The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-07-26
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

nau little account Of pug1l1Sm as 1t appeared in Grecian literature and now will give what is to noe an inter esting side light on how it got noticed by one of England's literary men.
 marvel over the fact that Joseph Strut in his Sports and Pastimes of the People of England" first published in 1901, found no place whatever for boxing, for prize fighting had been in vogue for more than fourscore years.
 Even if boxing was excluded in the first edition it does seem that after Hazlitts article on The Fight would have called for its inclusion in one of the later issues. I confessed surprise in finding that Homer sang the glory of being good with the fists and that Pindar embalmed a professional fighter .n one of his odes, but when I ran across the fact that one of England s, shyest literary men had not only attended prize fight. but had made it famous, I was amazed.
 It was almost as great SHOCK as 1T had found in the middle of Emerson's s essay on Friendship an account of a fistic bout, for the English essayist in many particulars was less man of the world than the great transcendental- ist. It may not be known to some that the former came to America Tn his early boyhood. saying that he never Afterwards got of his mouth the de- licious tang of frost bitten New Eng land barberry.
 Strange, is it not, that our American ministry gave it up just as Haziitt, the son of a dissenting minister, side stepped the ministerial profession, but prided himself in being metaphysi- he of all men should have found such inspiration in just an ordinary brutal pugilistic encounter with bare fists. The thing we call taste, is most elu-. sive affair.
 For fear some of you who see this have not yet become addicted to Haz- lit, advise you as friend if you care for essays to take them when in the mood to look through the ones penned by one of the most charming of all the English essayists. He is not only humanst His style, as has been said by trenchant critic, "soars to the rhetorical sublime, and drops to hard Saxon slang" It is for all the world, and not only for specialists.
 No, I haven't thrown up the sponge, but am only feinting, and will get in the ring, but before so doing I wanted to let you understand the kind and character of the man whom Coventry Patmore saw at prize fight in 1922, in the famous set-to between the Gas the town. In his diary, Coventry gives curious picture of Hazlitt. saying: After it was over we joined com pany, and then I found that he had taken the most profound metaphysi- cal as well as personal interest in the battle. and I never heard him talk finer or more philosophica1ly than he did on the subject which he treated, and justly I think. as one eminently worthy of being so considered and treated.
 "AS St1rdv of bu,,op aturn anS > varieties of it's character and constitu tion, Hazlitt looked upon the scene as the finest sight he had ever witnessed. and as a display of animal courage he spoke of the battle as nothing short of sublime. I found that he had paid the most intense attention to every part of the combat had watched the various chances and changes of it's progress with the eye and the tact of an experienced amateur, and could have given (and in fact afterwards did give in the New Monthly Magazine) an infinitely better, because more characteristic and intelligible, account of it's details than the professional re- porters employed for that purpose"
 The gentle author of the Table Talk as a sporting editor and special correspondent at a prize fight says Louise Imogen Quincy. speaking of the mill as "a sublime spectacle" is only another example of the love which every AngloSaxon is supposed to have for row. q do not believe, however, they carry to the degree of the irhab- itants of the Emerald Isle, who when any fighting is being done, make in- qulry to know If it is a free fight"
 I'll not take time to quote from "The Fight which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1922, but will con- tent myself with some extracts from the iamblics, for the jolly iambics are as inspired as the essay. after stating that The Fight was the great one between Neate of Bristol and Tom Hickman, the Gasman. Neate being the victor (who was later beaten by Tom spring). This latter contest was mock heroically celebrated by Maginn in Blackwood's and Hoods casual me- neurological similie heaped up honors on the winner:
 The Spring! I shrink and shudder at
 her name.
 For why? I find her breath a bitter
 brighter,
 And suffer from her blows as if they came
 From Spring the fighter"
 And because William Hazlitt had to | a trac h;,,x