[Sidenote: Ms. ut supra.]
In =The Crafte of Hontyng=[6] by Gyfford and Twety, the greyhound is mentioned only once; and hare-coursing is not recorded at all.
[Sidenote: Hardyng’s Chronicle.]
The unpublished labours of the Duke of York,[7] “Edmonde, hyght of Langley,” contain much original and valuable information: and it is to be regretted that it is not rendered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.
[Sidenote: Script. illust. M. B. auct. I. Baleo Cent. 8. 611.]
[Sidenote: Oldys in Biograph. Britannica, in voce Caxton, note.]
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. And the Dame[9] being no ordinary personage—“Illustris fœmina, corporis et animi dotibus abundans, 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.
[Sidenote: Venat. Herculis Strozæ, &c. Francofort. 1582.]
[Sidenote: Adrian. Cardinal. Venat. Aldus, 1534.]
[Sidenote: Venat. et Aucup. per J. A. Lonicer. Francof. 1582.]
[Sidenote: P. Lotich. Secundi Solitariensis Poem. omnia. Burmanni Amstel. 1754.]
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,
Qui citharâ primus, qui primus carminis arte Inter erat vates, Teutonis ora, tuos.
[Sidenote: Natal. Comes de Venatione Aldi fil. Venet. 1551.]
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.
[Sidenote: Petri Angelii Bargæi Poemata omnia. Florent. 1568.]
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.
[Sidenote: C. Heresbachii Compendium Therouticæ universæ.]
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.
[Sidenote: H. Fracastorii Alcon, seu de Curâ Canum.]
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.
[Sidenote: M. A. Blondi de Canibus et Venat. libellus, Romæ 1544.]
[Sidenote: Joan. Darcii Venusini Canes Francof. 1582.]
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.”
[Sidenote: Album Dianæ, &c. Cadomi 1655.]
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:
[Sidenote: Alb. Dianæ &c. L. +i.+ p. 7.]
Nam neque defixi canis irretita coturnix Indicio, non insidiis oppressa Laconum Heu leporum virtus, brevis illa et avara voluptas, Et quorum nunquam cor est satiabile cædis Nobile venandi nomen meruére!
The courser will scarce recognize his favourite dog in the slanderous abstract misnomer of “Lacedæmonii pernix violentia monstri.”
[Sidenote: La Chasse du Loup. J. de Cl.]
[Sidenote: Turbervile’s B. of H. p. 246.]
[Sidenote: Countrey Contentments. Countrey Farme &c. &c.]
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]
[Sidenote: Wase’s Illustrations of Gratius p. 74.]
Turbervile, or whoever be the translator of Fouilloux, has appended an admirable breviary of coursing to “the booke of hunting:” and 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,
[Sidenote: J. Vanierii Præd. Rustic. Lib. +iv.+]
Pes illi gracilis, longa internodia crurum, Argutum caput, et levibus vis ignea plantis; Demissumque brevi pectus se colligit alvo.
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.