CHAPTER CXLIV.

HISTORY AND ROMANCE RANSACKED FOR RESEMBLANCES AND NON-RESEMBLANCES TO THE HORSE OF DR. DANIEL DOVE.

Renowned beast! (forgive poetic flight!)
Not less than man, deserves poetic right.
                                                   THE BRUCIAD.

When I read of heroic horses in heroic books, I cannot choose but remember Nobs, and compare him with them, not in particular qualities, but in the sum total of their good points, each in his way. They may resemble each other as little as Rabelais and Rousseau, Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton, Paganini and the Duke of Wellington, yet be alike in this that each had no superior in his own line of excellence.

Thus when I read of the courser which Prince Meridiano presented to Alphebus, the Knight of the Sun, after the Prince had been defeated by him in the presence of his Sister Lindabridis, I think of Nobs, though Cornelin was marvellously unlike the Doctor's perfect roadster. For Cornelin was so named because he had a horn growing from the middle of his forehead; and he had four joints at the lower part of his legs, which extraordinary formation, (I leave anatomists to explain how,) made him swifter than all other horses, insomuch that his speed was likened to the wind. It was thought that his Sire was an Unicorn, though his dam was certainly a mare: and there was this reason for supposing such to be the case, that Meridiano was son to the Emperor of Great Tartary, in which country the hybrid race between Unicorn and Mare was not uncommon in those days.

When the good Knight of the Sun engaged in single combat with the Giant Bradaman, this noble horse stood him in good stead: for Bradaman rode an elephant, and as they ran at each other, Cornelin thrust his natural spike into the elephant's poitrel, and killed him on the spot.

Cornelin did special service on another occasion, when some Knights belonging to a Giant King of the Sards, who had established one of those atrocious customs which it was the duty of all Errant Knights to suppress, met with the Good Knight of the Sun; and one of them said he would allow him to turn back and go his way in peace, provided he gave him his arms and his horse, “if the horse be thine own,” said he, “inasmuch as he liketh me hugely.” The Good Knight made answer with a smile “my arms I shall not give, because I am not used to travel without them; and as for my horse, none but myself can mount him.” The discourteous Knight made answer with an oath that he would see whether he could defend the horse; and with that he attempted to seize the bridle. No sooner had he approached within Cornelin's reach, than that noble steed opened his mouth, caught him by the shoulder, lifted him up, dropt him, and then trampled on him si rudement que son ame s'envola à celuy à qui elle estoit pour ses malefices. Upon this another of these insolent companions drew his sword, and was about to strike at Cornelin's legs, but Cornelin reared, and with both his fore-feet struck him on the helmet with such force, that no armourer could repair the outer head-piece, and no surgeon the inner one.

It was once disputed in France whether a horse could properly be said to have a mouth; a wager concerning it was laid, and referred to no less a person than a Judge, because, says a Frenchman, “our French Judges are held in such esteem that they are appealed to upon the most trifling occasions.” The one party maintained qu'il falloit dire la gueule à toutes bestes, et qu'il n'y avoit que l'homme qui eust bouche; but the Judge decided, qu'à cause de l'excellence du cheval, il falloit dire la bouche. The Giant King's Knights must have been of the Judge's opinion when they saw Cornelin make but a mouthful of their companion.

When our English Judges are holden in such esteem as to be referred to on such occasions, they do not always entertain the appeal. Mr. Brougham when at the Bar—that Mr. Brougham (if posterity enquiries whom I mean) who was afterwards made Lord Chancellor and of whom Sir Edward Sugden justly observed, that if he had but a smattering of law he would know something of everything—Mr. Brougham, I say, opened before Lord Chief Justice Tenterden an action for the amount of a wager laid upon the event of a dog-fight, which through some unwillingness of dogs or men had not been brought to an issue: “We, My Lord,” said the advocate, “were minded that the dogs should fight.”—“Then I,” replied the Judge “are minded to hear no more of it;” and he called another cause.

No wager would ever have been left undecided through any unwillingness to fight on the part of Cornelin or of his Master the Knight of the Sun.

