assembly, and the day's sport arranged accordingly. The spot for the assembly had been selected in the valley where the deer was harboured, but about a mile lower down. The hart was to be unharboured in the presence of the company, and forced by means of toils or nets placed in the way which he would naturally take, to run into the park at a spot where a carefully constructed toil led up to an opening in the pale. Once within the park escape was impossible. The Justice and his guests could follow the hounds if they pleased, or better still betake themselves to the hill at the upper end of the valley, and enjoy the music of the best tuned cry of hounds in Gloucestershire as-the chorus swelled by relay after relay-they pursued the unhappy hart from thicket to thicket until exhausted by heat, fatigue, and his weight of flesh, he could run no longer, but was forced to stand at bay, and after a short struggle yield his life to the sword of the huntsman.

This mode of pursuit was preferred by the Justice to what was known as hunting at force, or pursuing the stag whithersoever he might choose to go in the open country." It was fitter for the entertainment of guests, and it brought out the qualities of cry for which his hounds had bred for generations. The Justice's hounds, like Theseus', were no ( common cry of curs' as Coriolanus was wont to call the populace,

but match'd in mouth like bells,

Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.

Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1. 128.

1 See Love's L. L. iv. 3. 2; Jul. Cæs. ii. 1. 206; Hamlet, iii. 2. 362; Ant. and Cleo. v. 2. 351.

2 This is the hunting of the buck or stag, if the bee not confyned within the limits of a parke or pale, but haue libertie to chuse their waies according to their own appetites, which of some Hunts-men is cald hunting at force.'-Markham, Cavalarice. The disuse of the toil, or net, marks the emerging of a field sport from the utilitarian epoch in which it had its birth. So long as the final cause of hunting was the destruction of beasts of prey or the acquisition of food, the net was used to aid and expedite the labours of huntsmen and hounds. When love of sport became the motive power, the instinct of the hound and the craft of the sportsman were left unaided. Game, rabbits and fish are still taken in nets, but

This result was not attained without careful breeding. 'If you would have your kennell for sweetness of cry then you must compound it of some large dogs that have deep solemn mouths, and are swift in spending, which must, as it were, bear the base in the consort; then a double number of roaring and loud ringing mouths, which must bear the counter tenor; then some hollow plain sweet mouths, which must bear the mean or middle part; and so with these three parts of musick you shall make your cry perfect; and herein you shall observe that these hounds thus mixt, do run just and eaven together, and not hang off loose from one another, which is the vilest sight that may be; and you shall understand that this composition is best to be made of the swiftest and largest deep mouthed dog, the slowest middle siz'd dog, and the shortest legg'd slender dog; amongst these you may cast in a couple or two small single beagles, which as small trebles may warble amongst them: the cry will be a great deal the more sweet.' What did it avail to have hounds bred for tenor, counter tenor, treble and bass, when the whole kennel run all but mute, hunting a hart at force over the Cotswold hills? These were the sentiments of Shallow and many of his contemporaries, and so it is that in illustrations of the period you may see the huntsman and company furnished with poles and horns, pursuing the deer on foot, in a manner possible only when he is hunted, not at force, but within the confines of a pale.

6

not by sportsmen. Xenophon's harriers drove their hare into skilfully arranged nets. And Portia must have witnessed some such hunting, else she would not have said to Nerissa, The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple' (Merch. of Ven. i. 2. 19). Good sport might be had even with the aid of nets, in the days of Shakespeare as in those of Horace,

Manet sub Jove frigido

Venator, teneræ conjugis immemor,
Seu visa est catulis cerva fidelibus,

Seu rupit teretes Marsus aper plagas.

But when the chase, not the death, of a beast of venery is solely in question, toils and nets are done away with. See an article in the Quarterly Review, Jan. 1895, entitled, Our Sporting Ancestors.

I G. Markham, Country Contentments.

CHAPTER III

HOW THE HART WAS UNHARBOURED

The poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
Wildly determining which way to fly.

Lucrece.

AND now, having learned how the hart was found, and how it was intended to hunt him, let us go back to the assembly, where we left the huntsman reporting to his master of the size and whereabouts of the harboured deer.

"'Tis well done, in faith, John Hunt," said the Justice, "'tis well done indeed too. A great hart, and in pride of grease. Come Master Petre, we will lead the Lady Katherine to a vantage ground within the park, where she may best hear the music of the cry. Come Cousin Silence, come Master Squele, come on, come on. Ellen too, and the fair Ann Squele. when I would have found the deer him, and unharboured him too."

