés que d’apologistes enthousiastes, parmi les anciens et les modernes, parce qu’elle a été envisagée sous le double rapport de son utilité et de ses abus.”

Amongst the ancient eulogists, in the Grecian language, will be found Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, Polybius, and Julius Pollux; in the Latin, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Seneca, Pliny, Justin, Symmachus, and others. To which numerous phalanx of classic worthies there is no opponent authority, save that of Sallust: and of more recent days, Petrarch, and Cornelius Agrippa. Not to swell this prefatory matter with too many citations from obsolete languages, I have referred the reader, who may wish to know more of the éloges alluded to, severally to the passages in a note subjoined.⁠[16] But touching the adverse party, a word or two may be here admitted.

In appreciating the authority of Sallust’s sentiments on the subject of field-sports, as given in the studied preface of his Bell. Catal. c. i.Catilinarian War, “Non fuit consilium socordiâ atque desidiâ bonum otium conterere: neque verò, agrum colendo, aut venando, servilibus officiis intentum, ætatem agere;” we should remark the ambitious tone of pretended philosophy in which the introduction is written: “Nostra omnis vis in animo, et corpore sita est. Animi imperio, corporis servitio magis utimur; alterum nobis cum Diis, alterum cum belluis commune est.” And that this distinction between mental and corporeal qualities, their proper relation to each other, and the subordinate character of the latter to that of the former,

are kept up in the passage first adduced: in which he merely means to say that he does not wish to spend his time in slothful idleness; and that the rural vocations of agriculture and hunting, being of a secondary and inferior character, more connected with the body than the mind, are not agreeable to his taste, as the business and occupation of life, “ætatem agere.” And we must allow that the entire and constant dedication of time to practical agriculture, or rural sports, to the care of flocks and herds, or the kenneling and coursing of greyhounds, unvaried by such higher studies and pursuits as are characteristic of well-educated men, must be deemed, in polished life, rather lowly employment;—approachingArist. Polit. L. i. c. vii. too near to the class of occupations, which the Stagirite considers sordid and servile, as being exercised by the corporeal powers alone:—to avoid which, Sallust declares a decided preference to speculative over bodily activity; to the Historia Vitæ et Mortis.“vita in literis” over the “vita rusticana:” “quò mihi rectius videtur,” says he, “ingenii quàm virium opibus gloriam quærere.” Disclaiming that union of both, which we so much admire in the Athenian philosopher of the Scilluntian retreat, and his counterpart, the modern literary country gentleman; a fair example of an individual acting upon the twofold principle on which Mr. Addison regulated his conduct. “As a compound of soul and body, obliged to a double scheme of duties; and thinking that he has not fulfilled the business of the day, unless he has employed the one in labour and exercise, as well as the other in study and contemplation.”

“It is not onely called Idelnes,” says Sir Thomas Elyot, “wherin the body or mynde cesseth from laboure, but specially ydelnes is an omission of al honest exercise.”

Passing over, for the present, the objections of Petrarch, let us pause for a moment on the vituperations of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa.Sir T. Elyot’s The Governour, B. i. c. xi. So confessedly crabbed a gentleman as this “noble clerke of Almayn,” can add but little weight to the scanty file of semi-classical oppositionists. Admitting in his dedication to Furnatius his mental approximation to the canine qualities of the metamorphosed Queen of Troy, H. C. Agrippa in Dedicat. D. Aug. Furnatio.“adeò ut ex ipsâ indignatione fermè cum Trojanâ illâ Hecubâ versus sum in canem, ac nullarum virium sim ad benè dicendum, nil amplius memini nisi mordere, oblatrare, maledicere, conviciari,” &c., his verdict cannot be received as that of a candid and unprejudiced adversary. The general contempt with which he visits all the arts and sciences, deprives his De Vanit. et Incert. &c. c. lxxvii.anti-cynegetical calumnies of much of their poignancy, and renders his “ars crudelis et tota tragica, cujus voluptas est in morte et in sanguine, quam ipsa deberet refugere humanitas,”⁠[17] &c. scarce worthy of the courser’s notice.⁠[18]

The moderate and occasional recourse to field-diversions, with the same object that influenced Pliny in their pursuit, “ut animus agitatione motuque corporis excitetur,” is not reprehensible, nor inconsistent with the due cultivation of the mind, and the fulfilment of the higher duties of life.

