But it is time to cease both praise and reprehension: of the latter I have been sparing; of the former, perhaps, too liberal. Symmachus, “the wordy champion of expiring Paganism,” checks his friend and correspondent Agorius in boasting too much of hisSymmachi Epist. L. i. E. 53. “nodosa retia vel pennarum formidines, et sagaces canes, omnemque rem venaticam, meliorum oblitus;” and suggests “quare cum scribis, memento facundiæ tuæ modum ponere. Rustica sunt et inculta, quæ loqueris, ut venator esse credaris.” Wherefore, being myself addicted only to one branch of the craft, viz. that of “greyhound-hunting,” in the phrase of our “pedant king,”
I am fearful of falling into the error of Agorius, and becoming obnoxious to the same rebuke. Enough, therefore: and now for an example.—Will the bookful recluse, the sedentary and learned oppositionist qualify the scorn with which he views our varied course of occupation in the library and the field, if we show him that our opinions and practice Symmachi Epist. L. v. 6.“liberalia studia sylvestri voluptate distinguere” are supported by a renowned example of antiquity; and direct his attention to the latter and sequestered part of the life “secretum iter, et fallentis semita vitæ” of the elder Xenophon,Xenophon. Anab. L. v. in contradiction of the refined antipathies of Sallust?—bid him contemplate the rival of Plato and Thucydides in his delightful retreat at Scillus, “under the protection of the temporal sovereignty of Lacedæmon, and the spiritual tutelage of Diana; diversifying the more refined pleasures of his studious hours with the active amusements of the field; breaking his dogs, training his horses, and attending to the breed of stock; registering the observations of his personal experience in these healthful pursuits with his own immortal pen; and affording an example to scholars in all ages, that they should not disdain to refresh their vigour, and renew their animation, by allowing the unharnessed faculties to recreate themselves freely in country sports, and exercise themselves agreeably in country business.”
I wish it were in our power to enrol the name of the accomplished Athenian among the first patrons of our particular branch of field-sports; but the greyhound was unknown to the son of Gryllus. We may, however, place the honour of the leash under the early patronage of his celebrated namesake: whose talents, as a military chief, were distinguished in the age in which he lived; whose works, as a philosopher and historian, have been transmitted with reputation to posterity, and continue to attract sufficient attention from the literary world, to embolden us in directing the notice of such of our opponents as consider the courser in a state of degraded existence, to the younger Xenophon, in his twofold capacity of a man of literature, and a patron of the leash. And we may conclude from the latter having been considered worthy the illustration of his pen, that coursing was not then classed with the “servilia officia” of rural life.
Before I proceed to the reasons which have induced me to lay before the public the following translation, I cannot resist availing myself of the opportunity, which a defence of the courser’s pursuit affords, of transcribing a spirited and highly poetical production of the late Mr. Barnard, of Brantinghamthorpe,[24] breathing the refined sentiments of a gifted scholar and ardent courser, fired at the idea of his favourite sport, his greyhounds, and his mountain thoughts being lightly or disdainfully received in the world’s esteem!
MY GREYHOUNDS.
But enough—
By my literary friends of the leash, who will alone probably condescend to open the following little treatise, it will be expected, after this too prolix defence of active field-amusements, and too selfish gratification of personal regret, that I should particularly state the reasons which have induced me to devote a few intervals of leisure to the version and illustration of an ancient courser, dignified byDecline and Fall, Vol. vii. c. 42. Mr. Gibbon with the title of “the eloquent and philosophic Arrian.”
But an objection in limine must be first answered to a modern reader giving up any of the “horæ vacivæ” of his library even to the perusal of the cynegetical writers of antiquity, much less to their collation; as treating forsooth of lowly animals, in their nature irrational and ferine.
