Part 29

My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew’d, so sanded, and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee’d, and dew-lap’d, like Thessalian bulls; Slow in pursuit; but match’d in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never halloo’d to, nor cheer’d with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.

The vigorous and fleet Leverarius being a supposed representative of some ancient types, I cite the masterly picture of Somerville for the purpose of comparison with the classic poets of the Chase:

See there with countenance blithe, And with a courtly grin, the fawning hound Salutes thee cowering; his wide opening nose Upwards he curls, and his large sloe-black eyes Melt in soft blandishments, and humble joy; His glossy skin, or yellow-pied, or blue, In lights or shades by nature’s pencil drawn, Reflects the various tints; his ears and legs Fleckt here and there, in gay enamell’d pride, Rival the speckled pard; his rush-grown tail O’er his broad back bends in an ample arch; On shoulders clean, upright and firm he stands; His round cat-foot, straight hams, and wide-spread thighs, And his low-dropping chest, confess his speed, His strength, his wind, or on the steepy hill, Or far-extended plain; in every part So well-proportion’d, that the nicer skill Of Phidias himself can’t blame thy choice.

The Talbot, whose portrait is also sketched by the Latin poet of Barga, as well as by the authors cited, is at present fallen into disrepute—his slowness of foot being scarce compensated by his keenness of scent. The fleeter Leverarius, whose consimilarity with the Gratian Petronius almost approaches to identity, was apparently unknown to M. A. Biondi; for he holds it quite impossible (like the elder Xenophon in regard to the fair capture of the hare with his ἀλωπεκίδες at force) that any hounds should have speed sufficient to run down a fox, without the aid of wily instruments of destruction. But the largest varieties of Somerville’s last picture are found a match for the arch-felon, “vulpem captare dolosam,”—the only approach to the modern mode of pursuing whom, which the classics afford, is in the fourth book of Oppian’s Cynegetics, where the κύνες ἀολλέες are evidently a pack of hounds, though we look in vain for the well-mounted hunters;

κερδὼ δ’ οὔτε λόχοισιν ἁλώσιμος, οὔτε βρόχοισιν, οὔτε λίνοις· δεινὴ γὰρ ἐπιφροσύνῃσι νοῆσαι, δεινὴ δ’ αὖτε κάλωα ταμεῖν, ὑπὸ δ’ ἅμματα λῦσαι, καὶ πυκινοῖσι δόλοισιν ὀλισθῆσαι θανάτοιο· ἀλλὰ κύνες μιν ἄειραν ἀολλέες, οὐδ’ ἄρ’ ἐκεῖνοι καὶ κρατεροί περ ἐόντες ἀναιμωτεὶ δαμάσαντο.

In no case does he fall an easy prey to the disturbers of his cunningly-wrought latibulum:

μάλ’ ἀρήϊος ἐν πραπίδεσσι, καὶ πινυτὴ ναίει πυμάτοις ἐνὶ φωλειοῖσιν, ἑπταπύλους οἴξασα δόμους, τρητάς τε καλιὰς τηλόθ’ ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων, μή μιν θηρήτορες ἄνδρες ἀμφὶ θύρῃ λοχόωντες ὑπὸ βροχίδεσσιν ἄγωνται· ἀργαλέη γενύεσσι καὶ ἀντία δηρίσασθαι θηρσί τ’ ἀρειοτέροισι, καὶ ἀγρευτῆρσι κύνεσσιν.

Even when, with the din of huntsmen and hounds, driven into nets, the entangled felon, according to Martial, still fights it out, to the no little discomfiture and injury of his canine antagonists;

Hic olidam clamosus ages in retia vulpem, Mordebitque tuos sordida præda canes...

Identical with the least of the hound tribe of the British isles, the Canis venaticus minor of Ray’s Synopsis, and Charleton’s Onomasticon, is the Oppianic Agassæus; the derivation of whose name has puzzled Broadæus and other classic commentators not a little. With the hint that Ἀγασσεὺς may be connected with Agassa of Macedonia, Agasus a port of Apulia, the Thracian Agessus, and Agathia a city of Phocis, no reason is alleged why a British dog should deduce his name from countries and places so remote. Of the existence of such a tiny hound of chase in this country, Rittershusius seems not to have been aware. British dogs, he remarks, are exceedingly keen-scented, but he cannot divine why called small, βαιὸν γένος, being, in his days at least, of great size. Brodæus, too, ignorant of any other than the Britannus of Claudian, cannot reconcile the “Anglici canes prodigiosæ staturæ” of this poet, and his own experience, with the portrait of the Oppianic Ἀγασσεύς.

It is scarce necessary to observe that the dog in question has no affinity with the Agasæus of Dr. Caius, who very absurdly borrows, for his gazehound, a name previously engaged by a totally different dog; as if to gratify his etymological mania by connecting the terms Agasæus, a gaze, a gazehound—“neque enim odoratu, sed prospectu attento et diligenti feram persequitur iste canis—(Agasæus, a gazehound)—etsi non sum nescius etiam apud Latinos Agasæi vocabulum inter canum nomina reperiri”—“Agasæum nostri abs re quòd intento sit in feram oculo vocant.”

Camden has fallen into the same error with Caius, and confounded the Agasseus of Oppian with the gazehound of Britain; and even Ray has made the gazehound a variety of the Canis venaticus sagax, distinguished from his supposed consimilars of the same family by running on sight of his game—“qui aspectu feras insequitur.”

