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planted their fires, and found they had shut off one half of the herd, with the result that twenty-five of the enemy escaped scot-free and were seen no

more !

However there were known to be at least twenty elephants still in the toils everything was ready for the fray, and we were soon in the thick of it. Words could not describe the hideous din of the onslaught: the shrieks and the yells, the taunts and the invectives, the discord of horns and rattles; and in front the dull crashing of the huge beasts through the jungle, varied by occasional volleys of musketry, as some great laggard in the rear turned for a moment to face his opponents. Then there would be curious moments of simultaneous silence, and it was possible, by a little creeping and manœuvring, to get close up to the quarry as they stood listening suspiciously in some thick thorn-brake, doubting in which direction to seek escape, until a sudden panic started the unwieldy ranks into a heavy trot, and the trees and creepers parted to right and left, beyond reach of eye and ear, and we waited anxiously for the first tell-tale shot, announcing that the foe had arrived at, and been repulsed from, the further limit.

And so we hunted the great beasts well into the noon, oblivious of the heat and regardless of the thorns. Excitement is a marvellous antidote to hunger and fatigue, nor was there any thought of either until a halt was called.

The lines took up their position with amazing rapidity: fires were lit and muskets re-loaded; and we threw ourselves down under a mighty banyan tree, and sent rapid messengers to the rear for sandwiches and sodawater.

*

It is the last day of the hunt. The elephants have been driven bit by bit into a patch of jungle not a quarter of a mile from the yawning entrance to the kraal, which has every right to be inscribed with the motto over Dante's famous portal. It only

wants a vigorous effort to thrust them into it, and that effort is about to be made. We take a tempting position up a patriarchal tree that commands both the jungleprison and the kraal-mouth. It is curious how extremely brave you feel at a kraal when you are safely astride of a firm branch; how you criticise the operations of the beaters and musket-men, and courageously chaff your friends below whose want of activity has deprived them of a similar excuse for bravery. But there is a terrible obstacle in the way of final success, in the shape of what is fondly called "the high road," though it is merely a sandy track, remarkable for the undetermined depth of its ruts. This lies right across the line of march: : can the elephants be got over it in broad daylight? For we have had enough of night-attacks and torchlight failures. The struggle is soon raging beneath us; and for a good hour we can trace the evolutions of the "heady fight," and the movements of the enemy and their pursuers, in the swaying of the tree-tops and the crashing of the jungle, and the shrill trumpetings of fear and rage, and the shouts and shots of the dusky army. Closer and closer it comes, up to the very verge of the road, but nothing will persuade the giants to break through the fringe of trees again and again they break back, facing fire and smoke rather than publicity; only to be driven forward again, by volley upon volley of blank cartridge and an ever increasing array of beaters; until at last a great head, with sensitive trunk outstretched, comes peering out of the thick bushes, and a tentative foot paws the sandy rut. The prospect is plainly not encouraging, for the monstrous body is on the point of turning round again; but luckily the beaters guess, or are told of, the state of affairs. Pandemonium let loose could not have excelled the outburst of triumphant hubbub: the die is cast, and the crossing of the Rubicon commences. The enemy are led by an

They

enormous bull, who scorns to hurry, and proudly marches, as though with the honours of war, from the evacuated fortress then follows a female, perhaps the queen of his harem, much occupied with the protection of her two tiny calves; and it is touching to see how carefully she guides and guards one with her trunk, while the other holds on lustily with his trunk to her stumpy apology for a tail. The rest of the herd are less interesting and less dignified: there is no attempt to defend the rear, which is seized with the sentiment of sauve qui peut helter-skelter they rush over the blinding sand, and are lost to view in the thick trees that guard and conceal the fatal entrance. are given but a short repose in this last shelter; just long enough for the attacking army to eat the midday rice, but sufficient for one more despairing effort on the part of the besieged. We have left our coign of vantage and are standing on the road, chatting to a hungry musketeer and rejoicing with him over the success of the morning's efforts, when suddenly there is heard the rush of a heavy body through the trees close to us, and out bursts the great bull into the open, his trunk curled up tight for striking, his tail in air, and a look of desperate wickedness in his rolling eye. But the besiegers are ready for him, even at rice-time: guns are seized in an instant, and a fierce volley greets and stops him ere he has time to pass the watch-fires: he hesitates, and the elephant, like the man, who does so, is lost. Two bold sentries step forward and pepper his feet and trunk with small-shot: the line closes on him, firing as it closes: a great shout runs down the length of it, and the champion, finding the better part of valour in discretion, retires with uncurled trunk and drooping tail.

