Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/360

Chap.IX. which is now almost peculiar to the parish of Manchester. This. is the good old hound of our Mancunian fathers, which is so remarkably distinguished over all the rest of the kingdom by the peculiarity of its aspect and the particularities of its frame. And this must certainly have been the fine original from which the many striking and picturesque touches in these well-known lines of Shakespear were immediately transcribed.

This delineation is evidently taken from the life. And the largeness of the chaps and the dapples of the body, the ample sweep of the douching ears and the large exuberance of the bagging chest, the deforming crookedness of the knees, the sonorous depth of the note, and the heavy (lowness of the motion, are all such clear and characteristic particulars as concur only in the Mancunian hound. This breed was in all probability once known in every part of the island. This breed was near the close of the last century confined to one or two counties in the fouth-western regions of the island and to Manchester and its vicinity in the north-western $undefined$. This breed is now utterly