Should any one address me in the language of the old nurse to Phædra—
or of Menedemus to Chremes—
I would reply, that I do not consider these authors as affording unsuitable mental recreation to any literary gentleman, be his vocation what it may; nor as rendering him amenable to the charge of Dr. Young of beingLove of Fame, Sat. i. “a polite apostate.”[25] Saint Chrysostom, the most eloquent of the Greek fathers of the church, was so enamoured of Aristophanes, notwithstanding the malignity of his satire, his occasional obscenities, and licentious morals, as “to wake with him at his studies, and to sleep with him under his pillow:” and it was never “objected either to his piety or his preaching, even in those times of pure zeal and primitive religion.” To close the ancient cynegetica against the modern student, merely because the lowly quadruped, that gives a name to such works, forms a part of their subject-matter, pregnant in every page with innumerable other beauties, unconnected with the poor tyke, but scattered around him, would be (in an expressive simile of the Sir T. Elyot’s The Governour, B. i. c. xiii.author of “the Governour”) like “prohibiting a man to come into a fayre gardein, lest in gadring good and holsome herbes, he may happen to be stung with a netle”—“Semblaby yf a man doe rede wanton matter, myxt with wysdom, he putteth the worst under fote, and sorteth out the beste.”
But the “Scriptores Rei Venaticæ” are, of all others on the classic file, most chaste and pure of sentiment. The character bestowed by Price on Gratius in particular, is applicable to all collectively:
Their eminent beauties in poetry and prose, their fine moral reflections and religious aspirations, will bear comparison with the brightest productions of Greek and Roman literature, and can only be lightly esteemed, because they are little known. If a candid and susceptible reader, competent to enjoy their beauties, shall, after a perusal, deem his hours of recreative study mispent, I will acknowledge that I have lost a few days of my life. But he, who pretends to decide their claims to attention, must have a mind sensible of the beauties of nature, and of didactic poetry and prose, devoted to the illustration of objects in rural life: and so far, I think, from deeming it beneath the notice of man to mark the hand of Providence among the inferior beings of Creation, and to contemplate the fixed regulations under which they support the economy of the animal world, he will allow that it is rather the entertainment of a correctly-constituted mind to admire the originals in the natural world, and the descriptions of their habits, and the modes of applying them to the service and amusement of mankind in the works of learned men. With such sketches of animal life the cynegetical writers abound: and Oppian, more especially, with the poetic pen of a philosophic naturalist, deduces from the habits of irrational creatures precepts worthy of enrolment in the code of a moralist.
With such instructions, too, for rendering animal powers subservient to the recreation and support of mankind, the works of Xenophon, Arrian, and others De Re Venaticâ are plentifully stored.
Let us hear then no more of the unworthiness of these authors or their subjects—Aristot. de Part. Animal. L. i. c. v.διὸ δεῖ μὴ δυσχεραίνειν παιδικῶς τὴν περὶ τῶν ἀτιμωτέρων ζώων ἐπίσκεψιν. I know the study of them to be eminently entertaining, and believe it to be equally innocent and instructive. Our higher and more grave studies are pleasantly diversified by such intermixture, and the mind returns from its lighter to its more serious avocations with renewed vigour.—Lucian. Hist. Veræ, L. i.τοῖς περὶ λόγους ἐσπουδακόσιν ἡγοῦμαι προσήκειν μετὰ τὴν πολλὴν τῶν σπουδαιοτέρων ἀνάγνωσιν ἀνεῖναί τε τὴν διάνοιαν, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἔπειτα κάματον ἀκμαιοτέραν παρασκευάζειν.
The amusement derived from the Cynegeticus of Arrian, its terse, elegant language, and valuable information, has been my principal inducement to present it to the patrons of the leash in an English dress; that those who might never have read the original, and might be unwilling, or, like Miramont in “the Elder Brother,”Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Elder Brother, act ii. sc. i. (who could “speak no Greek,” and held “the sound sufficient to confirm an honest man” without a knowledge of its sense) unable to peruse it, might have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the first author who had treated systematically of coursing. For “those,” says Christopher Wase in his preface to Gratius, “which are curious artisans, doe not content themselves that they have attained to so great perfection in their art, but are extremely pleased to look back and reflect upon the periods and steps whereby that art hath made its graduall progresse; if perchance by comparing the former with the latter, even the present state of it may be advanced.”