From the following portrait, compared with that drawn by Markham, we may decide the identity of the Agassæus and Beagle:

ἔστι δέ τι σκυλάκων γένος ἄλκιμον ἰχνευτήρων, βαιὸν, ἀτὰρ μεγάλης ἀντάξιον ἔμμεν’ ἀοιδῆς· τοὺς τράφεν ἄγρια φῦλα Βρετανῶν αἰολονώτων, αὐτὰρ ἐπικλήδην σφὰς Ἀγασσαίους ὀνόμῃναν· τῶν ἤτοι μέγεθος μὲν ὀμοίϊον οὐτιδανοῖσι λίχνοις οἰκιδίοισι τραπεζήεσσι κύνεσσι, γυρὸν, ἀσαρκότατον, λασιότριχον, ὄμμασι νωθές· ἀλλ’ ὀνύχεσσι πόδας κεκορυθμένον ἀργαλέοισι, καὶ θαμινοῖς κυνοδοῦσιν ἀκαχμένον ἰοφόροισι. ῥίνεσι δ’ αὖτε μάλιστα πανέξοχός ἐστιν Ἀγασσεὺς, καὶ στιβίῃ πανάριστος, ἐπεὶ κατὰ γαῖαν ἰόντων ἴχνιον εὑρέμεναι μέγα δὴ σοφὸς, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὴν ἴδμων ἠερίην μάλα σημῄνασθαι ἀϋτμήν.

Let the reader compare these little pet-like, weakly, crooked, lank, wire-haired, dull-looking creatures, keen however, and excellent of nose, with his own experience of the beagle’s type and properties, and the representations of authors.

The poet gives some amusing instructions for breaking in the puppy of the Agassæus;

αὐτὰρ ὅγ’ αἶψα ὠρίνθη, φριμάα τε λαγωείης ὑπ’ ἀϋτμῆς, ἴχνια μαστεύει τε κατὰ χθονὸς, κ. τ. λ.

comparing his restlessness to that of a young woman in travail with her first child,

ὡς δ’ ὅτε τις κούρη δέκατον περὶ μῆνα σελήνης πρωτοτόκος λοχίῃσιν ὑπ’ ὠδίνεσσι τυπεῖσα, κ. τ. λ.

The praises of the little beagle have been celebrated in Greek and Latin, verse and prose. Amongst the modern poets, he is found in the Album Dianæ Leporicidæ of Jac. Savary, under the title of “ululatorum ordo minorum”—“gens parvis devota feris;” and placed in the kennels of Britain—still sufficiently marked by her insular, geographical position, and the staunchness of her canine breed, but, unfortunately for the loyalty of Savary’s own countrymen, no longer exclusively characterized by the traitorous, regicide spirit of her inhabitants:

Insula quos gignit septem vicina trioni, Terra canum laudata fide, damnata virorum Perfidiâ, Regisque sui execranda cruore, &c.

He is also mentioned by Angelinus Gazæus—see the Lagographia Curiosa of Paullini. Of the Greek portrait of Arrian we shall presently speak, under the Segusian dog.

It is to Gervase Markham, our “English master of economical philosophy,” as Wase calls him, that we are indebted for the fullest description of “the little beagle, which may be carried in a man’s glove;”—“bred,” says Gervase, “for delight only, being of curious scents, and passing cunning in their hunting, for the most part tiring, but seldome killing the prey, except at some strange advantage.” “Their musicke is very smalle, like reeds, and their pace like their body, onely for exercise, and not for slaughter.”

The Segusian dog mentioned by Arrian, in the third chapter of his Treatise on Coursing, as a sorry brute, quick-scented, with a pitiful and dolorous whine, instead of bark—rough and unsightly, and the more high-bred the more ugly—I believe to be identical with the last variety. The Bithynian has devoted an entire chapter of his entertaining and original manual to a description of the Ἑγουσίαι κύνες: whose name, he tells us, is derived from a Celtic people, amongst whom they were first bred, and held in repute for their nasal sagacity. For a full description of these smaller hounds of Gaul, the reader is referred to the cited chapter; and attached to my translation of the same, he will find a few illustrative notes. The remarks of Belin de Ballu, in his Animadversiones in Oppianum, show strange misapprehension of the ancient distinctions in the Celtic kennels. The chiens courans of modern France are not the οὐέρτραγοι κύνες of the younger Xenophon; nor are the latter’s Ἑγουσίαι the “genus canum, quorum pili instar velleris ovium crispantur,” as incorrectly stated by this most learned editor of the Greek poet of the chase. The Segusians are rather the bigles of the present day—perhaps the bassets, a small variety of terrier-beagle, used in rabbit-hunting.

CANES VENATICI. +Class III.+

CANES CELERES.

Hæ pedibus celeres.

This class, by far the least numerous of the three, contains only the Vertragus or Vertraha, and possibly the Sicamber;—of the latter of whom I have nothing to communicate—being neither mentioned by Xenophon, Pollux, Oppian, nor Nemesian. If he be, as has been supposed, a Belgic hound, he cannot be the boar-hound of Silius Italicus, without losing his claim to admission on our present file. No Canis Venaticus can be enrolled here, who runs otherwise than on sight of his game;—it is his characteristic property—