White's 'History of Selborne;' Sir Humphry Davy's
'Salmonia;' 'The Wild Sports of the West;' Mr. St. John's charming
little works on Highland Shooting; and, above all, Christopher
North's 'Recreations'--delightful book! to be read and re-read, the
tenth time even as the first--an inexhaustible fairy well, springing
out of the granite rock of the sturdy Scotch heart, through the
tender green turf of a genial boyish old age. Sporting books, when
they are not filled--as they need never be--with low slang, and ugly
sketches of ugly characters--who hang on to the skirts of the
sporting world, as they would to the skirts of any other world, in
default of the sporting one--form an integral and significant, and,
it may be, an honourable and useful part, of the English literature
of this day; and, therefore, all shallowness, vulgarity, stupidity,
or bookmaking in that class, must be as severely attacked as in
novels and poems. We English owe too much to our field sports to
allow people to talk nonsense about them.
Claude smiled at some such words of mine that day.
Pages:
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247