Note 460 — The Alcove. (continued 2)

Some superficial notes, accompanied by an interesting wood-cut of a man carrying hawks for sale, in my edition of Robinson's translation of More's Utopia, kindled, in the breast of Mr. Joseph Haslewood, a prodigious ardour to pursue the subjects above-mentioned to their farthest possible limits. Not Eolus himself excited greater commotion in the Mediterranean waves than did my bibliomaniacal friend in agitating the black-letter ocean—'a sedibus imis'—for the discovering of every volume which had been published upon these delectable pursuits. Accordingly there appeared in due time—'[post] magni procedere menses'—some very ingenious and elaborate disquisitions upon Hunting and Hawking and Fishing, in the ninth and tenth volumes of The Censura Literaria; which, with such additions as his enlarged experience has subsequently obtained, might be thought an interesting work if reprinted in a duodecimo volume. But Mr. Haslewood's mind, as was to be expected, could not rest satisfied with what he considered as mere nuclei productions: accordingly, it became clothed with larger wings, and meditated a bolder flight; and after soaring in a hawk-like manner, to mark the object of its prey, it pounced upon the book of Hawking, Hunting, Fishing, &c., which had been reprinted by W. de Worde, from the original edition published in the abbey of St. Albans. Prefixed to the republication of this curious volume, the reader will discover a great deal of laborious and successful research connected with the book and its author. And yet I question whether, in the midst of all the wood-cuts with which it abounds, there be found any thing more suitable to the 'high and mounting spirit' (see Braithwait's amusing discourse upon Hawking, in his English Gentleman, p. 200-1.) of the editor's taste, than the ensuing representation of a pilgrim Hawker?!—taken from one of the frontispieces of L'Acadamia Peregrina del Doni; 1552, 4to., fol. 73.