When that good Knight of the Sun seeking death in his despair landed upon the Desolate Island, there to encounter a monster called Faunus el Endemoniado, that is to say the Bedevilled Faun, he resolved in recompence for all the service that Cornelin had done him to let him go free for life: so taking off his bridle and saddle and all his equipments, he took leave of him in these sorrowful words. “O my good Horse, full grievously do I regret to leave thee! Would it were but in a place where thou mightest be looked to and tended according to thy deserts! For if Alexander of Macedon did such honour to his dead horse that he caused a sepulchre to be erected for him and a city to be called after his name, with much more reason might I show honour to thee while thou art living, who art so much better than he. Augustus had his dead horse buried that he might not be devoured by carrion birds. Didius Julianus consecrated a marble statue of his in the Temple of Venus. Lucius Verus had the likeness of his while living cast in gold. But I who have done nothing for thee, though thou surpassest them all in goodness, what can I do now but give thee liberty that thou mayest enjoy it like other creatures? Go then, my good Horse, the last companion from whom I part in this world!” Saying this, he made as if he would have struck him to send him off. But here was a great marvel in this good horse: for albeit he was now free and with nothing to encumber him, he not only would not go away, but instead thereof approached his master, his whole body trembling, and the more the Knight threatened the more he trembled and the nearer he drew. The Knight of the Sun knew not what he should do, for on the one hand he understood in what danger this good horse would be if he should be perceived by the Faun; and on the other threaten him as he would he could not drive him away. At length he concluded to leave him at liberty, thinking that peradventure he would take flight as soon as he should see the Faun. He was not mistaken; Cornelin would have stood by his Master in the dreadful combat in which he was about to engage, and would peradventure have lost his life in endeavouring to aid him; but the Bedevilled Faun had been so named because he had a hive of Devils in his inside; fire came from his mouth and nostrils as he rushed against the Knight, and swarms of armed Devils were breathed out with the flames; no wonder therefore that even Cornelin took fright and galloped away.

But when Alphebus had slain the Bedevilled Faun, and lived alone upon the Desolate Island, like a hermit, waiting and wishing for death, eating wild fruits and drinking of a spring which welled near some trees, under which he had made for himself a sort of bower, Cornelin used often to visit him in his solitude. It was some consolation to the unhappy Knight to see the good horse that he loved so well: but then again it redoubled his grief as he called to mind the exploits he had performed when mounted upon that famous courser. The displeasure of his beautiful and not less valiant than beautiful mistress the Princess Claridiana had caused his wretchedness, and driven him to this state of despair; and when Claridiana being not less wretched herself, came to the Desolate Island in quest of him, the first thing that she found was the huge and broken limb of a tree with which he had killed the Faun, and the next was Cornelin's saddle and bridle and trappings, which she knew by the gold and silk embroidery, tarnished as it was, and by the precious stones. Presently she saw the good horse Cornelin himself, who had now become well nigh wild, and came toward her bounding and neighing, and rejoicing at the sight of her horse, for it was long since he had seen a creature of his own kind. But he started off when she would have laid hold of him, for he could not brook that any but his own master should come near him now. Howbeit she followed his track, and was thus guided to the spot where her own good Knight was wasting his miserable life.

Nobs was as precious a horse to the Doctor as Vegliantino was to Rinaldo,—that noble courser whom the Harpies killed, and whom Rinaldo, after killing the whole host of Harpies, buried sorrowfully, kneeling down and kissing his grave. He intended to go in mourning and afoot for his sake all the rest of his life, and wrote for him this epitaph upon a stone, in harpy's blood and with the point of his sword.

Quì giace Vegliantin, caval de Spagna,
Orrido in guerra, e tutto grazie in pace;
Servi Rinaldo in Francia ed in Lamagna,
Ed ebbe ingegno e spirto si vivace
Che averebbe coi piè fatto una ragna;
Accorto, destro, nobile ed audace,
Morì qual forte, e con fronte superba;
O tu, che passi, gettagli un pò d'erba. 1

He was as sagacious a horse and as gentle as Frontalatte, who in the heroic age of horses was

Sopra ogni altro caval savio ed umano. 2

1 RICCIARDETTO.

2 ORLANDO INAMORATO.

When the good Magician Atlante against his will sent his pupil Ruggiero forth, and provided him with arms and horse, he gave him this courser which Sacripante had lost, saying to him

            certamente so che potrai dire
Che'l principe Rinaldo e'l conte Orlando
Non ha miglior caval. 3

Avendo altro signore, ebbe altro nome;

His new master called him Frontino

Il mondo non avea più bel destriero,

*              *               *               *               *

Or sopra avendo il giovane Ruggiero,
Piu vaga cosa nun si vide mai.
Chi guardasse il cavallo e'l cavaliero
Starebbe a dar giudicio in dubbio assai,
Se fusser vivi, o fatti col pennello,
Tanto era l'un e l'altro egregio e bello. 3

3 ORLANDO INAMORATO.

Nobs was not like that horse now living at Brussels, who is fond of raw flesh, and getting one day out of his stable found his way to a butcher's shop and devoured two breasts of mutton, mutton it seems being his favourite meat. If his pedigree could be traced we might expect to find that he was descended from the anthropophagous stud of that abominable Thracian King whom Hercules so properly threw to his own horses for food.

