Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/351

Rh given of his habits is that he equally divided his time between these duties, his books, and the sports of the field, to which he was greatly attached. He has celebrated one of these sports in his poem on shooting, to which he prefixed a motto from Virgil, singularly appropriate to an invention not dreamed of when the lines were written.

The poem is written in smooth heroics, and is as good as any didactic poetry on such subjects can very well be. After invoking "Sylvan Muses," and paying a tribute to Somerville, the author of "The Chase," he lays down special laws to be observed by sportsmen; and although he indulges an occasional digression, as, for instance, the story of Atys and Adrastus, he keeps in the main closely to his subject. We will give the reader one specimen.

He enters with as much elaboration of detail, as in this passage, into the comparative merits of partridge, Z