Her leaping powers are extraordinary, over water or timber. On one occasion she cleared some palings three feet ten inches in height. As she had young only in the summer time, I suspect they breed but once a year in the wild state." This confirms the statement of Turbervile to the effect that the Wild Boar produces only one litter in the year. It was formerly the custom on Christmas Day at Queen's College, Oxford (whether still observed or not, we cannot say), to bring into hall a boar's head with great ceremony and song, as described by Aubrey in one of his MSS. preserved in the Ashmolean Museum. Tradition represents this usage of Queen's as a commemoration of an act of valour performed by a student of that college, who, while walking in the neighbouring forest of Shotover, and reading Aristotle, was suddenly attacked by a wild boar. The furious beast came open-mouthed upon the youth, who, however, very courageously and with a happy presence of mind, is said to have "rammed in the volume and cried Græcum est," fairly choking the savage with the sage.* We can scarcely dip into the history of the Wild Boar in days gone by without being reminded of the "Boar's Head," in Eastcheap, so happily referred to by Shakespeare, and so pleasantly descanted on by Goldsmith in his "Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern ;" and we are tempted to give an illustration of this famous sign, in reduced facsimile from the engraving in Pennant's "London." That author thus alludes to it :-"A little higher up on the left hand is Eastcheap, immortalized by Shakespeare as the place of rendezvous of Sir John Falstaff and his merry companions. Here stood the Boar's Head tavern; the site is now covered with modern houses, but in the front one is still preserved the memory of the sign, the Boar's Head cut in stone. Notwithstanding the house is gone, we shall laugh at the humour of the jovial knight, his hostess, Bardolph, and Pistol, as long as the descriptive pages of our great dramatic writer exist in our entertained imagination." Hone, in his "Year Book," gives a brief account of a visit which he paid to this memorable hostelry. "I could not," he says, "omit a sight of this remarkable place; but upon my approach to Eastcheap, the inhabitants were fled, the house shut up, and instead of an half timber building, with one story projecting Wade's "Walks in Oxford," 1817, vol. i. p. 167. over the other, as I expected, the edifice was modern, with a date in the front of 1668. I immediately concluded that the old house was burnt down by the great fire." Goldsmith's latest editor, Colonel Cunningham, in a note to the essay above referred to, assures us that this was so. Hone, however, continued his researches. On each side of the doorway he observed "a vinebranch carved in wood, rising more than three feet from the ground, loaded with leaves and clusters; and on the top of each a little Falstaff, eight inches high, in the dress of his day." This induced him to make further inquiry, when he ascertained that the place had been sold by auction three week's before, at Garraway's coffee-house ;* that the purchaser was a stranger, and had the keys; and that a sight of the premises could not be obtained. "There is nothing," he says, more difficult than to find out a curiosity which depends upon others, and which nobody regards. With some trouble," he continues, "I procured a sight of the back buildings. I found them in that ancient state which convinced me that tradition, Shakespeare and Goldsmith, were right; and could I have gained admission into the premises of mine hostess, Mistress Quickly, I should certainly have drank a cup of sack in memory of the bulky knight." There was another and more ancient hostelry *The date of his visit is not stated, but the date of his Preface to "The Year Book," in which his account is printed (under "December 3"), is January, 1832. called the "Boar's Head," though less celebrated than the one just mentioned. It was situate in Southwark, and was standing in Henry the Sixth's time. It is referred to in the "Paston Letters,” in a letter from Henry Wyndesore to John Paston, dated August 27, 1458. The writer says,-"Please you to remembre my maistre at your best leiser, wheder his old promise shall stande as touchyng my preferrying to the 'Boreshed' in Suthwerke."* It is in this same collection that we find mention made of the use of "boar-spears" in Norfolk, in the fifteenth century, first in a petition of John Paston to the King and Parliament, in 1450, touching his expulsion from Gresham by Lord Molyns, whose retainers held forcible possession of this manor "with bore-speres, swordes, and gesernys" (battle-axes); and again in a similar petition of Walter Ingham in 1454.t The boar-spear of those days was very different from the spear now used by boar-hunters in India. Nicholas Cox, in "The Gentleman's Recreation," first published in 1674, thus describes it :-" The hunting spear must be very sharp and broad, branching forth into certain forks, so that the boar may not break through them upon the huntsman." The modern Anglo-Indian spear is from six to eight feet long; the shaft of bamboo weighted with lead; the spear-head a broad and stout blade. "The Paston Letters," ed. Gairdner, vol. i. p. 431. the present work, the Wolf was the last to disappear. On this account, partly, the materials for its history as a British animal are more complete than is the case with any of the others. To judge by the osteological remains which the researches of geologists have brought to light, there was perhaps scarcely a county in England or Wales in which, at one time or another, Wolves did not I |