It was my wish that the copy should read like an original: and if I have failed in this respect, as I fear and feel I have, (for such an object is attended with far greater difficulties of attainment than the inexperienced may suppose,) the failure must be attributed to a fearfulness of assuming too great a licence of translation, and departing too far from the letter of the original—a fear of paraphrasing instead of translating my author; whose lively and spirited language indicates a power of description, and accurate knowledge of his subject, to which no translation could do justice, but by as faithful an adherence as the different idioms of different languages would allow. Under this impression, I have spared no pains in rendering the version with fidelity, deeming truth and perspicuity more essential than embellishment of language. For it has been well observed by Mr. Pope in his preface to the Iliad, that “it is the first grand duty of an interpreter to give his author entire and unmaimed.” And again, “it is certain no literal translation can be just to an excellent original in a superior language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have done) that a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; which is no less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by deviating into the modern manners of expression. If there be sometimes a darkness, there is often a light in antiquity, which nothing better preserves than a version almost literal.”
If however this translation should be deemed too close and literal, and greater freedom of language desired in a little coursing manual; I am willing to plead guilty to the fault. Still if its style and manner can neither be defended nor excused on the grounds stated, I trust they will be pardoned, because they are acknowledged.
I am fully sensible that what I have done, might have been done by others far better. For though an occasional worshipper of the classic Minerva—“parcus ... cultor et infrequens.” I know that there are, under the tutelage of Diana, many disciples who have been more richly endowed by the goddess of wisdom, and are better qualified for this undertaking. If, however, I have the good fortune to direct the attention of the more learned patrons of the leash to a manual scarce known among them, and to excite the same degree of interest in their minds, which its first perusal excited in my own; I shall rest satisfied that the errors and deficiencies of this attempt will induce them to devote superior knowledge of the Greek language, and greater experience in coursing, to decorating the Athenian Sportsman with an English dress, more becoming the antiquity of his claim to distinction.
Individuals possessed of great accuracy of knowledge in Greek literature, or what Schneider calls “ἀκρίβεια Græcæ doctrinæ,” united to extensive experience in field-sports, must necessarily be rare; and till such shall undertake an improvement on the present version, it may pass its ordeal of utility with the public. Moderate love of the diversion, and moderate experience in the field or on the plain, I conceive to be as indispensable as an acquaintance with the language of the original text to the translator of a courser’s enchiridion, or he will not work in it con amore, Demetrii Constantinop. Hieracosophii i.(πρόδηλον γὰρ εἰ μή τις ἔρως ἐπί τινι παρακολουθήσει πράγματι, ἀμήχανον τοῦτο κατορθωθῆναι,) nor acquit himself to the satisfaction of his readers.
To classic coursers I would particularly recommend the perusal and reperusal of the Greek original; for I am confident that it is far more worthy of their attention than the English version; which “is submitted to the correction and amendment of those worthy and well-knowing gentlemen,” under the hope that it may escape the severity of acrimonious criticism, as the work of a retired countryman, with no learned resources at hand, beyond a library moderately furnished with classic authorities, and writings illustrative of some departments of natural history. I wish I had been endowed with all the qualities essential to a more perfect performance. But such as it is, “I crave,” with an old Chronicler, “that it may be taken in good part. I wishe I had bene furnished with so perfect instructions, and so many good gifts, that I might have pleased all kindes of men, but that same being so rare a thing in any one of the best, I beseech thee (gentle reader) not to looke for it in me the meanest.”
Difficulty has occurred in rendering the ancient technical terms of a courser’s manual, with any degree of elegance, in a modern tongue—“ornari res ipsa negat.” This has partly arisen—
and partly from the corresponding English terms being debased into vulgarity by an usage too familiar to be pleasant to polite ears. Expressions of this kind in Arrian are occasioned by the accuracy which he affects in the most minute particulars connected with the subject of coursing, the shape of Celtic dogs, the discipline of the kennel and field, the breeding of whelps, &c.
In relation to this and other defects, it is requested of all my brethren of the leash, in behalf of the oldest courser who has written on their manly diversion, that whatever may appear inelegant, dull, or uninteresting in the following little work, may be laid to the account of the translator: the errors of whose style and execution ought not to affect the intrinsic merits of the Cynegeticus.
