MISCELLANEOUS CRITICISM. ON THORNTON'S SPORTING TOUR.* [Edinburgh Review, January, 1805.] Ir is well known that the patriarch of Uz exclaimed, in the midst of his afflictions, "Oh that mine adversary had written a book!" This ardent exclamation of the man of patience has led the learned Rabbin Menachem-el-Rekenet, in the treatise entitled Bâvra Báthra, to suggest that the "A Sporting Tour through the Northern Parts of England, and great Part of the Highlands of Scotland, including Remarks on English and Scottish Landscape, and General Observations on the State of Society and Manners. Embellished with Sixteen Engravings. By Colonel T. THORNTON, of Thornville-Royal in Yorkshire. London, 1804."+ + [Lieutenant-Colonel Thornton (formerly of the West-York Militia) was the first sportsman of his day, in point of science, and one of the most convivial companions of the festive board. He revived falconry on a very extensive scale. After the peace of Amiens he went to France for the purpose of examining the state of sporting in that country. He was said to have been materially assisted in his publication by the Reverend Mr. Martyne, and subsequently to his Sporting Tour in Scotland, there appeared, under the colonel's name, A Sporting Tour through various parts of France in 1802, 2 vols. 4to. 1806. And A Vindication of Colonel Thornton's conduct in his Transactions with Mr. Burton. Having been obliged to relinquish residence on his magnificent estate in Yorkshire, he spent the latter years of his life entirely at Paris, where he established a weekly dinner party, under the name of the Falconer's Club. For some months his health was visibly on the decline, yet he would lie in bed till the hour of five, then rise and go to the club, sing a better song, and tell a better story than any of the other members. He died at Paris in 1823.] Arabian sage may have been a writer in the Ammudeha Scibha (the Critical Journal of Tadmor), or at least in the Maarcoheth haelahuth (or Mokha Monthly Review). Without deciding on this difficult point, we can only say that we have frequently sympathized with the Eastern sufferer, and now rejoice that our enemy has written a book. Why we impute this hostile character to the author of the Sporting Tour before us, requires some explanation. The Reviewers of North Britain, in common with the other inhabitants of the Scottish metropolis, enjoy some advantages unknown, it is believed, to their southern brethren. We do not allude merely to the purer air which we breathe in our attics, and the more active exercise which we enjoy in ascending to them, although our superiority in these respects is well known to be in the proportion of fourteen stories to three. But we pride ourselves chiefly in this circumstance, that though "in populous city pent" for eight months in the year, the happy return of August turns the reviewers, with the schoolboys, and even the Burghers of Edinburgh, adrift through the country, to seck among moors and lakes, not indeed whom but what they may devour: For some of us do (under Colonel Thornton's correction) know where to find a bit of game. On such occasions, even the most saturnine of our number has descended from his den garnished with the limbs of mangled authors, wiped his spectacles, adjusted his knapsack, and exchanged the critical scalping knife for the fishing-rod or fowling-piece. But we are doomed to travel in a style (to use the appropriate expression) far different from that of our worthy author. Having in our retinue nothing either to bribe kindness, or to impose respect-having neither two boats nor a sloop to travel by sea, nor a gig, two baggagewaggons, and God knows how many horses, for the land service having neither draughtsman nor falconer, Jonas nor Lawson, groom nor boy-having in our suite neither Conqueror, nor Plato, nor Dragon, nor Sampson, nor Death, nor the Devil-above all, having neither crowns and half crowns to grease the fists of gamekeepers and foresters, nor lime punch, incomparable Calvert's porter, flasks of champagne, and magnums of claret,* to propitiate *All which Colonel Thornton says he had. In our mind, he should have given God thanks, and made no boast of them. their superiors;-in fine, being accoutred in a rusty black coat, and attended by a pointer which might have belonged to the pack of the frugal Mr. Osbaldeston,* being moreover "Lord of our presence but no land beside," we have in our sporting tours met with interruptions of a nature more disagreeable than we choose to mention. Hence the various oppressions exercised upon us by the Lairds† whose moors we have perambulated, has taught us to rail, with Jaques, against all the first-born of Egypt. And deeply have we often sworn, that if any of those gentlemen should be tempted to hunt across Parnassus, or to the demesnes adjacent, or should be detected abandoning their only proper and natural vocation of pursuing, killing and eating the fowls of the air, the beasts of the earth, and the fishes in the waters under the earth, for the unnatural and unsquire-like employment of writing, printing, and publishing, we would then, in return for their lectures on the game laws, introduce them to an acquaintance with the canons of criticism. Such an opportunity of vengeance was rather, however, to be wished than hoped; and therefore Colonel Thornton was not more joyfully surprised when at Dalnacardoch he