Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/180

166 maddening cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger? What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half asleep on a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon—once perhaps in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an idea that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses to a storm of canine music,—worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire, on the African sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred …. There they go,—prince and peer, baronet and squire—the nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each on such steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son—for could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water." Or again, you might say ditto to Mr. Leigh Hunt and others in their protest against angling; but you could not read Christopher North's wondrous rhapsodies "beside all waters,"—whether shining Tweed, or still St. Mary's Lake, or rueful Yarrow, or that dearest to him of all the lochs of Scotland (and they were all dear), "mountain-crowned, cliff-guarded, isle-zoned, grove-girdled, wide-winding, and far-stretching" Loch Awe, "glory of Argyleshire," "rill and river-fed, sea-arm-like," with its many-bayed banks and braes of brushwood, fern, broom, and heather—these rhapsodies, to the tune of "Reel music for ever!" you could hardly read without longing to tickle a trout or land a salmon. Or once again,—even with your prompt aversion from the scenes of the Ring, you could read with a certain askant indulgence the old man's vindication of the art of self-defence as a noble art—his panegyric on Chief Justice Best's panegyric on pugilism—in which science the Newdigate prize poet had long before approved himself a graduate, as an Oxford shoemaker in particular and other "base mechanicals" in general could testify.

In the some lusty way, just as he scouts whatever seems old-womanish among men, so he cannot away with what is girlish among boys. "What! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent," he urges, "you would not wish your only boy—your son and heir—the blended image of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beauty—to be a smug, smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his forehead, hands always unglauered, and without spot or blemish on his white-thread stockings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his nose—botanising with his maiden aunts—doing the pretty at tea-tables with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and attending to the kettle—telling tales on all naughty boys and girls—laying up his penny-a-week pocket money in a penny pig—keeping all hi clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer—having his own peg for his uncrushed hat—saying his prayers precisely as the clock