FOOTNOTES:

[24] Some of these fallacies have been incidentally referred to in preceding chapters, but it is convenient, at the expense of a little overlapping, that they should here be treated together.

[25] Blackwood’s Magazine, August, 1899.

[26] Both these lines of argument were followed by Dr. Lang, Archbishop of York, when on a recent occasion (November 16, 1913) he pronounced what may be called the Foxology at the dedication of a stained window to the memory of an aged blood-sportsman who was killed in the hunting-field. That a Christian minister should have been “launched into eternity,” as the phrase is, while engaged in hunting a fox, might have been expected to cause a sense of very deep pain, and even of shame, to his co-religionists. What actually happened was that an Archbishop was found willing to eulogise, in a consecrated place of worship, not only the reverend gentleman whose life was thus thrown away, but the sport of fox-hunting itself!

[27] “My Sporting Holidays,” by Sir H. Seton-Karr, 1904.

[28] But let us not forget the delightful remark of the Archbishop of York, that “even the labourer, when he felt the stir of the Meet, got just one of those fresh events, excitements, and interests that he needed in what otherwise was often a very monotonous life.”

[29] This humane aspect of sport may be aptly illustrated by a passage in De Quincey’s essay on “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts”:

“The subject chosen ought to be in good health, for it is absolutely barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite unable to bear it. And here, in this benign attention to the comfort of sick people, you will observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the feelings. From our art, as from all the other liberal arts, when thoroughly mastered, the result is to humanise the heart.”

[30] Soame Jenyns, 1782.

APPENDIX

PAGE
I.[SPORT AS A TRAINING FOR WAR]149
II.[“BLOODING”]155
III.[THE HUNTING OF GRAVID ANIMALS]158
IV.[DRAG-HUNT VERSUS STAG-HUNT]162
V.[CLAY PIGEON VERSUS LIVE PIGEON]166
VI.[COURSING]170
VII.[THE GENTLE CRAFT]174
VIII.[SPOILING OTHER PEOPLE’S PLEASURE]179