or naked woods are passed, and the stubble-ridges “swallowed up in the fierceness and rage” of the rushing steeds; the indifference of those engaged in the headlong sport to the danger or even the death of their companions; the lengthening and deepening howl of the hounds as they near their prey; the fierce silence of the dying victim; and the fiercer shout of victory which announces to the echoes that the brush is won, and the glorious (or inglorious) day’s work is over;—­all this Somerville loves, and has painted with considerable power.  In the course of the poem, he sings also of the mysteries of the dog-kennel—­pursues the blood-hound on his track of death—­describes a stag-hunt in Windsor Forest—­paints the fearful phenomena of canine madness—­hunts the hare in a joyous spirit—­and goes down after the otter into its watery recesses, and watches its divings and devious motions as with the eyes of a sea-eagle.  And, besides, (here also imitating Thomson,) he is led away from the comparatively tame “Chase” of England to the more dangerous and more inspiring sports of other lands, where “the huntsmen are up in Arabia,” in pursuit of the wolf, where the bear is bayed amidst forests dark as itself, where the leopard is snared by its own image in a mirror, where the lion falls roaring into the prepared pit, and where the “Chase” is pursued on a large scale by assembled princes amidst the jungles of India.

We doubt not, however, that, were a genuine poet of this age taking up the “Chase” as a subject for song, and availing himself of the accounts of recent travellers, themselves often true poets, such as Lloyd, Livingstone, Cumming Bruce, and Charles Boner, (see the admirable “Chamois Hunting in Bavaria” of the latter,) he would produce a strain incomparably higher than Somerville’s.  Wilson, at least, as we know from his “Christopher in his Sporting Jacket,” and many other articles in Maga, was qualified, in part by nature and in part by extensive experience, to have written such a poem.  Indeed, one sentence of his is superior to anything in the “Chase.”  Speaking of the charge of the cruelty of chasing such an insignificant animal as a fox, he says, “What though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue?  After the first tallyho, reynard is rarely seen till he is run in upon—­once, perhaps, in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common.  It is an idea that is pursued on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm of canine music, worthy both of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands.”  We do not answer for the humanity of this description, but it certainly seems to us to exhaust the subject of the chase, alike in its philosophy and its poetry.[1]

SOMERVILLE’S CHASE.

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