Nor was he like that other horse of the same execrable extraction, whom in an evil day Rinaldo, having won him in battle, sent as a present by the damsel Hipalca to Ruggiero,—that Clarion

A quien el cielo con rigor maldixo,
Y una beldad le diò tan codiciada;

that fatal horse who as soon as Ruggiero mounted him, carried his heroic master into the ambush prepared for him in which he was treacherously slain. The tragedy not ending there, for one of the traitors took this horse for his reward and his proper reward he had with him

Púsole el traidor pernas, corrió el fuerte
Desenfrenado potro hasta arrojallo,
En medio de la plaza de Marsella,
A ojos de Bradamante, y su doncella.

Alli en presencia suyo hecho pedazos
Al Magancés dexó el caballo fiero:
Viendole Hipalca muerto entre los brazos,
Y no en su silla qual penso a Rugero,
Notorios vió los cavilosos lazos
Del fementido bando de Pontiero.
Alteróse la bella Bradamante
Y el sobresalto le abortó un infante.

Y al quinto dia con la nueva cierta
De la muerte infeliz del paladino,
La antes dudosa amante quedó muerta,
Y cumplido el temor del adivino.
Y por tantas desgracias descubierta
La traicion de Maganza, un rio sanguino
Labró Morgana, y de la gente impia
Cien falsos Condes degolló en un dia. 4

eso quieren decir las desgracias del Caballo Clarion, says the author of this poem El Doctor Don Bernardo de Balbuena, in the allegory which he annexes to the Canto, que la fuerza de las estrellas predomina en los brutos, y en la parte sensitiva, y no en el albedrio humano y voluntad racional.

4 BALBUENA.

Neither did Nobs resemble in his taste that remarkable horse which Dr. Tyson frequently saw in London at the beginning of the last century. This horse would eat oysters with great delight, scrunching them shells and all between his teeth. Accident developed in him this peculiar liking; for being fastened one day at a tavern-door where there happened to be a tub standing with oysters in it, the water first attracted him, and then the fresh odour of fish induced him to try his teeth upon what promised to be more savoury than oats and not much harder than horse-beans. From that time he devoured them with evident satisfaction whenever they were offered him; and he might have become as formidable a visitor to the oyster-shops, if oyster-shops there then had been, as the great and never-to-be-forgotten Dando himself.

He was not like the Colt which Boyle describes, who had a double eye, that is to say two eyes in one socket, in the middle of his forehead, a Cyclops of a horse.

Nor was he like the coal-black steed on which the Trappist rode, fighting against the Liberales as heartily as that good Christian the Bishop Don Hieronimo fought with the Cid Campeador against the Moors, elevating the Crucifix in one hand, and with his sword in the other smiting them for the love of Charity. That horse never needed food or sleep: he never stumbled at whatever speed his master found it needful to ride down the most precipitous descent; his eyes emitted light to show the Trappist his way in the darkness; the tramp of his hoofs was heard twenty miles around, and whatsoever man in the enemy's camp first heard the dreadful sound, knew that his fate was fixed, and he must inevitably die in the ensuing fight. Nobs resembled this portentous horse as little as the Doctor resembled the terrible Trappist. Even the great black horse which used to carry old George, as William Dove called the St. George of Quakerdom, far exceeded him in speed. The Doctor was never seen upon his back in the course of the same hour at two places sixty miles apart from each other. There was nothing supernatural in Nobs. His hippogony, even if it had been as the Doctor was willing to have it supposed he thought probable, would upon his theory have been in the course of nature, though not in her usual course.

Olaus Magnus assigns sundry reasons why the Scandinavian horses were hardier, and in higher esteem than those of any other part of the World. They would bear to be shod without kicking or restraint. They would never allow other horses to eat their provender. They saw their way better in the dark. They regarded neither frost nor snow. They aided the rider in battle both with teeth and hoofs. Either in ascending or descending steep and precipitous places they were sure-footed. At the end of a day's journey a roll in the sand or the snow took off their fatigue and increased their appetite. They seldom ailed anything and what ailments they had were easily cured. Moreover they were remarkable for one thing,

Ch' à dire è brutto, ed à tacerlo è bello—5

and which, instead of translating or quoting the Dane's Latin, I must intimate——by saying that it was never necessary to whistle to them.

