to enter the royal navy, and before the end of 1762 the poet-sailor was rated as a midshipman on board the “Royal George.” But as this ship was paid off at the peace of 1763, Falconer received an appointment as purser of the “Glory” frigate, a situation which he held until that vessel was laid up on ordinary at Chatham. In 1764 he published a new and enlarged edition of The Shipwreck, and in the same year a rhymed political tirade against John Wilkes and Charles Churchill, entitled The Demagogue. In 1769 appeared his Universal Marine Dictionary, in which retreat is defined as a French manœuvre, “not properly a term of the British marine.” While engaged on this dictionary, J. Murray, a bookseller in Fleet Street, father of Byron’s munificent publisher and correspondent, wished him to join him as a partner in business. The poet declined the offer, and became purser of the “Aurora” frigate, which had been commissioned to carry out to India certain supervisors or superintendents of the East India Company. Besides his nomination as purser, Falconer was promised the post of private secretary to the commissioners. Before sailing he published a third edition of his Shipwreck, which had again undergone “correction,” but not improvement. The poet sailed in the “Aurora” from Spithead on the 20th of September 1769. The vessel arrived safely at the Cape of Good Hope, and left on the 27th of December. She was never more heard of, having, as is supposed, foundered at sea. The Shipwreck, the poem with which Falconer’s name is connected, had a great reputation at one time, but the fine passages which pleased the earlier critics have not saved it from general oblivion.
See his Poetical Works in the “Aldine Edition” (1836), with a life by J. Mitford.
FALCONET, ÉTIENNE MAURICE (1716–1791), French
sculptor, was born in Paris. His parents were poor, and he was
at first apprenticed to a carpenter, but some of his clay-figures,
with the making of which he occupied his leisure hours, attracted
the notice of the sculptor Lemoine, who made him his pupil.
He found time to study Greek and Latin, and also wrote several
brochures on art. His artistic productions are characterized by
the same defects as his writings, for though manifesting considerable
cleverness and some power of imagination, they display in
many cases a false and fantastic taste, the result, most probably,
of an excessive striving after originality. One of his most
successful statues was one of Milo of Crotona, which secured his
admission to the membership of the Academy of Fine Arts in
1754. At the invitation of the empress Catherine he went in
1766 to St Petersburg, where he executed a colossal statue of
Peter the Great in bronze. In 1788 he became director of the
French Academy of Painting. Many of Falconet’s works, being
placed in churches, were destroyed at the time of the French
Revolution. His “Nymphe descendant au bain” is in the Louvre.
Among his writings are Reflexions sur la sculpture (Paris, 1768), and Observations sur la statue de Marc-Aurèle (Paris, 1771). The whole were collected under the title of Œuvres littéraires (6 vols., Lausanne, 1781–1782; 3 vols., Paris, 1787).
FALCONRY (Fr. fauconnerie, from Late Lat. falco, falcon),
the art of employing falcons and hawks in the chase, often termed
Hawking. Falconry was for many ages one of the principal
sports of the richer classes, and, since many more efficacious
methods and appliances for the capture of game undoubtedly
existed, it is probable that it has always been carried on as a
pure sport. The antiquity of falconry is very great. There
appears to be little doubt that it was practised in Asia at a very
remote period, for which we have the concurrent testimony of
various Chinese and Japanese works, some of the latter being
most quaintly and yet spiritedly illustrated. It appears to
have been known in China some 2000 years B.C., and the records
of a king Wen Wang, who reigned over a province of that country
689 B.C., prove that the art was at that time in very high favour.
In Japan it appears to have been known at least 600 years B.C.,
and probably at an equally early date in India, Arabia, Persia
and Syria. Sir A. H. Layard, in his Nineveh and Babylon,
considered that in a bas-relief found by him in the ruins of
Khorsabad “there appeared to be a falconer bearing a hawk
on his wrist,” from which it would appear to have been known
there some 1700 years B.C. In all the above-mentioned countries
of Asia it is practised at the present day.
Little is known of the early history of falconry in Africa, but from very ancient Egyptian carvings and drawings it seems to have been known there many ages ago. It was probably also in vogue in the countries of Morocco, Oran, Algiers, Tunis and Egypt, at the same time as in Europe. The older writers on falconry, English and continental, often mention Barbary and Tunisian falcons. It is still practised in Egypt.
Perhaps the oldest records of falconry in Europe are supplied by the writings of Pliny, Aristotle and Martial. Although their notices of the sport are slight and somewhat vague, yet they are quite sufficient to show clearly that it was practised in their days—between the years 384 B.C. and A.D. 40. It was probably introduced into England from the continent about A.D. 860, and from that time down to the middle of the 17th century falconry was followed with an ardour that perhaps no English sport has ever called forth, not even fox-hunting. Stringent laws and enactments, notably in the reigns of William the Conqueror, Edward III., Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, were passed from time to time in its interest. Falcons and hawks were allotted to degrees and orders of men according to rank and station—for instance, to the emperor the eagle and vulture, to royalty the jerfalcons, to an earl the peregrine, to a yeoman the goshawk, to a priest the sparrow-hawk, and to a knave or servant the useless kestrel. The writings of Shakespeare furnish ample testimony to the high and universal estimation in which it was held in his days. About the middle of the 17th century falconry began to decline in England, to revive somewhat at the Restoration. It never, however, completely recovered its former favour, a variety of causes operating against it, such as enclosure of waste lands, agricultural improvements, and the introduction of fire-arms into the sporting field, till it fell, as a national sport, almost into oblivion. Yet it has never been even temporarily extinct, and it is successfully practised even at the present day.
In Europe the game or “quarry” at which hawks are flown consists of grouse (confined to the British Isles), black-game, pheasants, partridges, quails, landrails, ducks, teal, woodcocks, snipes, herons, rooks, crows, gulls, magpies, jays, blackbirds, thrushes, larks, hares and rabbits. In former days geese, cranes, kites, ravens and bustards were also flown at. Old German works make much mention of the use of the Iceland falcon for taking the great bustard, a flight scarcely alluded to by English writers. In Asia the list of quarry is longer, and, in addition to all the foregoing, or their Asiatic representatives, various kinds of bustards, sand grouse, storks, ibises, spoonbills, pea-fowl, jungle-fowl, kites, vultures and gazelles are captured by trained hawks. In Mongolia and Chinese Tartary, and among the nomad tribes of central Asia, the sport still flourishes; and though some late accounts are not satisfactory either to the falconer or the naturalist, yet they leave no doubt that a species of eagle is still trained in those regions to take large game, as antelopes and wolves. Mr Atkinson, in his account of his travels in the country of the Amur, makes particular mention of the sport, as does also Mr Shaw in his work on Yarkand; and in a letter from the Yarkand embassy, under Mr Forsyth, C.B., dated Camp near Yarkand, Nov. 27, 1873, the following passage occurs:—“Hawking appears also to be a favourite amusement, the golden eagle taking the place of the falcon or hawk. This novel sport seemed very successful.” It is questionable whether the bird here spoken of is the golden eagle. In Africa gazelles are taken, and also partridges and wild-fowl.
The hawks used in England are the three great northern falcons, viz. the Greenland, Iceland and Norway falcons, the peregrine falcon, the hobby, the merlin, the goshawk and the sparrow-hawk. In former days the saker, the lanner and the Barbary or Tunisian falcon were also employed. (See Falcon.)
Of the foregoing the easiest to keep, most efficient in the field, and most suitable for general use are the peregrine falcon and the goshawk.
In all hawks, the female is larger and more powerful than the male.
