Part 37

Of Mr. Barnard, who was accustomed to enliven the sedentary pleasures of his intellectual pursuits with the active and salutary recreation of coursing, and to shake off, in Horatian language, “inhumanæ senium ... Camœnæ,” in the company of his greyhounds, on the wolds of Yorkshire, the reader must pardon me, if I speak with the deepest regret. He was indeed, like Maximus the friend and correspondent of Symmachus, “inter sodales Apollinis ac Dianæ, utriusque sectator,” or in the apposite words of Ercole Strozzi,

sylvæ scius, et scius artis Pieriæ, Phœbo et Phœbæ gratissimus æquè.

But alas! gifted as he was, far beyond the ordinary worshippers of the sylvan goddess, he hath “begun the travel of eternity,”

βέβηκε ... τὴν πανυστάτην ὁδῶν ἁπασῶν.

The periodical publications of the day have given to the world the mournful tribute of a scholar to his memory: and when the voice of affection hath sung “the deathless praise” of a departed son, that of friendship may be silent. But let it not be supposed that the learning and genius of this accomplished man were confined to the inferior and perishable subjects of the courser’s pursuit. The powers of his talented mind were directed also to the high and heavenly callings of his profession; and among other subjects, to the commemoration in verse and prose, of the saints and martyrs of the Protestant Church. In the words of the Nutricia of Politiano, he was indeed

Felix ingenio, felix cui pectore tantas Instaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaci Alternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas!

His poetical version of the poems of the younger Flaminio, a celebrated Latinist of the sixteenth century, on which he was engaged till his fatal illness, and the publication of which he fondly anticipated, will add, I trust, to his posthumous fame.

ἐν δ’ ὀλίγῳ βροτῶν τὸ τερπνὸν αὔξεται· οὕτω δὲ καὶ πιτνεῖ χαμαὶ, ἀποτρόπῳ γνώμᾳ σεσεισμένον. ἐπάμεροι. τί δέ τις; τί δ’ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωποι.

As the originator of the Courser’s Stud Book, and the indefatigable compiler of its genealogical tables, (an attempt “multâ deducere virgâ,” to derive “by trees of pedigrees,” as Dryden says, the speed and shape of each celebrated descendant, in the greyhound kennel, from the recorded genealogies and performances of a far-famed ancestry,—ἀγαθοὶ δὲ ἐγένοντο διὰ τὸ φῦναι ἐξ ἀγαθῶν,) the name of Mr. Barnard must be recorded in the annals of coursing with lasting gratitude; notwithstanding the prolegomena of a vicarious editor have occasioned the substitution of a second name on the title-page of the work, after the unexpected death of the original projector:

οὐ γὰρ οἶδ’ ἀνεῳγμένας πύλας Ἅδου, φάος τε λοίσθιον βλέπων τόδε.

But let us cease this querulous display of individual feeling. Many did not know him; and those who did—his relatives—his friends and correspondents—have felt too much already. And the preface to so trivial a work as a Courser’s Vade-Mecum is not a fit occasion for descanting on the high merits of a Christian scholar; nor is lamentation over the dead a suitable prelude to the entertainment of the living.

καὶ χαῖρ’· ἐμοὶ γὰρ οὐ θέμις φθιτοὺς ὁρᾷν, οὐδ’ ὄμμα χραίνειν θανασίμοισιν ἐκπνοαῖς.

Many of the Greek and Latin classics having been edited by English Divines, the latter fell under the lash of Young in the memorable lines,

When churchmen Scripture for the Classics quit, Polite apostates from God’s grace to wit, &c.

These terms are also misapplied in the Cynegeticon of the poet of Barga, and in the Album Dianæ Leporicidæ of Savary of Caen. The latter, speaking of Spain and Italy, says—

Non alit in leporem catulos nisi forte Lacones Hesperia, &c.

and of the Italians and their chase he writes,

Et lepori indicunt solo Lacedæmone bellum.

Arrian invariably calls himself Xenophon; and his predecessor of the same name he designates, for distinction’s sake, τὸν πάλαι, τὸν πρεσβύτερον. In the Cynegeticus he refers to him as τῷ Γρύλλου, τῷ ἐμαυτοῦ ὁμωνύμῳ, ἐκείνῳ τῷ Ξενοφῶντι.

With the citizenship of Rome, bestowed upon him by the Emperor, when in Greece, as it is supposed, A.D. 124, he assumed the Roman name of Flavius: and subsequent to his return from the prefecture of Cappadocia, he was probably raised to the consulate.

Aulus Gellius particularly authenticates his literary connexion with Epictetus, where he alludes (Noct. Attic. L. +xix.+ c. +i.+) to the latter’s διαλέξεις “ab Arriano digestas,” &c.

These instructions are written, as military orders, in the imperative mood. Ὁ δὲ ἡγεμὼν τῆς πάσης στρατιᾶς Ξενοφῶν, τὸ πολὺ μὲν πρὸ τῶν σημείων τῶν πεζικῶν ἡγείσθω, ἐπιφοιτάτω δὲ τάσῃ τῇ τάξει, κ. τ. λ. Such were some of the duties which he enjoined on himself as commander-in-chief.

The practical courser will not deny to Hormé the merit, which on his lord’s voucher, he is entitled to; few greyhounds, even in their prime, in modern days, could vie with their redoubted prototype and master four hares per diem.

In addition to the authors already cited, or referred to, he is also mentioned by Arnobius, towards the close of his second book.

It is a truth worth recording, that, from Photius to Saint-Croix and Chaussard, the last translator of Alexander’s Anabasis, no writer has impugned his veracity and honesty as an historian, nor his literary style as a scholar.

The vanity which La Mothe Le Vayer discovers, so glaring in his history, and more particularly in what he says of himself in the 12th chapter of the first book of the Anabasis of Alexander, before quoted, and from which Gronovius and Raphelius satisfactorily exculpate him, I confess I do not see. The pride of the historian is not beyond the dignity of his subject.

Chiron, the son of Saturn and the nymph Philyra, is fabled to have received his knowledge of hunting from Apollo and Diana; and to have instructed the numerous disciples, recorded by Xenophon in the first chapter of his Cynegeticus, in the science and practice of the chase.

Quis primus tulit ista viris? hominumne Deûmne Ingeniis inventa? dedit quis commoda tanta? Delia Phillyridem primum Chirona fugaces In sparsos per rura greges, sylvâque vagantes Armavit, fecitque vias in commoda tanta.