killed a char with bait, than we were to detect a hunting, hawking, English squire, poaching in the fields of literature. We therefore apprize Colonel Thornton that he must produce his license, and establish his qualification, or submit to the statutory penalty, in terrorem of all such offenders. The colonel's book is a journal of a tour though Scotland, which, like Agricola, he invaded by sea and land at once, and with a retinue almost as formidable. When twenty horses had conveyed the colonel and his trusty followers from Yorkshire by Kelso to Edinburgh, and thence by Glasgow, Dumbarton and Loch-Lomond to Loch-Tay, and thence by Dunkeld to Raits in the forests of Strathspey, they there received news of the embarkation, consisting of a cutter deeply laden with stores and domestics, which had sailed from Hull to Forres, and had been twice saved by the presence of mind of an active housekeeper, who "in spirit outvied the men," p. 3. On the first occasion, she discovered a leak "by the trickling of water in her cot." * Who kept a pack of hounds and two hunters, not to mention a wife and six children, on sixty pounds a-year. + A variety of the squire-genus found in Scotland. Imputing it indeed to some other cause, she prudently gave no alarm till the same phenomenon occurred in another hammock; and on a second eventful occasion, it was she who made the signal of distress, by hoisting her white linen on the oar of the jolly boat, p. 72. After a long encampment in the moors, and after visiting Elgin and Gordon-Castle, the train went by Iverness and the forts to Inverary, thence to Dumbarton and to Edinburgh, and so home by the western road. The performance is termed a Sporting Tour, not because it conveys to the reader any information, new or old, upon the habits of the animals unfortunate enough to be distinguished as game, nor even upon the modes to be adopted in destroying them secundum artem; but because it contains a long, minute and prolix account of every grouse or blackcock which had the honour to fall by the gun of our literary sportsman-of every pike which gorged his bait-of every bird which was pounced by his hawks-of every blunder which was made by his servants-and of every bottle which was drunk by himself and his friends. Now this, we apprehend, exceeds the license given to sportsmen. We allow them all the pleasure which they can procure in an active and exhilarating amusement; nay, we permit them to rehearse the exploits of the field, lake and moor, as long as the audience are engaged in devouring and digesting the spoils of the campaign-but not one minute longer. Will Wimble himself, if we recollect rightly, began and finished his account of striking, playing, and landing the huge jack he presented to Sir Roger de Coverley, within the time the company were engaged in eating it. And if a sportsman wishes to protect his narrative through close time, we apprize him that he must provide for the auditors a reasonable quantity of potted char, pickled salmon, jugged hare, and deer ham, or be satisfied with the attention of the Led Captain. For our own part, we may be believed when we protest we would have given a patient hearing to all the colonel's exploits, if we had been admitted to partake of the dinner in his Dulnon camp, of which the following bill of fare, with many others, is given us with laudable accuracy: "A hodge-podge. REMOVE. Boiled trout and salmon, Reindeer's tongue, Brandered moor-game. SAUCES. Garlic, and Capsicum vinegars. REMOVE. Cheshire cheese, Biscuits. Liquors-port, imperial, Jamaica rum, punch, with fresh limes, porter, ale, &c."-P. 129. Had we been fortunate enough to be regaled at this table in the wilderness, we would willingly and most conscientiously have listened to every story in the colonel's quarto— we would have caressed Pero, Ponto, Dargo, Shandy, Carlo, and Romp (p. 151),-we would have wondered at the old cock and five polts which the colonel killed out of one covey; and wondered still more at the monstrous great pike, which was five feet four inches in length (p. 86), although the story be a good half-hour's reading. Nor would we have refused to sympathize in the moving reverses of fortune experienced by this emperor of sportsmen. We would have been sorry when he fired away his ramrod, or bruised the pipe so, that he could not return it (p. 151),— sorry when his tent tumbled down about his ears (p. 154), -very sorry when a drunken ferryman jumped upon and broke the fourth-piece of his fishing-rod (p. 52),-and very sorry indeed, when he rubbed the skin off his heel by the hard seam of his fen-boot. Nay, if the repast could possibly have lasted so long, we should have submitted thankfully to gape and mourn over a gig stuck on a gate-post (p. 33), over a broken trace or spring (p. 30), or over Sampson, the marvel of the Highlands, abimé (as the colonel calls it) in a bog, though upwards of seventeen hands and a half high (p. 73). In short, we aver, that, while our mouths were employed, our ears should always have been open, and that, reviewers though we be, no hawk he ever reclaimed should have been more manny.* But at present we are under no obligation either to be good listeners or courteous readers; for the colonel, by the mode in which he has been pleased to communicate the above important inci A term in falconry (Colonel Thornton informs us), for being gentle and well broken. |