HUNTING IN THE OLDEN DAYS.* Tim handsome volume, which is
written by a well-known historian of the chase, will provide hunting men with plenty of excellent reading. It is profusely illustrated with a vast collec- tion of reproductions from ancient hunting pictures. Many of these are extremely interesting, and a certain number, so far as we know, have not been previously photographed. They illus- trate to perfection, and more vividly than the pen, the manners, proceedings, and costumes of the hunting field in early days. It is a misfortune, perhaps, that the book-is so heavy that one cannot enjoy it except when reading at a table. Mr. William Scarth Dixon partially covers the ground from the earliest days after the Conquest, and be writes of stag, fox, and hare. He does not profess to produce a history of hunting in England; but sometimes the reader, who has enjoyed one of the chapters in which he treats discursively of "Some Early Foxhunting Records" or " Staghunting in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," may he excused for wishing that our author had marshalled his story in strict chronological order, had treated us to a few more dates, and had, by occasional footnotes, given exact authorities or identified documents. But the majority of Mr. Dixon's readers will enjoy the matter he provides without troubling their heads about "documented history." The old Sinnington Hunt papers in particular have provided him with original material. and, as every student of hunting literature knows, there is no greater authority on the hunting history of Yorkshire than Mr. Dixon. But very often the only interegt in a fact lies in the exact date when it occurred. "It is not so very many years since, that the Hertfordshire killed a fox within striking distance of Alexandra Palace." Does this mean five years ago or fifty-five ? And one is equally curious to know exactly how far "striking distance" is.
Mr. Dixon, very wisely, does not enter into the futile search, which used to occupy historians of the chase, for the earliest established pack of foxhounds. There is no doubt now that foxhunting, as we have seen it carried on in the nineteenth century, is older than was once supposed. The Charlton Hunt, which was taken over by the Duke of Richmond and became the Goodwood, dates hack to the reign of Charles II. There are abundant records to show that in some counties they then hunted the fox much as we do. The Quorn hounds under Mr. Boothby go back to about 1697. Meynell's influence has probably been exaggerated. He did to the Quorn what all masters of hounds were doing all over England in the eighteenth century. Sir Thomas Elyot, writing in 1531, said : "I disprayse not the huntynge of the foxe, with rennynge hounds, but it is not to be compared to other huntynge in commoditie of exercise." We find Mr. Dixon saying that "foxhunting was a popular sport amongst the country gentlemen, as we should now call them, in the Plantagenet era." Of course, it all depends what is meant by foxhunting. Foxes have been killed with the aid of hounds from very early days, but there is no doubt that the procedure of Plantagenet and even Tudor times bore only the faintest resemblance to eighteenth and nineteenth century foxhunting. Mr. Dixon successfully dispels the old legend that there was no foxhunting in England until Mr. Fownes, of Stepleton, Dorset, invented it. On the other hand, we think he goes too far the other way. The truth is, during the later Stuart days the red deer was becoming extinct and sportsmen turned to foxes. No one who had forests stocked with wild deer at his door would hunt a fox for choice or for sport. Mr. Dixon has some chapters on hunt finance and a good collection of songs and ballads. Hunting verse has little merit for the most part, and is often not even amusing. Hunting songs also are frequently inordinately long. Mr. Dixon, amongst many amusing tales, has one of a man at a hunt dinner who sang a song with forty verses. When the singer had reached the thirty-seventh he found he had missed a verse and had to begin again at the beginning.
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