The Lion, The Elephant, The Ibex, The Chamois, And The Red
Deer Are Beasts Of Chase Falling Before Man, But The Fox Alone Can Cope
With Him In Point Of Intellect And Sagacity, And Put Him To All His
Shifts.
It is this ingredient in fox-hunting - viz:
The consciousness of
having to do with a foe worthy of him, which brings men of all ages,
sorts, kinds, intellects, characters, and professions to the covert side,
uniting together occasionally as odd an assemblage as ever went into the
ark. No man, when he puts on his top-boots in the morning, can say whether
he may not be about to assist at a run which may live in story like the
Billesdon Coplow or the Trojan War, and of which it shall be sufficient,
not only to the fortunate sportsman himself but to his descendants of the
third and fourth generation, to say - he was there!
Villiers, Cholmondeley, and Forester made such sharp play,
Not omitting Germaine, never seen till to-day:
Had you jug'd of these four by the trim of their pace
At Bib'ry you'd thought they had been riding a race.
Billesdon Coplow.
"Their fame lives still. But what, O ye sentimentalists! would ye prepare
both for fox and fox-hunter? If the fox was not regarded as the only
animal possessed of these talents and capabilities, he must shortly rank
as a sneaking little robber of hen-roosts, the foe of the good wife and
gamekeeper, and become as extinct as a dodo.
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