Part 6

A knowledge of what others have written on a subject on which we ourselves are about to write appears indispensable. “Although I were very much experienced,” says the translator of Gratius, “in any art, and were apt to conceive a good opinion of my own ability therein, yet being to publish a discourse concerning it, I was obliged to inform myself of what others had formerly proposed in the same matter, as far as may conveniently be attained. There are some who esteem it glory to be thought to have declined any other helps but their own wit, which I should charge upon myself as negligence.” Far be such self-sufficiency from me! I am ever glad to avail myself of the opinions and sentiments of others; and in so doing, to give the merit of originality to its rightful owner, and not to a modern plagiarist. “Est enim benignum ut arbitror, et plenum ingenui pudoris, fateri per quos profeceris, non ut plerique ex iis, quos attigi, fecerunt. Scito enim conferentem autores me deprehendisse à juratissimis et proximis veteres transcriptos ad verbum, neque nominatos,” &c.

For out of the old fieldis, as men saith, Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of olde bookis, in good faith, Cometh all this new science that men lere.

Few will think me sparing of citation: but if there be such a one, and well disposed to a brother courser, “si bonus est, quæ omisi, non oblita mihi, sed præterita existimet. Dehinc qualiscunque est, cogitet secum, quàm multa de his non reperisset, si ipse quæsisset. Sciat enim me non omnibus erutis usum;” I hope he will not add with Ausonius, “et quibusdam oblatis abusum.”

Should curiosity induce any one to inquire who is the translator of this treatise, let it suffice, that he is an humble individual of retired habits, too utterly unknown to the world to expect that any additional interest will be imparted to his labours by the publication of the name of their author:—that he is in the enjoyment of the ease and freedom of a private scene, where, in the felicitous language of Sir W. Temple, “a man may go his own way and his own pace:”—that his pursuits at home and abroad are rationally diversified. “For honest pleasures,” like Brathwait’s gentleman, “he is neither so Stoicall as wholly to contemne them, nor so Epicureall as too sensually to affect them.” “There is no delight on mountaine, vale, coppice, or river, whereof he makes not an usefull and contemplative pleasure;”

At sylvæ gelidique specus, cava lustra ferarum, Ruraque, et arcanâ labentia flumina valle Sunt animo!

But his “hour-beguiling pastime,” when not occupied in any of the more important duties of life, “si quandò cum influentibus negotiis paria fecit, instar refectionis,” is that of a theoretical and practical courser—desirous of acquiring, in the sedentary retirement of his library, the science of active enjoyment in the field; and of elucidating the mysteries of the leash, and the pertinent anecdotes of animal biography, by collecting in one point of view the scattered glimmerings of classical antiquity, and the illustrations of more modern days, relative to an elegant and manly diversion:—directing the whole under the guidance of experience, and the name of the father of the leash, to the advancement of human recreation.

Quod plerique omnes faciunt adolescentuli, Ut animum ad aliquod studium adjungant, aut equos Alere, aut canes ad venandum, aut ad philosophos: Horum ille nihil egregiè præter cætera Studebat, et tamen omnia hæc mediocriter.

The translator has his hack, his greyhound, and his slipper, (κυναγωγὸς,) participating of the unimportant character of their master, and equally devoid of interest in the eyes of the public. All, therefore, are consigned to the same fate, and merged in one common namelessness; spite of the example of Hippamon of old, in the metrical commemoration of his sporting establishment:

Ἀνδρὶ μὲν Ἱππάμων ὄνομ’ ἦν, ἵππῳ δὲ Πόδαργος, καὶ κυνὶ Λήθαργος, καὶ θεράποντι Βάβης.

With regard to the Appendix,

Si quis tamen hæc quoque, si quis Captus amore leget,

I have only a few remarks to make. To many, though mere sciolists in natural history, it must have appeared, during their progress in classical reading, that much ignorance of the varieties of the canine race is shown by annotators. With the gentlemen è societate Jesu, and others who have favoured us with their expositions of the ancients, there is too great an inclination to generalize both as to the names and properties of the canine tribe. The “veloces Spartæ catuli” are all “lévriers,” though there was not, according to Arrian, (and he is supported by Blumenbach,) a greyhound in the whole of ancient Greece: and certainly as “the babbling echo mocked them” in their quick-scented pursuit of the Laconian quarry, they could be no more entitled to the appellation, than any sharp-nosed mongrel, bred in modern days, between a sagacious yelping hound, and a prick-eared shepherd’s cur. Upon the same principle of generalization, all truculent Molossi, C. Custodes, Pecuarii, &c. are by these worthies at once dismissed as Gallicè “dogues,” Anglicè “mastiffs,” without an attempt to particularize their respective attributes in warfare, or the chase, or the economy of rural life.

Hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are cleped All by the name of dogs; the valued file Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, The housekeeper, the hunter, every one According to the gift which bounteous nature Hath in him closed; whereby he does receive Particular addition, from the bill That writes them all alike.

This confusion of nomenclature might pass at school, but not longer. Subsequent experience, and the reflection of maturer years would direct the attention of many literary ruralists to the occasional correction of errors in the canine vocabulary. Such at least has been the case with the writer of these pages; and he conceives that errors, apparent to him, must have been manifest to others. Nor is a misapprehension of some of the names and qualities of the individuals of this multifarious genus

(Mille canum patriæ, ductique ab origine mores Cuique suâ)

to be wondered at in scholiasts and commentators; when we consider their monkish habits of indolent seclusion, and how unfit and unwilling they were to ascertain by actual experiment, whether Pliny was correct in affirming that Minerva was as fond of traversing the hills as Diana. “These bookish fellowes,” in the words of Sir John Harrington, “could judge of no sports, but within the verge of the fair fields of Helicon, Pindus, and Parnassus.” Their practice in the field was not commensurate with their scholastic knowledge. Very few carried their note-books, like the learned and indefatigable Vlitius to the covert side, and examined the difficulties of rural poetry, and obscure allusions to canine instinct in the field of experience. And unless they did so, they had little chance of becoming acquainted with the sylvan goddess, who tells us in her petition to her sire, that she rarely descends from her mountain haunts into the cities of men;

————σπαρνὸν γὰρ ὅτ’ Ἄρτεμις ἄστυ κάτεισιν. οὔρεσιν οἰκήσω.

Wherever the different sporting dogs of antiquity are alluded to, or mentioned by name in the Cynegeticus of Arrian, or the classical works to which I have had occasion to refer in illustration of it, I have endeavoured to clear up some of the obscurity, in which they were enveloped; by classifying varieties, and in a few cases even individuals, and comparing ancient types with modern representatives. This I have attempted more especially in relation to the ancient British dogs, and the Celtic greyhound (the subject of Arrian’s Treatise), as being of paramount interest to the British courser.

ὦ πόποι, οἷον τοῦτο θεοὶ ποίησαν ἄνακτες θηρίον ἀνθρώποισι μετέμμεναι· ὡς ἐπιμηθές.

The observations and extracts on these points, more trite probably than recondite, have been thrown together in an appendix, which I hope may be found amusing to any literary sportsman who may condescend to peruse them.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE CYNEGETICUS, OR WORK ON COURSING.

The Cynegeticus was originally written by Arrian, in imitation of Xenophon’s Treatise de Venatione, to supply the lacunæ of that work in the particular department of Coursing.

The manuscript seems to have been neglected in the Vatican library for several years after it had been first discovered, in consequence of its bearing the name of Xenophon: for the persons who accidentally met with it, not being aware of Arrian’s assumption of that title, took no pains to examine it, under an impression that it was the edited Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and not a new and unknown treatise on a different branch of the same subject, by an author of the same assumed name, a pseudo-Xenophon.

We are told by Mausacus that Rigaltius intended to have edited it with the Scriptores de Re Accipitrariâ et de Curâ Canum, (the first edition of which he published in 1612, with a forged epistle in Castilian and Latin from Aquila Symmachus and Theodotion to a Ptolemy, King of Egypt,) but the printers refused their consent, unless he added a Latin translation; a desideratum which was afterwards supplied by Holstein in the first edition. Henry Stephens, however, had previously perused the unpublished treatise, and given to the world, in his Schediasmata, some observations on different passages.

Holstein, the first editor, was a celebrated scholar of his day, and is commemorated in the Sept. Illustr. Vir. Poemata as—

Graiæ Latiæque Minervæ Artibus, Eois notus et Hesperiis.

His edition issued from the Paris press of Sebastian and Gabriel Cramoisy in the year 1644. The Greek text, and version attached to it, were amended by Blancard in his Amsterdam edition of 1683; which contains also the minor works of Arrian, and the pertinent schediasmata of Henry Stephens above mentioned. My library affords no editions but the above two, and the accurate reprint of Schneider by the University of Oxford in 1817. The last is certainly the best edition of the Cynegeticus of Arrian which I have seen. The Clarendon press also published in the same volume the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and his Opuscula Politica; the same collection of the minor works as Zeune comprehended in one volume, printed at Leipsic, 1778.