Athletics and Football (extract)

28 ATHLETICS faults are possibly venial with writers who simply introduce them incidentally, though these latter sometimes make strange blunders. Scott, in his ' Lady of the Lake' (Canto V. Stanza 23), makes Douglasperform a ridiculous feat ofweight-putting: Their armthse brawnyyeomen bare To hurl tmheassive bianr air. When eachhis utmost strenhgathd shown, The Douglarsent anearth-fast stone From its debepd, then heaved hiitgh, And senthe fragmenthrough tshkey A roodbeyondthe farthest mark. We have some suspicion that Thackeray was thinking of this when, in his ' Rebecca and Rowena,' he makes Cceur de Lion ' flinga culverinfrom him as though it had been a reed. It lighted three hundred yards off on the foot of Hugo de Eunyon, who was smoking a cigar at the door of his tent, and caused that redoubted warrior to limp for some days after.' There is another absurd feat, in the way of jumping, in the ' Lady of the Lake' (Canto III. Stanza12): And from the silver beach's side Still watshe prowthree fathom wide, When lightlbyounded to theland The messenger of blood andbrand. Eighteen feet for a ' standing long jump ' is a ' record ' which is hardly likely to be beaten (10 ft. 9 in. is the best knownat present at an athletic meeting). A list of such misĀ­ takes might be indefinitely multiplied, but we will only give one other here. Henry Kingsley,in ' GeoffreyHamlin,' makes his ' muscular Christian' curate run four miles in clerical garb, then vault over a gate, take off his hat to a lady, and draw his watch out of his pocket to time himself; after which, being apparently not in the least out of breath, he enters upon a conversation about the benefitsof athletics. No wonder this curate became a dignitaryof the colonialchurch. He deserved the honour.

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