And my god-daughter By the mass, time was myself, and harboured

1 'We herbor and unherbor a harte,' according to the Noble Arte, 'we lodge and rowse a Bucke; we forme and start a Hare; we burrow and bolt a Conie; we kennel and unkennell a Fox.' The word 'rouse' seems to have been generally used in the absence of special terms of venery. We find it applied to the lion and the panther, and Gervase Markham in his edition of the Boke of St. Albans (1595) sanctions its application to the hart. But it was in strictness a term of art used in reference to the buck, and it is so used by Shakespeare. Thus, even if other indications were wanting, we could have told that Belarius and the sons of Cymbeline were engaged in the sport of shooting fallow deer with crossbow when he exclaimed, Hark, The game is roused'! (Cymb. iii. 3. 98), and that Henry Bolingbroke had in his mind the chase of the buck, when he assured the Duke of York that his son would have found in John of Gaunt a father to rouse his wrongs and chase them to the bay' (Rich. II. ii. 3. 128). Neither 'harbour'nor' unharbour' occur in Shakespeare in a sporting sense, unless indeed the nightly refuges of the deer, both red and fallow, are suggested in the lines.

MAKING READY FOR THE CHASE

27

"Aye, and hunted and killed and powdered and eaten him, I warrant," said Petre.

“I'faith, I'd ha' done anything and roundly too. But it may be, Master Petre, that you or your cousin Ferdinand would yourselves take part in the unharbouring of the game?"

"Not I, in faith," said Ferdinand Petre, "the pleasure of the hunt for me, and the toil for those who like it, say I. 'Tis well that some are found to get out of their beds before cock-crow, and to tear their flesh in thorny brakes at midday, and all to see a liam-dog do what a Christian cannot. I'll hearken to the music of your organs, Master Shallow, and let those who love the task blow the bellows."

My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly,

1

And slaves they are to me that send them flying:
O, could their master come and go as lightly,
Himself would lodge where senseless they are lying!

Two Gent. iii. 1. 140.

But the coney has his burrow (Coriol. iv. 5. 226) and the hare is started, 'O, the blood more stirs, To rouse a lion than to start a hare!' (1 Hen. IV. i. 3. 197). When Sir Toby Belch drew his sword on Sebastian, Olivia took the offence as one offered to herself, saying to Sebastian, He started one poor heart of mine in thee' (Twelfth N. iv. 1. 63). Dr. Johnson writes: 'I know not whether here be not an ambiguity intended between heart and hart.' The quibble is a favourite one, but assuredly it is not intended here. Absolute certainty in Shakespearian criticism is attainable only in regard to matters of venery and horsemanship. Shakespeare would as soon write of rousing a fox as of starting a deer. 'I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox,' said Master Ford (Merry Wives, iii. 3. 174), an operation present to the mind of Hamlet when he tells Horatio to observe his uncle at the play,

If his occulted guilt,

Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

It is a damned ghost that we have seen.-Hamlet, iii. 2. 85.

1 The references in the diary to Ferdinand Petre are not without significance. Scanty though they be, they suggest him as a disciple of the then fashionable school of Lyly, the author of Euphues. He would be therefore, of necessity, hateful to one of the temperament of the Lady Katherine. With this knowledge, we can understand what Petre meant when, in the course of taming his shrew, he said to his servant,

Sirrah, get you hence,

And bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither;

One, Kate, that you must kiss, and be acquainted with.

Tam. of Shrew, iv. 1. 153.

It did not become necessary to resort to this extremest discipline, and we hear

From this conversation I infer that Master Ferdinand Petre belonged to the modern school of fashionable and cultured Englishmen, who affected to despise the sports of their fathers, except as leading up to a social event, such as a solemn hunting or hawking party, capable of scenic effect, and affording refined enjoyment to eye and ear. 'At these dayes' (1575), writes the author of the Noble Arte, there are many men which beare hornes and bewgles, and yet cannot tell how to use them, neyther how to encourage and helpe theyr hounds therewith, but rather do hinder than furder them, hauing neyther skill nor delight to use true measure in blowyng: and therewithal seyng that Princes and Noble men take no delight in hūtyng, having their eyes muffled with the scarfe of worldly wealth, and thinking thereby to make theyr names immortall, which in deede doth often leade them to destruction bothe of bodie and soule, and oftener is cause of the shortening of theyr lyfe (which is their principall treasure here on earth), since a man shall hardly see any of them reygne or liue so long as they did in those dayes that every Forest rong with houndes and hornes, and when plentie of flagon bottels were caried in every quarter to refresh them temperately.'

A generation earlier, the most cultured man of his day, Master Thomas More, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England and Martyr, devised certain pageants for a painted cloth, representing the stages of the life of man, and over the pageant representing manhood was written:

Manhod I am, therefore I me delyght

To hunt and hawke, to nourishe up and fede

The grayhounde to the course, the hawke to th' flyght,
And to bestryde a good and lusty stede;

These thynges become a very man in dede.

In the age of euphuism, as in the days of dandyism and æstheticism, there must have been many who would have

no more of Ferdinand. Indeed, but for our diarist, he, with William and Ellen Silence, and Will Squele the Cotswold man, would have for ever remained names and nothing more.