5 RUCELLAI.

Nobs had none of the qualities which characterized the Scandinavian horses, and in which their excellencies consisted, as peculiarly fitting them for their own country. But he was equally endowed with all those which were required in his station. There was not a surer-footed beast in the West Riding; and if he did not see his way in the dark by the light of his own eyes like the black horse of the Trappist, and that upon which the Old Woman of Berkeley rode double behind One more formidable than the Trappist himself, when she was taken out of her coffin of stone and carried bodily away,—he saw it as well as any mortal horse could see, and knew it as well as John Gough the blind botanist of Kendal, or John Metcalf the blind guide of Knaresborough.

But of all his good qualities that for which the Doctor prized him most was the kindness of his disposition, not meaning by those words what Gentlemen-feeders and professors of agriculture mean. “It is the Grazier's own fault,” says one of those professors, “if ever he attempts to fatten an unkind beast,”—kindness of disposition in a beast importing in their language, that it fattens soon. What it meant in the Doctor's, the following authentic anecdote may show.

The Doctor had left Nobs one day standing near the door of a farm-house with his bridle thrown over a gate-post; one of the farmer's children, a little boy just old enough to run into danger, amused himself by pulling the horse's tail with one hand and striking him with a little switch across the legs with the other. The Mother caught sight of this and ran in alarm to snatch the urchin away; but before she could do this, Nobs lifted up one foot, placed it against the boy's stomach, and gently pushed him down. The ground was wet, so that the mark of his hoof showed where he had placed it, and it was evident that what he had done was done carefully not to injure the child, for a blow upon that part must have been fatal. This was what the Doctor called kindness of disposition in a horse. Let others argue if they please que le cheval avoit quelque raison, et qu'il ratiocinoit entre toutes les autres bestes, à cause du temperament de son cerveau; 6 here, as he justly said, was sufficient proof of consideration, and good nature.

6 BOUCHET.

He was not like the heroic horse which Amadis won in the Isle Perilous, when in his old age he was driven thither by a tempest, though the adventure has been pretermitted in his great history. After the death of that old, old very old and most famous of all Knights, this horse was enchanted by the Magician Alchiso. Many generations passed away before he was overcome and disenchanted by Rinaldo; and he then became so famous by his well-known name Bajardo, that for the sole purpose of winning this horse and the sword Durlindana which was as famous among swords as Bajardo among horses, Gradasso came from India to invade France with an army of an hundred and fifty thousand knights. If Nobs had been like him, think what a confusion and consternation his appearance would have produced at Doncaster races!

Ecco appare il cavallo, e i calci tira,
E fa saltando in ciel ben mille rote;
Delle narici il foco accolto spira,
Muove l'orecchie, e l'empie membra scuote;
A sassi, a sterpi, a piante ei non rimira,
Ma fracassando il tutto, urta e percote;
Col nitrito i nemici a fiera guerra
Sfida, e cò piè fa rimbombar la tierra. 7

7 TASSO.

Among the Romans he might have been in danger of being selected for a victim to Mars, on the Ides of December. The Massagetæ would have sacrificed him to the Sun, to whom horses seem to have been offered wherever he was worshipped. He might have escaped in those countries where white horses were preferred on such occasions;—a preference for which a commentator upon Horace accounts by the unlucky conjecture that it was because they were swifter than any others.

No better horse was ever produced from that celebrated breed which Dionysius the Tyrant imported into Sicily from the Veneti. No better could have been found among all the progeny of the fifty thousand Mares belonging to the Great King, upon the Great Plain which the Greeks called Hippobotus because the Median herb which was the best pasture for horses abounded there. Whether the Nisæan horses which were used by kings, were brought from thence or from Armenia, antient Authors have not determined.

There was a tomb not far from the gates at Athens, ascending from the Piræus, on which a soldier was represented standing beside a Horse. All that was known of this monument in the age of Adrian was that it was the work of Praxiteles; the name of the person whose memory it was intended to preserve had perished. If Nobs and his Master had flourished at the same time with Praxiteles, that great sculptor would have thought himself worthily employed in preserving likenesses for posterity of the one and the other. He was worthy to have been modelled by Phidias or Lysippus. I will not wish that Chantrey had been what he now is, the greatest of living sculptors, fourscore years ago: but I may wish that Nobs and the Doctor had lived at the time when Chantrey could have made a bust of the one and a model of the other, or an equestrian statue to the joint honour of both.

