Pars in gramineis exercent membra palæstris,
Contendunt ludo, et fulvâ luctantur arenâ:
Pars pedibus plaudunt choreas, et carmina dicunt.——
Arma procul, currusque virûm miratur inanes.
Stant terrâ defixæ hastæ, passimque soluti
Per campos pascuntur equi. Quæ gratia currûm
Armorumque fuit vivis, quæ cura nitentes
Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repôstos.
VIRG. ÆN. VI.
Part, on the grassy cirque, their pliant limbs
In wrestling exercise, or on the sands,
Struggling, dispute the prize: part lead the ring,
Or swell the chorus with alternate lays.
The chief their arms admires, their empty cars,
Their lances fix’d in earth. The unharness’d steeds
Graze unrestrain’d; horses, and cars, and arms,
All the same fond desires, and pleasing cares,
Still haunt their shades, and after death survive.
I hope, therefore, I may be indulged, even by the more grave and censorious part of mankind, if, at my leisure hours, I run over, in my elbow-chair, some of those chases, which were once the delight of a more vigorous age. It is an entertaining, and, as I conceive, a very innocent amusement. The result of these rambling imaginations will be found in the following poem; which if equally diverting to my readers, as to myself, I shall have gained my end. I have intermixed the preceptive parts with so many descriptions, and digressions, in the Georgick manner, that I hope they will not be tedious. I am sure they are very necessary to be well understood by any gentleman, who would enjoy this noble sport in full perfection. In this, at least, I may comfort myself, that I cannot trespass upon their patience more than Markham, Blome, and the other prose writers upon this subject.
It is most certain, that hunting was the exercise of the greatest heroes of antiquity. By this they formed themselves for war; and their exploits against wild beasts were a prelude to their future victories. Xenophon says, that almost all the ancient heroes, Nestor, Theseus, Castor, Pollux, Ulysses, Diomedes, Achilles, &c. were MαΘηζαὶ Kυνηγεδιῶν, disciples of hunting; being taught carefully that art, as what would be highly serviceable to them in military discipline. Xen. Cynegetic. And Pliny observes, those who were designed for great captains, were first taught, “certare cum fugacibus feris cursu, cum audacibus robore, cum callidus astu:”—to contest with the swiftest wild beasts in speed; with the boldest in strength; with the most cunning, in craft and subtilty. Plin. Panegyr. And the Roman emperors, in those monuments they erected to transmit their actions to future ages, made no scruple to join the glories of the chase to their most celebrated triumphs. Neither were their poets wanting to do justice to this heroick exercise. Beside that of Oppian in Greek, we have several poems in Latin upon hunting. Gratius was contemporary with Ovid; as appears by this verse,
Aptaque venanti Gratius arma dabit.
LIB. IV. PONT.
Gratius shall arm the huntsman for the chase.
But of his works only some fragments remain. There are many others of more modern date. Among these Nemesianus, who seems very much superiour to Gratius, though of a more degenerate age. But only a fragment of his first book is preserved. We might indeed have expected to have seen it treated more at large by Virgil in his third Georgick, since it is expressly part of his subject. But he has favoured us only with ten verses; and what he says of dogs, relates wholly to greyhounds and mastiffs:
Veloces Spartæ catulos, acremque Molossum.
GEOR. III.
The greyhound swift, and mastiff’s furious breed.
And he directs us to feed them with butter-milk.—“Pasce sero pingui.” He has, it is true, touched upon the chase in the fourth and seventh books of the Æneid. But it is evident, that the art of hunting is very different now, from what it was in his days, and very much altered and improved in these latter ages. It does not appear to me, that the ancients had any notion of pursuing wild beasts, by the scent only, with a regular and well-disciplined pack of hounds; and therefore they must have passed for poachers amongst our modern sportsmen. The muster-roll given us by Ovid, in his story of Actæon, is of all sorts of dogs, and of all countries. And the description of the ancient hunting, as we find it in the antiquities of Pere de Montfaucon, taken from the sepulchre of the Nasos, and the arch of Constantine, has not the least trace of the manner now in use.