Many classical quotations have been introduced in the notes to elucidate and enliven the text; some in their original language, others in the English tongue. Where the former appeared more illustrative and expressive, it has been retained. The latter has been occasionally substituted, where the passages selected conveyed information acceptable to an English courser, or a version of acknowledged merit faithfully conveyed the sense of the original. And in a few instances the original and translation have been introduced in juxta-position, to enable the reader to judge of their respective excellencies. To this too I have been “moved,” as Wase very nicely observes, by a wish that the quotations from the dead languages “may be understood with ease, and the delight of attending to the elegancies in them rather doubled than intermitted, by adjoyning a translation in equal consort:” “wherein,” as he adds, “I shall have pleased either those that have an affection to see our language enriched with the wit of former ages; or on the other side, even those men whose inclinations do rather move to look upon the native beauties of every piece.”
The references to antiquity, which have imperceptibly increased to some extent,—“nec dubitamus multa esse, quæ et nos præterierint, homines enim sumus, et occupati officiis,”—have not been introduced for the sake of ostentatious display of knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, like those
but that the classical courser might be induced “antiquos exquirere fontes,”
to compare the beauties and defects of the several authors who have treated on the same favourite subject; and that the issue of the comparison might be the illustration of the Nicomedian courser.
To the classic reader (“cui nihil neque non lectum est, neque non intellectum”) no apology is necessary for the number of the extracts made from writers who must ever be prized, while pure and correct taste prevails: and to the courser, who with his academic gown has laid on the shelves of his library the authors of Greece and Rome, to be no more disturbed, like “the rude forefathers” of the rustic cemetery,
and who “wonders” with Sir John Daw in “The Silent Woman,” that “those fellows have such credit with gentlemen;” there is a summary power vested in himself, of reducing the number to the measure of his own taste and capacity. Such, however, not having been the fate of Churchill “The Author.”“the crabbed authors” with myself, I confess that I have found it difficult to check my pen in transcribing apposite and explanatory quotations from these early friends. For in the language of old Gervase, “the minde being preoccupied and busied with a vertuous search, is ever ready to catch hold of whatsoever can adorne or illustrate the excellencie of the thing in which it is imployed.”
This, I trust, will be received as an apology; and that the practical notes interspersed with the classical, will redeem my character as a moderate amateur of the sport, and give admission to this translation on the courser’s table.
With the exception of Somerville, “who has shown,” as Dr. Johnson observes, “by the subjects which his poetry has adorned, that it is practicable to be at once a skilful sportsman and a man of letters,” I have extracted very little from writers of the last century: but the natural historians, poetic and prosaic authors of the olden time, whose works are not of very common occurrence in our libraries, have afforded much information confirmatory of Arrian’s opinions. These selections, as well as those from ancient English authors, incorporated with this preface, have been left in their original spelling, so happily expressed by Specimens of English Poets, Vol. i. p. 11.Mr. Ellis as “that fortuitous combination of letters, which the original transcribers or printers had assigned to them.”
A knowledge of what others have written on a subject on which we ourselves are about to write appears indispensable. “Although I were very much experienced,” says the translator of Gratius, “in any art, and were apt to conceive a good opinion of my own ability therein, yet being to publish a discourse concerning it, I was obliged to inform myself of what others had formerly proposed in the same matter, as far as may conveniently be attained. There are some who esteem it glory to be thought to have declined any other helps but their own wit, which I should charge upon myself as negligence.” Far be such self-sufficiency from me! I am ever glad to avail myself of the opinions and sentiments of others; and in so doing, to give the merit of originality to its rightful owner, and not to a modern plagiarist. Plin. in Præfat. Vespas.“Est enim benignum ut arbitror, et plenum ingenui pudoris, fateri per quos profeceris, non ut plerique ex iis, quos attigi, fecerunt. Scito enim conferentem autores me deprehendisse à juratissimis et proximis veteres transcriptos ad verbum, neque nominatos,” &c.
Few will think me sparing of citation: but if there be such a one, and well disposed to a brother courser, Ausonius Symmacho. Griphus.“si bonus est, quæ omisi, non oblita mihi, sed præterita existimet. Dehinc qualiscunque est, cogitet secum, quàm multa de his non reperisset, si ipse quæsisset. Sciat enim me non omnibus erutis usum;” I hope he will not add with Ausonius, “et quibusdam oblatis abusum.”
