The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-22 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Tales and Traits of Sporting Life. By Henry
Corbet. One Vol. Pp. 202. Rogerson and
Texford, 246, Strand. •
Since Charles Apperley, the famous .Nimrod,
and Charles Bindley, the hilarious Harry ifieover,
we have had no such sporting writer as Henry
Corbett the writer of this most exhilarating book of
Turf Sketches. " Tales and Traits of Sporting Life"
as he calls them, these sketches have been collected
together from the pages of Bell's Life in London,
of the sporting magazines generally, and of
Dickens's All the Year Round in particular. Let
U 9 premise, at once, while drawing attention thus
pointedly to what we have found to be so really
delightful a volume of Sporting Sketches, that the
writer of it—Mr Corbet—is to us a mere name
Peiaon a title-page. And, what is yet more to the
point, let us add, to this acknowledgment of ours,
that, until now, we were wholely unacquainted
with him, with his mere name, that is, as a sport-
ing writer, although among these " Tales and
Traits" of his, we have, to our exceeding satisfac-
tion, recognised one or two papers reed by us when
they were first published (anonymously) in one
or other of the periodicals already mentioned—
in Bell's Life, if we remember rightly, or it may
have been in All the Year Round. We have
now recognised, we say, one or two papers so read
by us, without any knowledge then on our part as
to their authorship—papers so delightful in their
way, so entirely to our own liking, at least, that we
possess to this day clippings from them, clippings
carefully preserved among our collection of News-
paper paragraphs. To be plain, we find that we
have thus, for example, already set apart, now, two
or three years ago, for pleasant reference to after-
wards, whenever we might so list to refer them—
fragmentary extracts from Henry Corbet's wonder-
fully graphic description of the late Fulwar Craven,
one dubbed by the writer of it " A Bit of a Cha-
racter !" A description that we had no notion (until
now) was Henry Corbet's when it chanced to be
first read by us—was it not in Bells Life in Lon-
don? Again we say of this sketch in particular
—now, upon our reperusal of it—a wonderfully
graphic description ! As graphic even as E. Cor-
bet's marvellous little coloured vignette portraiture
of "Fulwar Craven" himself—out upon the Downs
(with Fly-by-night, we may suppose, or Long-
waist, visible in the distance)—talking with a red,
cloaked gipsy-woman. Nay, to our " mind's eye"
—having often seen the man himself, and that, too,
In the days of his glory,when he was, indeed,in every
sense of the phrase, "A Bit of a Character"—H.
Corbet's pen-and-init sketch of Ful war Craven is
more vividly realistic as a life-like sketch than E.
Corbet's coloured vignette sketch of him, but just
now mentioned. Never were Lord Byron's words,
from the famous slang stanza in "Don Juan," so
aptly quoted as they are here by our author, as
directly applying to Fulwar Craven--
"So prime, so flash, so nutty, and so knowing 1"
Yonder is the very man before us, with, as Mr
Corbet expresses it, that " slang delllnt yet some-
how thoroughly sportsman's air about him!"
"Character"—as our Younger Nimrod has it—even,
as it were, "in the careless cock of his
(Fulwar Craven's) battered white hat—in
the wisp-tie of his crimson bandana, in the
half-open striped waistcoat, and the loose cut of
his brass-buttoned brown coat, with another
fogle flying from the pocket of it I" Almost
equally decisive, it is added, were his drab breeches
and gaiters—" emphasised," as the latter were,
"by being carefully pulled down at the back to
show some inches of pink silk stocking I"
And so, too —in this wonderfully lifeslike
sketch—in regard to the mention made of the big
brooch in the shirt, the purple jacket in the hand
(together with the orange cap, Fulwar Craven's
jockey-colours on the race-course), the roving
glance—" a deal of devil in the eye, a life's story in
his very walk and bearing"—et voila ! the owner
of Deception ! the swell ex. Captain Craven ! the
Game Evergreen ! as ready, says Mr Corbet—in this
inimitable portraiture of his, of Fulwar Craven when
in his prime—" as ready still as any of you for a
bout, a lark, or a drink I" Here, already—even while
quoting thus fragmentarily from there "Tales and
fraits of Sporting Life"—we rest assured that we
have given our readers a flavourous taste of our au
thorns quality ! And equally satisfied are we, that
even brief extracts like the foregoing will be recog.

