'You talk often
of the poetry of sport. I can see nothing in it but animal
excitement, and a certain quantity, I suppose, of that animal cunning
which the Red Indian possesses in common with the wolf and the cat,
and any other beast of prey. As a fact, the majority of sportsmen
are of the most unpoetical type of manhood.'
'More unpoetical than the average man of business, or man of law,
Claude? Or even than the average preacher? I believe, on the
contrary, that for most of them it is sport which at once keeps alive
and satisfies what you would call their aesthetic faculties, and so--
smile if you will--helps to make them purer, simpler, more genial
men.'
'Little enough of aesthetic appears either in their conversation or
their writing.'
'Esau is a dumb soul, especially here in England; but he has as deep
a heart in him as Jacob, nevertheless, and as tender. Do you fancy
that the gentleman over whose book we were grumbling last night,
attached no more to his own simple words than you do? His account of
a stag's run looks bald enough to you: but to him (unless Diana
struck him blind for intruding on her privacy) what a whole poem of
memories there must be in those few words,--"Turned down * * Water
for a mile, and crossed the forest to Watersmeet, where he was run
into after a gallant race.
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