But “there is an especiall need,” observes Christopher Wase, in the preface of his translation of Gratius, after much just praise of hunting, “to hold a strict reine over our affections, that this pleasure, which is allowable in its season, may not entrench upon other domesticall affaires. We must consider that it wastes much time, and although it have its own praise, being an honest recreation and exercise, yet it is not of the noblest parts of life. There is great danger lest wee bee transported with this pastime, and so ourselves grow wild, haunting the woods till wee resemble the beasts which are citizens of them,⁠[19] and, by continual conversation with dogs, become altogether addicted to slaughter and carnage, which is wholly dishonorable, being a servile employment. For as it is the privilege of man, who is endued with reason, and authorized in the law of his creation to subdue the beasts of the field, so to tyrannize over them is plainly brutish.”

When field amusements are allowed to engross the whole of our attention, and in their pursuit to enslave, as it were, the mind to the body; when they become the ἔργα of life instead of the πάρεργα, its daily occupation, instead of the occasional recreation of its leisure hours;⁠[20] they constitute, as Rittershusius has well observed, a culpable θηρομανία, and certainly tend, by devoting the attention exclusively to inferior objects, to abridge the intellect of that sustenance which it should occasionally derive from more refined and important studies. “Fateor insitam esse nobis corporis nostri caritatem:Senecæ Epist. xiv. fateor nos hujus gerere tutelam: non nego indulgendum illi, serviendum nego.”

With such ultra-sportsmen the translator has no community of sentiment: nor will they experience from common sense less severity of reproofPetrarchæ Remed. Utriusque Fortunæ, Lib. i. Dial. 32. than “Reason” bestows on them in the dialogue with “Joy” in Petrarch’s “Remedia Utriusque Fortunæ.” “Ad honestum nihil idonei,” says Ratio, “sylvas colunt, non vitam solitariam acturi, cui non minùs quàm politicæ se ineptos sciunt, sed feris, ac canibus, et volucribus convicturi, quod non facerent, nisi illis similitudine aliquâ juncti essent: qui, si ex hoc voluptatem quandam, seu solam temporis fugam quærunt, utrinque stulti, voti compotes forsan evaserint. Sin, nescio quam, seu ingenii, seu magnificentiæ gloriam aucupantur, errant,” &c.⁠[21]

The whole dialogue is an admirable rebuke of the licentious sporting in the days of this extraordinary genius.⁠[22] “Hic amor, hæc felicitas, et hoc totum, quod Creatori Deo, quod altrici patriæ, quod parentibus, quod amicis redditis? Quis vos ferat, ad aliud natos, in his vivere, si modo vivitis, hoc agentes?” says “Reason:” and I confess that I am unable and unwilling to furnish “Joy” with a reply of defence; approving, as I do, of the joint worship of Minerva and Diana, recommended by Plin. Epist. L. ix. 10.Tacitus to his correspondent Pliny, and of making the health of the body conducive to that of the mind: “ut sua menti constet sanitas,” says Christopher Wase to William Lord Herbert, “et justum corpori accedat robur.”

It must ever be borne in mind that the illustrious heroes of Xenophon’s classic file acquired not their renown by hunting prowess alone, but by its union with moral and intellectual endowments:Xenophon. Cyneg. c. i. ἐκ τῆς ἐπιμελείας τῆς τῶν κυνῶν καὶ κυνηγεσίων καὶ ἐκ τῆς ἄλλης παιδείας πολὺ διενεγκόντες κατὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐθαυμάσθησαν. Chiron himself was invested with the privileges and science of the chase on account of his moral worth, διὰ δικαίοτητα—for he was δικαιοτάτος Κενταύρων. Orph. Argon. v. 377.And the numerous disciples of the craft, distinguished in the annals of the world as practical sportsmen, from Cephalus and Æsculapius to Æneas and Achilles, left other claims on the notice of posterity than thoseXenophon. Cyneg. c. i. attached to their characters as μαθηταὶ κυνηγεσίων.⁠[23]