This is the largest of modern English Hounds, and the one which most nearly approaches in character the old “Hound” which fell into disuse on account of its slowness, but which we often find mentioned in olden writers. Shakspere, for instance, writes of this old English or Southern Hound in “Midsummer Night’s Dream”:—
Hip. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay’d the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem’d all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
The. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew’d, so sanded; and their heads are hung