At the hedge-corner, in the coldest fault?
I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.
Huntsman. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord;
He cried upon it at the merest loss,
And twice to-day pick’d out the dullest scent:
Trust me, I take him for the better dog.”
Many more such instances might be adduced, but the reader might perhaps be tempted to exclaim, with Timon of Athens:—
“Get thee away, and take thy beagles with thee.”
Act iv. Sc. 3.
We will therefore only glance at that amusing scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor (Act v. Sc. 5), where Falstaff appears in Windsor Forest, disguised with a buck’s head on. “Divide me,” says he, “like a brib’d-buck, each a haunch: I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands.”