Babbler is a common and most expressive word. In the language of the chase, a hound that gives tongue at all times save the right one, namely, off the scent often, but rarely on: hence an unreliable, irresponsible chatterer. Compare Lord Beaconsfield's famous phrase, "The hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity." Shakespeare says, "I do follow here in the chase, not like a hound that hunts, but one that fills up the cry"-"cry" having two meanings (the Immortal Bard loved juggling double entendre): a pack of hounds, and the music thereof. But, indeed, the great poet's writings. contain many references to babbling and babblers. "This babbler shall not henceforth trouble you," said Julia in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." Elsewhere we find, " And leave thy vain bibble babble." In "Much Ado about Nothing," Dogberry exclaims: "For the watch to babble and talk is most tolerable, and not to be endured." The last words of Falstaff, when we are told "'a babbled of green fields," exhibit a somewhat extended use of the word; as does also the phrase from "Titus Andronicus," "Whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds;" though the following from the same play strictly shows its use in its derivative sense: "A long-tongued, babbling gossip." The author of the "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" opens his preface with the words: "What has this babbler to say?" quoting the bard aforesaid. Plato's pithy aphorism, "As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers," fittingly closes this section of my discourse.

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Daily we hear or read of "trying back," on a false scent," "off the scent," "a cold scent," and the like, all of which are borrowed from the vocabulary of hunting, and require no explanation. Of all the various branches of sports and pastimes, hunting appears to have supplied more phrases and forms of illustration in English literature than any other. In Holy Writ we read of the hart heated in the chase panting for cooling streams, an allusion strictly accurate and practical. "To run with the hare and hunt with the hounds" is every man's most natural illustration of a trimmer. The "whips" in the British Houses of Parliament marshal their respective packs just as do whippers-in their hounds.

Quitting hunting for awhile, and passing on to other sections of the subject of sporting phrases and allusions, the expression "in the first flight" suggests itself. This, though borrowed from the language venatic, is primarily derived from the habits of birds, the most wary of which, with Dædalian promptitude, instinctively first take wing upon occasion, due or otherwise. "Wide of the mark," a familiar

expression, originally referred to archery; but though bows have long since given place to rifles, it is to-day as appropriate and expressive as it was in the time of Robin Hood. "To shoot at a pigeon and kill the crow" has for centuries served Englishmen to express a lucky accident; while in the phrase, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" there is a distinct allusion to the ancient method of fowling. "Hoodwinked" is derived from hawking; for falcons or other trained hawks were, and are, carried with hoods over head and eyes till such time as it is required to despatch them after their quarry.

Our omnivorous tongue has not scrupled to turn to the baser forms of so-called "sports" for felicitous, though vulgar, adages. From the cock-pit comes the expressive saying: "This cock won't fight." To the racecourse the politician, the lecturer, and the leader-writer have recourse when they speak of being overmatched, hampered, or "handicapped." From the racecourse this convenient trope doubtless comes; though for its actual derivation the card-table must be sought. Originally, handicap was a game at cards not unlike loo, but with this difference: the winner of one trick has to put in a double stake, the winner of two tricks a triple stake, and so on. Thus, if six persons are playing, and the general stake is one shilling, and A wins three tricks, he gains six shillings, and has to "hand i' the cap," or pool, three shillings for the next deal. Says Pepys in his "Diary: ""To the Mitre Tavern, in Wood Street, a house of the greatest note in London. Here some of us fell to handicap, a sport I never knew before, which was very good." From cards also are derived such familiar sayings as, A card up his sleeve" (a clever, if not a very commendable action); a trump card;" "to play your cards well," &c. From billiards we borrow a fine stroke;" from cricket, "a good innings ;" and from football "he has the ball at his feet." Many others will suggest themselves to the reader, the foregoing being just jotted down as they occur to the mind of the writer, by way of examples.

Shakespeare's plays and poems abound with references and allusions to sport and pastime, together with direct quotations from the jargon thereof. He directly mentions such topics upwards of two hundred and fifty times-indirectly on thousands of occasions. And no wonder. Loving the air and living greatly in the same; a very joyous and manly man ; born and bred in one of the loveliest portions of beautiful England, hard by the silver Avon; surrounded by all the attributes of rural and sylvan life, and in an eminently sporting and sportive age (England was "Merrie England" then); a sympathiser with lovers of "cakes and ale" and all jollity; it would be strange

indeed were one so keenly alive to all his surroundings mute as regards such subjects-failed to draw illustrations from such a copious source. In addition to those already given, I venture to quote a few passages from the works of the "Great Heir of Time" in elucidation of this. And it is to be noted that our bard was evidently well versed in all matters pertaining to hounds and horses. Take the following admirable description of a horse :

Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks strong and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide;
Look what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Then, as to hounds and their glorious music, the following extracts from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (it being borne in mind that fashions change, and that the style of hound so nobly delineated by the poet, though utterly unlike his modern descendar was precisely the animal beloved of children of Artemis in the Elizabethan era). Hippolyta says to her royal lover:

I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,

When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

And presently Theseus takes up the theme, informing his fair inamorata that he is the happy owner of a noble pack:

My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew;

Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,

Each under each. A cry more tuneable

Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.

