The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the FieldTaplin, William
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The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2): Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field
Taplin, William
Hunting -- Dictionaries; Sports -- Dictionaries
His HOUNDS are kept from an instinctive attachment to the sport itself,
as well as to perpetuate the respectable and exhilarating establishment
of his ancestors, (hitherto transmitted to their posterity without a
stain,) and not from the least desire of having his name blazoned
through every part of the county in which he resides, for keeping what
he has neither PROPERTY to SUPPORT, or spirit to enjoy. Personally
frugal, (amidst the most spirited hospitality,) he never suffers his
mind to be disquieted by the pecuniary applications of people in trade:
having a soul superior to the idea of living beyond his income, and
running in debt, it is an invariable maxim, never to let his tradesmen
be a single quarter in arrear. The guardian of his own honour, he never
affords a chance of its becoming degraded by the officious and
unprincipled pride of a subordinate, under the appellation of STEWARD;
or to be disgraced, or prostituted, by the barefaced, unqualified
_denial_ of a menial bedaubed with lace and variegated finery, under the
denomination of a _footman_.
Innately philanthropic, the true, well-bred, liberal-minded SPORTSMAN is
always equally easy of access to friends, neighbours, tenants, and even
to necessitous parochial solicitants; and never countenances false
consequence amongst his domestics in one department, or impertinent
pride in another: by a persevering adherence to which system, his rustic
mansion seems the summit of all worldly happiness and earthly
gratification: not a dependent but eyes him with the warmest sensations
of gratitude; not a servant within, or a labourer without, but looks
awefully up to him as their best friend. The pleasures of the field he
extensively and judiciously engages in with all the fervency of a
well-informed and experienced sportsman; but by no means with all the
unqualified enthusiasm, and fashionable furor, of an indiscreet and
determined devotee. Capable of distinguishing between the _use_ and
_abuse_ of what is so evidently and benignantly placed before him, as an
excitement to exhilarating action, bodily invigoration, and general
health; he enters into all its _spirit_, avails himself of all its
_import_; not more as a personal gratification (in respect to sport)
than a mental perusal of one of Nature's many instructive volumes,
displaying to the ruminative and expansive comprehension, the applicable
and coinciding speed of the HORSE; the instinctive impulse, invincible
ardour, and corresponding perseverance of the HOUND; the various shifts
and evasions of the GAME; and lastly, the firm and manly fortitude of
those who join and surround him in the CHASE. These are the
distinguishing traits by which the true and generous sportsman may be
known: and it must be freely admitted, that so congenial are the
feelings, so sympathetic the liberality, and so uniform the hospitality
of SPORTSMEN in the scale of universality, that no friendships are
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