Job?! Masefield's Minor Sports                   13

Squire, had already glorified it in his long poem. The Rugger
Match. Masefield makes interesting use of football in an extended
simile in the poem Right Royal, enlivening his presentation of one
sport through the imagery of another. The riders, jockeying for
position in the steeplechase, are described as follows:

As in football, when forwards heave all in a pack.
With their arms round each other and their heels

heeling back.
And their bodies all straining, as the\' heave, and

men fall.
And the halves hover haw klike to pounce on the ball.
And the runners poise ready, while the mass of

hot men
Heaves and slips, like rough bullocks making play

in a pen,
And the crowd sees the heaving, and is still, till

it break,
So the riders endeavoured as they strained for

the stake.

These passages concerning Masefield's minor sports, along with
his occasional references to cricket and whippet-racing, are of
small importance in comparison with his extensive use of fox¬
hunting, horse-racing, boxing, and the acti\'ities of country fair
and travelling circus. They do round out the picture of a wTiter
more interested in sports and games than most of his literary col¬
leagues, although by no means a professional sportsman like the
deep-sea fisherman, big-game hunter, semi-serious pugilist, and
bull-fight aficionado lirnest Hemingway. John Masefield's love of
competitive physical activity was one of the several reasons for his
appropriateness and his popularity as laureate of a sports-minded
English people.

Note: Permission for quotation from the works of John Masefield has been
granted bv the Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, and The So¬
ciety of Authors, London.