Again, Shakespeare alludes some half-dozen times to the game of tennis, so popular and fashionable in his day; and once to billiards, hardly then the game now in vogue, nor played upon such tables as are used at the present time. No less than one hundred and fifty times is the word "sport" used by the bard in his deathless plays and poems; but not, of course, in the restricted sense in which the writer of this article uses it. Shovel-board and shove-groat shilling (2 Henry IV. II. 4) are allusions to a somewhat similar game. It will be remembered

how Bardolph was to quoit (a reference to another game, used with the poet's usual love of metaphor) Pistol downstairs, as the smooth shilling-the shove-groat-flies along the board. Rare Ben Jonson

makes a similar allusion.

And again, still digging in this exhaustless mine, whence every description of jewel may be extracted for purposes of literary adornment-consulting this encyclopædia of illustration-we find much reference to the ever-popular sport of angling. There is the wellknown passage in "Antony and Cleopatra," plus the jest of the stale fish; there is another in "Much Ado about Nothing ;" and the curious student will find them elsewhere in the revered volumes of which we are so fondly proud. Evidently Shakespeare was familiar with the game of football, in the elementary though popular form of the æra he adorned. Dromio of Ephesus ("Comedy of Errors"), doubly playing upon the word "round," says: "Am I so round with you, as you with me, that like a football you do spurn me thus?" And in the Master's greatest tragedy Kent is made to say: "Nor tripped neither, you base football player."

Leaving the Swan of Avon and the noble writers of the Elizabethan age, as we pass onwards we find more and more reference to sports and pastimes in all the writings preserved through the medium of type. Byron, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, Whyte Melville, and a host of others constantly allude to such subjects. Sometimes the writer, as in the case of Byron, betrays both ignorance of and contempt for sport; sometimes, like Dickens, talented and classical authors display a cockneyfied lack of knowledge: Trollope writes of hunting calmly yet intelligently; whilst Whyte Melville (soldier, poet, novelist, sportsman) gave the world a collection of impassioned novels, mainly treating of the chase, which are alike imbued with the true spirit of sport and the divine flame of the artist. "Nimrod" (Mr. Apperley); Mr. St. John; the authors of "Silk and Scarlet," "Post and Paddock," "Loch and Moor ;" the late Mr. Walsh, of the Field ("Stonehenge "); Mr. Senior (the great "Redspinner"), "Plantagenet," "Cordley," and many others, have produced works elegantly written, crammed with poetical quotation and classical allusions. The sporting novel, and the novel which, in striving to depict the various phases of modern English life, has to touch upon the subject of sport, are so well known as to be familiar to all readers of current and, possibly, ephemeral literature.

There are sporting writers and sporting writers. The vulgar tautological argot of the average reporter on racing or boxing, sculling, running, or knurr and spell, is as widely apart from the fasci

nating and pure style of a Whyte Melville or a "Brooksby" as is the schoolboy's essay on "Kats" from the scholarly and model essays of Addison.

Somerville's "Love Chase," a work little read nowadays, is a piece of true poetry of a high order of excellence, though mere sport is its subject. The said "Love Chase" must not be confounded with the comedy of that name by the brilliant Sheridan Knowles. By way of illustration I append a few lines from the poem in question:

All earth's astir, rous'd with the revelry

Of vigour, health, and joy! Cheer awakes cheer,
While Echo's mimic tongue that never tires
Keeps up the hearty din. Each face is then
Its neighbour's glass-where gladness sees itself,
And at the bright reflection grows more glad ;
Breaks into tenfold mirth !—laughs like a child—
Would make a gift of its own heart, it is so free!
Would scarce accept a kingdom, 'tis so rich!

Shakes hands with all, and vows it never knew
That life was life before.

And all about what, think you? Merely foxhunting.

It would, indeed, be difficult to say into what works of English classical literature the student might dip without the certainty of encountering allusions to sports and pastimes (save only, of course, the writing of those holy men who have given to us solemn matter which should not be mentioned in conjunction with such a light subject as this paper treats of).

In Hogg's "Madoc of the Moor" (Canto I., The Hunting) will be found a spirited description of the chase in Scotland in the fourteenth century, reminding the reader so strongly of portions of Scott's "Lady of the Lake" that one is impelled to accuse Sir Walter of plagiarism. Note four lines previously quoted.

Even the sage (and somewhat dull) Cowper cannot avoid a brief reference to the great topic. Says he :

Nor yet the hawthorn bore his berries red,
With which the fieldfare, wintry guest, is fed;
Nor autumn yet had dash'd from every spray,
With his chill hand, the mellow leaves away:
But corn was housed, and beans were in the stack.
Now, therefore, issued forth the spotted pack.

As being germane to my text, I should like to quote a few lines from the cynical, godless, unhappy genius known to mankind as Lord Byron, the poet :