The battle is practically over. The entrance to the kraal is rendered more and more inevitable by gradually closing lines the herd wanders into it almost unconsciously: a stockade,

corresponding to the one at the further end, is run up and lined with guns, and the prisoners have begun their captivity. The scene at the summit of the amphitheatre (if one may apply such a term to an oblong) is picturesque in the extreme. Spectators from every village in the neighbourhood have been pouring in all the morning, and the fairer (or shall we say gentler?) sex is at last allowed to appear now that the danger is over. Brilliant and dazzling are the colours scattered over the black volcanic rock that rises from a sea of jungle: wild and terror-stricken are the rushes of the huge captives in the toils: most audible is the buzz of contented conversation above, most pitiable the trumpetings of impotent rage below.

But the wild herd is weary at last of tearing up and down the narrow arena, for the heat is very great, and the low jungle is trampled down sufficiently to admit of successful operations. The stockade at the entrance is opened, and the four tame elephants march stealthily in. Each carries two mahouts and plentiful store of strong rope, while by the side, or rather under the cover, of each walk two men armed with sharp spears and two nooses. The leader of the tame gang is a mighty tusker, on whose courage and coolness everything depends, for the other three are but novices, and five to one is long odds in a mammoth battle. The object to be gained is to approach the captives so quietly as not to startle them into a series of wild gallops, to cut off one of their number by a well-timed flank movement, and to hem him in. Then will the clever nooser do his work, and slip a deft loop over the hind foot directly it is lifted, while his comrade fastens the other end to a neighbouring tree, and-actum est de elephanto. But there is many a slip between the lasso and the elephantine foot. All goes smoothly at first. The decoys steal knowingly along the side of the rock-wall to within ten yards of the herd, stopping or advancing according

to each sign of apprehension or confidence, when suddenly the wild ones scent danger, and, escape being impossible, determine on resistance. The huge champion of the herd challenges the tusker, in knightly fashion, to single combat, and advances on him with stooping head and a reverberating roar. You can almost hear the great skulls crash together, so near do they approach, when out step the spearmen in the nick of time, and strike their keen spears into the soft flesh of the trunk, and the charge is averted. But the champion's followers are bent on mischief in spite of his discomfiture charge follows charge with furious frequency: one of the tame ones is in full flight for the rear, and the tusker and his satellites have all they can do to save the retreat from turning into a fatal rout. An exciting incident happens just below us. Α spearman has delivered his thrust at a charging foe, but the spear breaks short off near the head, and remains sticking in the elephant's trunk. He retires, disarmed, to the shelter of the tusker, trips over a root, and falls prone. His enemy is upon him in an instant, bending his head to crush him. It is a sickening moment. One cannot breathe. Suddenly the beast starts back with a shriek of pain and rushes up the arena. The spearhead in his trunk caught in the ground as he was delivering the fatal blow, and

One

gave him such a wrench as he will hardly forget in a week, and the man is saved.

It takes some time to bring up the tame elephants to the attack again, for the first defeat was demoralizing in the extreme, and it is not until a plentiful feed, numerous incantations, and the arrival of a fifth ally have restored their courage that the perilous game recommences. But the wild ones are by this time exhausted with their very wildness, and gather into detached, weary knots: their charges are mere feints, and at last a straggler is hemmed into a likely corner. One moment of suspense as the nooser creeps noiselessly up to him: a wild, abortive struggle with the unyielding tree, and the first fruits of the hunt are securely reaped. The remainder of the work is comparatively easy. Success breeds success, and one after the other the victims fall to the wiles

of their pursuers. The moon rises over the strange scene as we leave it for the camp: the rocks are alive with little fires that form the centres of chattering, hungry groups: the sea of jungle is very calm and pale: the grim prisoners below are straining hopelessly at their fetters, and sniffing sullenly at the food thrown to them; and a glorious week's sport has reached a happy end.

S. M. BURROWS.

190

DR. JOHNSON'S STYLE.

THE critic who examines the variations in Dr. Johnson's style labours under the disadvantages of one who deals with a subject probably unfamiliar to most of his readers. Of his prose works scarcely anything is now read except a few of the Lives of the Poets Rasselas indeed is not forgotten, yet the chances are that an allusion to it is not understood even among people of some reading. The Rambler and The Idler have even passed beyond the affectation of those who are unwilling to be thought ignorant of the great monuments of literature. No one is tempted to pretend that he has read them, for no reputation would be gained thereby. They have, to use Johnson's own words, been "swept away by time," and now lie "among the refuse of fame." It is idle to ask whether this neglect is deserved. Johnson himself, when speaking of the judgment which had been slowly formed of Addison's Cato, maintained that "about things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to think right." In another passage he remarks that "what is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it Eas been found to please." The Rambler and The Idler did not greatly please even the generation for which they were written.

