[13] Contained in his work entitled “Countrey Contentments.” In addition to which, “The Countrey Farme,” by the same author, a compilation from the French, will be read with amusement.
[14]
[Sidenote: Oppian Halieut. +i.+ vs. 28.]
Τερπωλὴ δ’ ἕπεται θήρῃ πλέον ἠέπερ ἱδρώς.
[Sidenote: Vlitii Venatio Novantiqua.]
Coursing has ever been held an honourable and gentlemanly amusement in Great Britain, from its earliest annals to the present time. Nor can I discover any authority for the truth of Vlitius’s opinion, as given in his note on the Veltraha of Gratius. “Ne ideò Vertragis suis sagaces posthabeat ille Xenophon: nam hodiè in Angliâ sagaces nobilissimi quique exercent; Vertrago autem leporem conficere, indignum benè nato parum abest quin habeatur.” Such never was the opinion entertained of “greyhound hunting,” in King James’s phrase:—indeed the farther we go back into the history of the leash, the higher it ranked in the scale of British field-sports. See the “Constitutiones Canuti Regis de forestâ”—and Blount’s Ancient Tenures passim, for instances of the high repute in which the courser’s hound has ever been held in Great Britain.
[15] The reader will be amused with Simon Latham’s epilogue to the third edition of his “Faulconry,” wherein he combats (for he wrote in ticklish times, 1658) with his usual quaintness of style and illustration, the notion of the sinfulness of rural sports: inferring that they may “be lawfully and conscientiously used with moderation by a magistrate or minister, or lawyer or student, or any other seriously employed, which in any function heat their brains, waste their bodies, weaken their strength, weary their spirits; that as a means (and blessing from God) by it their decayed strength may be restored, their vital and animal spirits quickened, refreshed, and revived, their health preserved, and they better enabled (as a bow unbended for shooting) to the discharging of their weighty charges imposed upon them.”
[16] Aristot. de Polit. L. +i.+ c. +v.+ plato de legibus l. +vii.+ Xenophon. Cyropæd. L. +i.+ c. +v.+ l. +viii.+ c. +xii.+ respub. lacedæm. c. +iii.+ cyneget. c. +i.+ +xii.+ +xiii.+ Polybius Hist. L. +xxxi.+ jul. pollux onomast. l. +v.+ Præfat. Commodo.—Cicero de Nat. D. L. +ii.+ de officiis l. +i.+ horat. l. +i.+ epist. +xviii.+ virgil. æneid. l. +vii.+ +ix.+ Seneca de Provid. c. +ii.+ plinii panegyr. traj. d.—justin. hist. epit. l. +xxxvii.+ Symmach. Epist. L. +v.+ Ep. 66.
It will be readily ceded that the amatory expostulation of Sulpitia to her dear Cherinthus,
[Sidenote: Tibulli Eleg. L. +iv.+ 3.]
Sed procul abducit venandi devia cura O pereant sylvæ, deficiantque canes! Quis furor est, quæ mens, densos indagine colles Claudentem teneras lædere velle manus? Quidve juvat furtim latebras intrare ferarum, Candidaque hamatis crura notare rubis?
and the epistle of Ausonius to the ruralist Theon,
[Sidenote: Ausonii Epist. +iv.+ 39.]
Sed tu parce feris venatibus, et fuge nota Crimina sylvarum: ne sis Cinyreïa proles, Accedasque iterùm Veneri plorandus Adonis;
are too jocular to place Tibullus and the poet of Bourdeaux on the side of the Catilinarian historian.
[17] The plaintive poet of “The Task,” B. +iii.+ has seemingly borrowed from Agrippa’s page the memorable crimination of the hunter’s pursuit:
[Sidenote: Cowper’s The Garden.]
Detested sport, That owes its pleasures to another’s pain; That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks Of harmless nature, &c.
[18]
[Sidenote: J. Lipsii Saturnal. Sermon. L. +i.+ c. 7.]
I purposely omit all notice of the “Venatio Amphitheatralis,” or “V. in arenâ” of ancient Rome; of which Tertullian, Augustin, Chrysostom, and the Christian Cicero, Lactantius, have written with merited reprobation. “Cum viderent pietatis damno, addictum devinctumque populum his ludis; passim invecti in eos, ut libidinis, sævitiæque fontes; et bene illi.” Not a word can be advanced in palliation of these brutal outrages of humanity,
[Sidenote: Prudentius.]
illa Amphitheatralis spectacula tristia pompæ!
[Sidenote: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, c. +iv.+]
[Sidenote: Cyprian. ad Donatum.]
wherein man was “butcher’d to make a Roman holiday”—“Homo occiditur ad hominis voluptatem.” With this monstrous variety of Venatio, so called κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, and recorded as such with horror, we have nothing to do; with its abettors under any qualified form, the modern frequenters of the cock-pit or bear-garden, the heroes of a bull-bait, and patrons of mercenary pugilists, the rivals of the “municipalis arenæ perpetui comites” of Juvenal’s days, we have no sentiments in common. We have hailed with exultation the victory already effectuated, or in course of gradual achievement, over the ferocious barbarities of the amphitheatre, and the semi-pagan cruelties of more modern spectacles—a victory that is attempering the pastimes of the English people to the religion and morality of the age; and we sincerely deplore the existence of the θεάτρον κυνηγετικὸν of Dio, under any modification, in any part of the civilized world.