Should curiosity induce any one to inquire who is the translator of this treatise, let it suffice, that he is an humble individual of retired habits, too utterly unknown to the world to expect that any additional interest will be imparted to his labours by the publication of the name of their author:—that he is in the enjoyment of the ease and freedom of a private scene, where, in the felicitous language of Sir W. Temple, On Gardening Miscell. Pt. ii.“a man may go his own way and his own pace:”—that his pursuits at home and abroad are rationally diversified. “For honest pleasures,” like Brathwait’s gentleman, “he is neither so Stoicall as wholly to contemne them, nor so Epicureall as too sensually to affect them.” “There is no delight on mountaine, vale, coppice, or river, whereof he makes not an usefull and contemplative pleasure;”
But his “hour-beguiling pastime,” when not occupied in any of the more important duties of life, Plin. Panegyr. Trajan. 81.“si quandò cum influentibus negotiis paria fecit, instar refectionis,” is that of a theoretical and practical courser—desirous of acquiring, in the sedentary retirement of his library, the science of active enjoyment in the field; and of elucidating the mysteries of the leash, and the pertinent anecdotes of animal biography, by collecting in one point of view the scattered glimmerings of classical antiquity, and the illustrations of more modern days, relative to an elegant and manly diversion:—directing the whole under the guidance of experience, and the name of the father of the leash, to the advancement of human recreation.
The translator has his hack, his greyhound, and his slipper, (κυναγωγὸς,) participating of the unimportant character of their master, and equally devoid of interest in the eyes of the public. All, therefore, are consigned to the same fate, and merged in one common namelessness; spite of the example of Hippamon of old, in the metrical commemoration of his sporting establishment:
With regard to the Appendix,
I have only a few remarks to make. To many, though mere sciolists in natural history, it must have appeared, during their progress in classical reading, that much ignorance of the varieties of the canine race is shown by annotators. With the gentlemen è societate Jesu, and others who have favoured us with their expositions of the ancients, there is too great an inclination to generalize both as to the names and properties of the canine tribe. The “veloces Spartæ catuli”[26] are all “lévriers,” though there was not, according to Arrian, (and he is supported by Blumenbach,) a greyhound in the whole of ancient Greece: and certainly as “the babbling echo mocked them” in their quick-scented pursuit of the Laconian quarry, they could be no more entitled to the appellation, than any sharp-nosed mongrel, bred in modern days, between a sagacious yelping hound, and a prick-eared shepherd’s cur. Upon the same principle of generalization, all truculent Molossi, C. Custodes, Pecuarii, &c. are by these worthies at once dismissed as Gallicè “dogues,” Anglicè “mastiffs,” without an attempt to particularize their respective attributes in warfare, or the chase, or the economy of rural life.
This confusion of nomenclature might pass at school, but not longer. Subsequent experience, and the reflection of maturer years would direct the attention of many literary ruralists to the occasional correction of errors in the canine vocabulary. Such at least has been the case with the writer of these pages; and he conceives that errors, apparent to him, must have been manifest to others. Nor is a misapprehension of some of the names and qualities of the individuals of this multifarious genus
to be wondered at in scholiasts and commentators; when we consider their monkish habits of indolent seclusion, and how unfit and unwilling they were to ascertain by actual experiment, whether Pliny was correct in affirming that Minerva was as fond of traversing the hills as Diana. A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, &c.“These bookish fellowes,” in the words of Sir John Harrington, “could judge of no sports, but within the verge of the fair fields of Helicon, Pindus, and Parnassus.” Their practice in the field was not commensurate with their scholastic knowledge. Very few carried their note-books, like the learned and indefatigable Vlitius to the covert side, and examined the difficulties of rural poetry, and obscure allusions to canine instinct in the field of experience. And unless they did so, they had little chance of becoming acquainted with the sylvan goddess, who tells us in her petition to her sire, that she rarely descends from her mountain haunts into the cities of men;
Wherever the different sporting dogs of antiquity are alluded to, or mentioned by name in the Cynegeticus of Arrian, or the classical works to which I have had occasion to refer in illustration of it, I have endeavoured to clear up some of the obscurity, in which they were enveloped; by classifying varieties, and in a few cases even individuals, and comparing ancient types with modern representatives. This I have attempted more especially in relation to the ancient British dogs, and the Celtic greyhound (the subject of Arrian’s Treatise), as being of paramount interest to the British courser.