nized by the more discerning, as affording the amplest
justification of the commendatory words already pro.
flounced by us upon the radiant, animated, capital

style in which Henry Corbet handles the pen as a
Sporting Writer. If he handles the ribbons only but

one half as well, he must be a splendid Whip I How.

ever that may be, it appears to us perfectly manifest
—estimating our author's capabilities from the mere
manner of the man—that he is, to the backbone, a
thorough sportsman ! One ready alike—according to
the mere chance of the opportunity—to throw a fly,
to wing a partridge, or to clear a five-barred gate
—equally at home, as he must surely be, in the
saddle, among the stubble, or by the weedy
margin of the trout-stream. Those who turn to
his pages for amusement, will find ample store of
that same, closely compacted into this exhilarating
little half-crown volume, in which he sketches off,
besides Fulwar Craven, divers other dead and gone

glories of the turf, men as well known in their time

as "John Gully," Pugilist and Membar of Parlia-

ccent—as " Old John Day," of his kind A. 1 among

ockeys and trainers —Or as that other wearer

of the peaked skull cap and the silk jacket, " The
Last of the Chifneys 1" Commend us, too—for

capital bits of fun—to our author's reoord, here, of
" The Love Bird" and "The Hard-up," of "A Second

Fox." and " The Belles of Swindon," Such capital
Talcs and Traits they are— these Sketches of Sport-
ing Life by Henry Corbet—i hat all sporting readers

who know them not already, will have reason to
thank us, after a perusal of them, for having thus

heartily commended these sane Sketches to their

consideration.

BROTHER OF GENERAL LEE.—Rumour has it

that Captain Lee, a brother of the great Confederate gene.
ral of that name, is presently enjoying the fishing at Glen-
elg, in the West Highlands. He will find the prosecution
of the piscatorial art in a quiet Higland glen far more plea-
sant work than that in which his illustrious brother is
engaged at Petersburg.—Etyin Courant,

A RIGMAROLE APOLOGUE I—related (apparently
by the Ghost of Mr Roundabout) in the Saturday
Review,—A lawyer with a taste for casuistical speculations
was one day walking over a common. He heard a noise
by the roadside, which appeared on examination to proceed

rem a battle between a rabbit and a weasel. The wease
had the rabbit by the throat, and it was drumming furiously
on the weasel's back with its forepaws. The lawyer began to
doubt whether he should interfere or not. By interfering ho
would save the rabbit's life; but ho would aloe deprive the
weasel of his dinner, which he was earning in the natural
way of his business. By not interfering, he would neglect
to save the life of the rabbit, which,
as compared with de-
priving the weasel of his dinner, would produce a balance
of pain. It appeared to the lawyer, who was a practical
man as well as a casuist, that under these circumstance
the rabbit ought to have the benefit of the doubt; and in-
stead of following the advice, of one of his own profession
who, wheu a notorious rogue was defended by an ingenious
quibble, proposed to "hang the man and save the point,"
he saved the rabbit's life from his antagonist, and ale o
saved the point whether he had done right for further con-
sideration. Upon reflection, he arrived at the satisfactory
conclusion that he had done right, on the ground that the
individual act produced more pleasure than pain, and that
it did not, and from the nature of the case could not, tend
to establish an injurious precedent. If, in order to save
the lifa of the individual rabbit, it had been necessary to
lay down the general principle that all rabbits ought to have
their lives protected against all weasels, ho would have been
wrong; for, to affirm such a principle would have been to
interfere with the established order of nature whereby it is
ordained that rabbits should be the prey of weasels. Bu t
the particular act had no such meaning. The lawyer had
not the remotest intention of becoming a knight-errant on
the part of rabbits in general against weasels, nor did he
even intend to set up a company for that purpose. His
connexion with the subjeci:oegan and ended with that par-
ticular interference, the plain result of which was life to
the rabbit, and a countermand of dinner to the weasel ;
and it was hundreds, perhaps thousands to one that he
would never see such a sight again as long as he lived.
WHALES.—WhiIe the Berwick clipper the Tweed
was lying becalmed off the Ferns Islands on. Sunday and
Monday, it was surrounded during these days by as large
a shoal of whales as has been seen off our shores at this
season for many years. The sailors deplore they had no
harpoon on board, as they might possibly have bagged
some of these monsters of the deep. The presence of whales
is generally a sign of great shoals of herrings.—Beratick,