[Sidenote: Jul. Cæsar. Scaliger. Epidorpidum L. +iv.+]
videtur Natura parens hunc homini dedisse ludum, Suà obire manu retia, defigere varos, Hos cum docuit: cum accipitrem redire jussum Jucunda canes cum leporarios creabat: Nunquàm faciens frustrà aliquid carensve fine.
[Sidenote: Somerville, Chace. B. +iv.+]
The brute creation are man’s property, Subservient to his will, and for him made. As hurtful these he kills, as useful those Preserves; their sole and arbitrary king. Should he not kill, as erst the Samian sage Taught unadvised, and Indian Brachmans now As vainly preach; the teeming rav’nous brutes Might fill the scanty space of this terrene, Incumb’ring all the globe.
[Sidenote: Xenophon de Venat. c. +i.+]
[Sidenote: Hist. of Engl. Poetry, V. +ii.+]
Mr. Warton, the talented historian of English Poetry, a bookful Academic, and not a μαθητὴς κυνηγεσίων, acquits the hunter of the charge of barbarism, and acknowledges that “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.”
[Sidenote: Encyclopédie Méthodique sur les Chasses, avertissement.]
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. “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.
[Sidenote: Bell. Catal. c. +i.+]
In appreciating the authority of Sallust’s sentiments on the subject of field-sports, as given in the studied preface of his 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,
[Sidenote: Oppian. Halieut. L. +v.+ vs. 94.]
ὡς οὔτ’ ἠνορέης, οὔτ’ εἴδεος ἔπλετ’ ὄνειαρ τόσσον, ὅσον πραπίδων,
[Sidenote: Arist. Polit. L. +i.+ c. +vii.+]
[Sidenote: Historia Vitæ et Mortis.]
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;—approaching 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 “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.”
[Sidenote: Oppian.]
τῷ τις ἀεργίην δυστερπέα τῆλε διώκοι καὶ κραδίης καὶ χειρός.
[Sidenote: The Governour, B. +i.+ c. +xxvi.+]
“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.”
[Sidenote: Sir T. Elyot’s The Governour, B. +i.+ c. +xi.+]
[Sidenote: H. C. Agrippa in Dedicat. D. Aug. Furnatio.]
[Sidenote: De Vanit. et Incert. &c. c. +lxxvii.+]
Passing over, for the present, the objections of Petrarch, let us pause for a moment on the vituperations of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. 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, “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 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.
[Sidenote: Petr. Lotichii 2di Eclog. +i.+ Sarnis. vs. 10.]
Ipse etiam citharam Phœbus quandoque reponit: Et pharetras plectris, et mutat plectra pharetris.
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.”
[Sidenote: Cowper’s Task, B. +vi.+]
On Noah, and in him on all mankind The charter was conferr’d, by which we hold The flesh of animals in fee, and claim O’er all we feed on pow’r of life and death. But read the instrument, and mark it well: Th’ oppression of a tyrannous controul Can find no warrant there. Feed then, and yield Thanks for thy food. Carnivorous, through sin, Feed on the slain, but spare the living brute.
[Sidenote: Senecæ Epist. +xiv.+]
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: fateor nos hujus gerere tutelam: non nego indulgendum illi, serviendum nego.”
[Sidenote: Petrarchæ Remed. Utriusque Fortunæ, Lib. +i.+ Dial. 32.]