It has been asserted that in Johnson's writings three periods can be traced. In his earlier works and in his later he is, it is maintained, much simpler and easier than in those of his middle age. "Between the years 1750 and 1758 his style was, I think," writes Malone, "in its hardest and most laboured state." If Malone, as I have no doubt, meant to include the period in which were published The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler, he should have closed it with

the year 1760. The publication of The Idler, which began in the spring of 1758, lasted two years all but ten days. Murphy traces "the pomp of diction" which was for the first time assumed in The Rambler, to the influence that the preparation of the Dictionary had on Johnson's mind. "As he grew familiar with technical and scholastic words, he thought that the bulk of his readers were equally learned; or at least would admire the splendour and dignity of his style." Both these critics, in the judgment at which they have arrived, have, I believe, examined merely Johnson's style as an essayist. They have not looked at his miscellaneous writings that belong to the same period. In them I fail to discover any unusual "pomp of diction," or anything harder or more laboured than is met with in the compositions of his earlier or later manhood. The Preface to the Dictionary, the Life of Sir Thomas Browne, the Review of Jonas Hanway's Journal, and of Soame Jenyns's Nature and Origin of Evil, which were written about the middle of this period of ten years, are free from any excess of mannerisms. In fact Boswell himself, though he says that Johnson's style "was considerably easier in the Lives of the Poets than in The Rambler," yet in the numerous papers that his friend wrote for The Literary Magazine in 1756 can find one instance only "in which he had indulged his Brownism," meaning thereby that Anglo-Latian diction in which Sir Thomas Browne delighted. What can be simpler than the following lines in which we are told of Browne's birth and education? They might be taken as a model of simplicity by all biographers.

"Sir Thomas Browne was born at London in the parish of St. Michael in Cheapside on

the 19th of October, 1605. His father was a merchant, of an ancient family at Upton, in Cheshire. Of the name or family of his mother I find no account. Of his childhood or youth there is little known, except that he lost his father very early; that he was, according to the common fate of orphans, defrauded by one of his guardians; and that he was placed for his education at the school of Winchester."

What, to quote an instance from another kind of writing, can be freer from "pomp of diction than the following sarcastic attack on Soame Jenyns?

"I am told that this pamphlet is not the effort of hunger; what can it be then but the product of vanity? And yet how can vanity be gratified by plagiarism or transcription? When this speculatist finds himself prompted to another performance, let him consider whether he is about to disburden his mind or employ his fingers; and if I might venture to offer him a subject I should wish that he would solve this question: Why he that has nothing to write should desire to be a writer?"

The difference in style which Malone and Murphy insist on, which Boswell to some extent allows, and for which Lord Macaulay, as I shall presently show, has an explanation of his own, must, I readily admit, strike any one who, after some familiarity with Johnson's biographical writings, takes up for the first time his essays. The Ramblers undoubtedly differ in style. from Johnson's earlier writings. In his previous compositions scattered passages can be readily found which are cast in the same mould, but the very first Rambler is all of one piece, woven of one texture, of more gorgeous threads, of a more elaborate pattern, and in a more stately loom. For this "pomp of diction," this exuberance of language, a simpler and a more natural explanation may be found than that which Murphy gives. Johnson came before the world in a new character-a character which, as it commonly seeks a peculiar and a dignified dress, so still more commonly adopts a certain stateliness of language. In his Rambler he appeared as a majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom." If he did not

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wear the gown of the preacher, or of the doctor in some ancient university, at all events he clothed his lessons in a style which, to borrow his own words, would "have given dignity to a bishop." In his last Rambler he tells his readers that "it has been his principal design to inculcate wisdom or piety." It will be found, if I am not mistaken, that when he is didactic, when he is "pointing a moral," he labours the most. To him who preaches and to him who teaches, amplification and repetition come almost naturally. Each truth, as it is enunciated, is first set forth with a certain simplicity of language, and is then decked in all the pomp that words can lend. should not be forgotten that Johnson, in the midst of all his big words, is entirely free from one fault which is common to some of the greatest and If the most contemptible of writers. he forces foreign words into the language he never forces foreign idioms. He protests, both by words and by example, against "the license of translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France." He charges Milton with "forming his style by a perverse and pedantic principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom."

It

In

The explanation that I have just given of the change in Johnson's style, though it accounts for much, yet it does not account for all the amplifications that weary the reader in The Rambler and The Adventurer. both these papers he was writing under conditions which are the greatest temptation to diffuseness. He had not only to express his thoughts, but to make them in each number cover a certain space. If they in themselves would not go far enough, the gaps had to be filled up with words. With his wonderful command of language it was the easiest of tasks to support each substantive with three adjectives, where two or even one would have sufficed; and in a second swelling sentence to tell over again in fresh and

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