Part 3

but we do not forbid others

imbelles figere damas, Audacesve lupos, vulpem aut captare dolosam.

For the refined diversion of coursing may be as disagreeable to the fox-hunter, whose only joy is when

The hounds shall make the welkin answer them, And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth,

as it is delightful to the genuine amateur, on account of its chaste, and temperate, and contemplative quiet. King James, in his Βασιλικὸν Δῶρον, (himself, according to Sir Theodore Mayerne, “violentissimis olim venationis exercitiis deditus,”) praises “the hunting with running houndes, as the most honourable and noblest sort thereof,” and is supported by the high authority of Edmund de Langley, Mayster of Game; adding “it is a thievish forme of hunting to shoote with gunnes and bowes, and greyhounde hunting is not so martiall a game.” But on the other hand, Sir Thomas Elyot, in “The Governour,” speaking of “those exercises apte to the furniture of a gentylman’s personage,” and “not utterly reproved of noble autours, if they be used with oportunitie and in measure,” calls “hunting of the hare with grehoundes a ryght good solace for men that be studiouse, or theim to whom nature hathe not geven personage, or courage apte for the warres; and also for gentilwomen, which feare nether sonne nor wynde for appayryng their beautie. And peradventure they shall be therat lesse idell, than they shold be at home in their chaumbers.”—And the author of “The Booke of Hunting,” annexed to Turbervile’s Falconrie, concludes his treatise with the following singular panegyric “concerning coursing with greyhoundes”—“the which is doubtlesse a noble pastime, and as meet for nobility and gentleman, as any of the other kinds of Venerie before declared: especially the course of the hare, which is a sport continually in sight, and made without any great travaile: so that recreation is therein to be found without unmeasurable toyle and payne: whereas in hunting with hounds, although the pastime be great, yet many times the toyle and paine is also exceeding great: and then it may well be called, eyther a painfull pastime, or a pleasant payne.”

Coursing, more than the other laborious diversions of rural life, while it ministers to our moderate sensual enjoyment, admits also during the intervals of the actual pursuit of hound and hare, much rational reflection, opportunities of conversation with our brethren of the leash, and mental improvement. It tends, as Markham quaintly expresses himself, “to satisfie the mind and body in a joynt motion;” for in the beautiful poetry of a living patron of the Celtic dog, there is no interval of idleness with the well-read courser;

Nor dull between each merry chase, Passes the intermitted space: For we have fair resource in store, In Classic and in Gothic lore.

But there are those who anathematize limiting and coursing, and other rural recreation, either as sinful, or indicative of barbarism and mental degradation, in the ratio of the pursuit. Like Cornelius Agrippa, they view venation in genere as the worst occupation of the worst of mankind; and say with Philip Stubbes, that “Esau was a great hunter, but a reprobat; Ismael, a great hunter, but a miscreant; Nemrode, a great hunter, but yet a reprobat, and a vessell of wrath;” and bid us, in the poetic badinage of the poet of Cyrene, leave off coursing:

ἔα πρόκας ἠδὲ λαγωοὺς οὔρεα βόσκεσθαι· τί δέ κεν πρόκες ἠδὲ λαγωοὶ ῥέξειαν;

swearing, with the melancholy Jaques,

that we Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse, To fright the animals, and to kill them up, In their assign’d and native dwelling-place.

But if “some habites and customes of delight” are allowable and indispensable to the “contentment” of the human mind, and “men of exceeding strickt lives and severity of profession” have indulged in rural diversions, why need we regard the severe reflections of the sensitive Monsieur Paschal, or his more modern plagiarists? why think that wisdom loves not the courser’s sport? or that man is degraded before the tribunal of sound reason by estimating aright the instinct of any of the creatures around him? or made sinful in the eyes of his Creator by availing himself of the adapted powers of the lowliest of the brute race, for the subjugation of such wild animals as were originally designed by a bountiful Creator for the sustenance and recreation of man? “Canum verò tam incredibilis ad investigandum sagacitas narium, tanta alacritas in venando, quid significat aliud nisi se ad hominum commoditates esse generatos?”

The inference in regard to the chases and field sports generally is surely just, “that man, by co-operating with such animals, employs both his and their faculties on the purposes for which they were partially designed: tending thereby to complete the bounteous scheme of Providence, the happiness and well-being of all its creatures.”

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.

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.

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.”

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. But touching the adverse party, a word or two may be here admitted.

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,

ὡς οὔτ’ ἠνορέης, οὔτ’ εἴδεος ἔπλετ’ ὄνειαρ τόσσον, ὅσον πραπίδων,

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.”

τῷ τις ἀεργίην δυστερπέα τῆλε διώκοι καὶ κραδίης καὶ χειρός.

“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.”

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,” &c. scarce worthy of the courser’s notice.

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.

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, 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.”

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.