The observations and extracts on these points, more trite probably than recondite, have been thrown together in an appendix, which I hope may be found amusing to any literary sportsman who may condescend to peruse them.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
AND
BIOGRAPHICAL
NOTICES.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE
OF THE
CYNEGETICUS,
OR
WORK ON COURSING.
The Cynegeticus was originally written by Arrian, in imitation of Xenophon’s Treatise de Venatione, to supply the lacunæ of that work in the particular department of Coursing.
The manuscript seems to have been neglected in the Vatican library for several years after it had been first discovered, in consequence of its bearing the name of Xenophon: for the persons who accidentally met with it, not being aware of Arrian’s assumption of that title, took no pains to examine it, under an impression that it was the edited Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and not a new and unknown treatise on a different branch of the same subject, by an author of the same assumed name, a pseudo-Xenophon.
We are told by Mausacus that Rigaltius intended to have edited it with the Scriptores de Re Accipitrariâ et de Curâ Canum, (the first edition of which he published in 1612, with a forged epistle in Castilian and Latin from Aquila Symmachus and Theodotion to a Ptolemy, King of Egypt,) but the printers refused their consent, unless he added a Latin translation; a desideratum which was afterwards supplied by Holstein in the first edition. Henry Stephens, however, had previously perused the unpublished treatise, and given to the world, in his Schediasmata, some observations on different passages.
Holstein, the first editor, was a celebrated scholar of his day, and is commemorated in the Sept. Illustr. Vir. Poemata as—
His edition issued from the Paris press of Sebastian and Gabriel Cramoisy in the year 1644. The Greek text, and version attached to it, were amended by Blancard in his Amsterdam edition of 1683; which contains also the minor works of Arrian, and the pertinent schediasmata of Henry Stephens above mentioned. My library affords no editions but the above two, and the accurate reprint of Schneider by the University of Oxford in 1817. The last is certainly the best edition of the Cynegeticus of Arrian which I have seen. The Clarendon press also published in the same volume the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and his Opuscula Politica; the same collection of the minor works as Zeune comprehended in one volume, printed at Leipsic, 1778.
M. Gail is reported to have published a French translation of the work, with critical notes and dissertations, at Paris, in 1801: but, notwithstanding repeated applications to the Parisian booksellers, I have not been able to procure a copy. Equally unsuccessful have been my endeavours to obtain from the same source Defermat’s version, published by Hortemels of Paris, in 1690. The latter, however, in consequence of the literary character given of its author by Belin de Ballu, in his prolegomena to Oppian, I do not much regret. It accompanied a French version of the two last books of the Cynegetics of the Cilician poet, which are stated to abound in errors of translation, and to be performed in a tedious and barbarous style by Defermat, eminent as a mathematician, but of moderate attainment in Greek literature.
The present version was completed before I was aware of any prior attempt to translate the Cynegeticus into English: the first notice of which, in the partial labours of Mr. Blane, was derived from Schneider’s annotations. I do not believe any other to exist in the English language, with the exception of such fragments of the treatise as may have been occasionally made to speak English, on the emergency of a periodical publication needing an article on Coursing; or a literary sportsman wishing to enliven his communications by a reference to the manual, and quoting it in his vernacular tongue.
Mr. Blane’s attempt did not extend apparently to the whole treatise. It is in parts inaccurately executed, and omits numerous sentences, where he professes to translate; and whole chapters in sequence, where we can see no reason for omission. The fourth, and ten following chapters to the fourteenth inclusive, and the twenty-third and twelve following chapters to the thirty-fifth inclusive, are entirely omitted by this capricious translator. Since, then, in a work consisting of only thirty-five chapters, he has, without assigning any cause, passed over twenty-four unnoticed, nearly all of them important to practical coursers, some evincing the kindly feelings of their author, (as for instance, the one containing the affectionate history of his beloved dog Hormé,) and others most honourable to his humanity, and confirmative of the purity of his religious faith, operative in a heathen breast, (as the two closing chapters, showing, amidst much fabulous allusion, his unreserved acknowledgment of human dependence on divine aid, and the certainty of evil and misfortune being consequent on irreligion and moral transgression,) I hope a complete translation of this ancient courser’s enchiridion will not be considered an useless undertaking.