[Sidenote: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, c. +i.+ s. 68.]
The Sabbath comes, a day of blessed rest; What hallows it upon this Christian shore? Lo! it is sacred to a solemn feast: Hark! heard you not the forest monarch’s roar? Crashing the lance, he snuffs the spouting gore Of man and steed, o’erthrown beneath his horn; The throng’d arena shakes with shouts for more; Yells the mad crowd o’er entrails freshly torn, Nor shrinks the female eye, nor ev’n affects to mourn.
[Sidenote: K. Henry VI. Pt. +ii.+ act +ii.+ sc. 1.]
Let Christianity transfuse its lenient spirit into all our sports, and instead of the amphitheatrical entertainments, and barbarian amusements of infidels, let us have such as are congenial to the humanity of Christians. Let us be the champions of rational recreation, not of brutal gratification;—the friends of man, and not unnecessarily the enemies of inferior animals;—spectators in our temperate and innocent diversions of the dog’s innate faculties and prowess for the seizure of the destined animals of the chase—“to see how God in all his creatures works,” and witnesses of “the curious search or conquest of one beast over another, persued by a naturall instinct of enmitie;—” how
[Sidenote: Rokeby, c. +iii.+ 1.]
The slow hound wakes the fox’s lair, The greyhound presses on the hare;
but not hostile instigators of canine ferocity to the heartless maiming and slaying an unnatural prey—a species of animal conflict never intended by creative wisdom; and wherein violence is done to natural instinct to minister to man’s unhallowed sport.
[19]
[Sidenote: H. C. Agrippæ de Vanitate &c. c. +lxxvii.+]
Cui dum nimium insistunt, ipsi abjectâ humanitate feræ efficiuntur, morumque prodigiosâ perversitate, tanquam Actæon mutantur in naturam belluarum.
[20]
[Sidenote: Βασιλικὸν Δῶρον, B. +iii.+]
“In using either of these games observe that moderation,” says King James to Prince Henry, “that ye slip not therewith the houres appointed for your affaires, which ye ought ever precisely to keepe; remembering that these games are but ordained for you, in enabling you for your office, for the which ye are ordained,” &c.
[21]
[Sidenote: J. Firmici Astronomic. L. +v.+ c. +viii.+]
According to the decisions of judicial astrology in casting nativities, Julius Firmicus remarks that the following personages, “equorum nutritores, accipitrum, falconum, cæterarumque avium, quæ ad aucupia pertinent, similiter et Molossorum, Vertagrorum, et qui sunt ad venationes accomodati,” being born when the planet Venus is in Aquarius, are incapable of application to any more laudable pursuit than hunting and hawking.
[22]
[Sidenote: De Incert. et Vanit. &c. c. +lxxvii.+]
The chasseurs of Agrippa’s days, laical and clerical, were equally reprehensible. From the Thebans, this literary Timonist tells us, the worst of men, Venation passed to the Trojans, not much better, and thence to Greece and Rome, brutalizing the inhabitants of the earth in its progress—“Tandem hæc exercitia in se reverâ servilia et mechanica eo usque evecta sunt, ut positis quibusque liberalibus studiis, hodie prima nobilitatis elementa atque progressus sint, illis ducibus ad summum gradum perveniatur: hodieque ipsa regum et principum vita, ipsa etiam (proh dolor!) abbatum, episcoporum, cæterorumque ecclesiæ præfectorum religio, tota inquam venatio est,” &c.
[23]
[Sidenote: La Fauconnerie de Messire Arthelouche de Alagona.]
The disastrous casualties that have befallen divers of the worshipful but rash disciples of Chiron and his compeers are recorded _in terrorem_ by a Sicilian amateur of falconry. Will the timid courser venture to mount his “smart hack or Zetland shelty,” after reading the following summary of these fatalities? “Meleager en perdit la vie, pour la victoire rapportée sur le sanglier de Calidoine. Le bel Adonis fut tiré par un sanglier. Actéon fut dévoré de ses propres chiens. Cephale y tua sa chère Procris, et Acaste en fut interdict, ayant occis le fils du Roy qui luy avoit esté donné en charge, comme fut Brutus pour avoir tué son père Sylvius par mesgarde. Un Empereur fut occis par la beste qu’il poursuivoit. Un Roy en courant à la chasse se cassa le col en tombant de cheval.” The legitimacy of the inference drawn by Le Conseiller et Chambellan du Roy de Sicile is doubtful—“Que qui craindra ces dangereux effectz qu’il s’adonne à la vollerie, où il trouvera sans doubte plus grand plaisir.” The superior pleasure of the latter is as equivocal as its inferior danger; and pursued to excess, I should think, must share equality of peril and of blame.