Poppæa would have had such a horse shod with shoes of gold. Caligula would have made him Consul. William Rufus would have created him by a new and appropriate title Lord Horse of London Town.

When the French had a settlement in the Island of Madagascar, their Commander who took the title of Viceroy, assembled a force of 3000 natives against one of the most powerful native Chiefs, and sent with them 140 French under the Sieur de Chamargou. This Officer had just then imported from India the first horse which had ever been seen in Madagascar, and though oxmanship was practised by this people, as by some of the tribes on the adjacent coast of Africa, those oxriders were astonished at the horse; ils luy rendoient même des respects si profonds, que tous ceux qui envoyoient quelque deputation vers le General de cette armée, ne manquoient point de faire des presens et des complimens a Monsieur le Cheval. If Nobs had been that Horse, he would have deserved all the compliments that could have been paid him.

He would have deserved too, as far as Horse could have deserved, the more extraordinary honours which fell to the lot of a coal black steed, belonging to a kinsman of Cortes by name Palacios Rubios. In that expedition which Cortes made against his old friend and comrade Christoval de Olid, who in defiance of him had usurped a government for himself, the Spaniards after suffering such privations and hardships of every kind, as none but Spaniards could with the same patience have endured, came to some Indian settlements called the Mazotecas, being the name of a species of deer in the form of one of which the Demon whom the natives worshipped had once, they said, appeared to them, and enjoined them never to kill or molest in any way an animal of that kind. They had become so tame in consequence, that they manifested no fear at the appearance of the Spaniards, nor took flight till they were attacked. The day was exceedingly hot, and as the hungry hunters followed the chase with great ardour, Rubios's horse was overheated, and as the phrase was, melted his grease. Cortes therefore charged the Indians of the Province of Itza to take care of him while he proceeded on his way to the Coast of Honduras, saying that as soon as he fell in with the Spaniards of whom he was in quest, he would send for him; horses were of great value at that time, and this was a very good one. The Itzaex were equally in fear of Cortes and the Horse; they did not indeed suppose horse and rider to be one animal, but they believed both to be reasonable creatures, and concluded that what was acceptable to the one would be so to the other. So they offered him fowls to eat, presented nosegays to him of their most beautiful and fragrant flowers, and treated him as they would have treated a sick Chief, till to their utter dismay, he was starved to death. What was to be done when Cortes should send for him? The Cacique with the advice of his principal men gave orders that an Image of the Horse should be set up in the temple of his town, and that it should be worshipped there by the name of Tziminchac, as the God of Thunder and Lightning, which it seemed to them were used as weapons by the Spanish Horsemen. The honour thus paid to the Horse would they thought obtain credit for the account which they must give to the Spaniards, and prove that they had not wilfully caused his death.

The Itzaex however heard nothing of the Spaniards, nor the Spaniards of Rubios's black horse, till nearly an hundred years afterwards two Franciscans of the province of Yucatan, went as Missionaries among these Indians, being well versed in the Maya tongue, which is spoken in that country; their names were Bartolomé de Fuensalida and Juan de Orbita. The chief settlement was upon an Island in the Lake of Itza; there they landed, not with the good will either of the Cacique or the people, and entering the place of worship, upon one of their great Cus or Pyramids they beheld the Horse-Idol, which was then more venerated than all the other Deities. Indignant at the sight, Father Orbita took a great stone and broke to pieces the clay statue, in defiance of the cries and threats with which he was assailed. “Kill him who has killed our God,” they exclaimed; “kill him! kill him!” The Spaniards say the serene triumph and the unwonted beauty which beamed in Orbita's countenance at that moment, made it evident that he was acting under a divine impulse. His companion Fuensalida, acting in the same spirit, held up the Crucifix, and addressed so passionate and powerful an appeal to the Itzaex in their own language upon the folly and wickedness of their Idolatry and the benefits of the Gospel which he preached, that they listened to him with astonishment and admiration and awe, and followed the Friars respectfully from the place of worship, and allowed them to depart in safety.

These Franciscan Missionaries zealous and intrepid as they were, did but half their work. Many years afterwards when D. Martin de Ursua defeated the Itzaex in an action on the Lake, and took the Petén or Great Island, he found, in what appears to have been the same Adoratory, a decayed shin bone, suspended from the roof by three strings of different coloured cotton, a little bag beneath containing smaller pieces of bone in the same state of decay, under both there were three censers of the Indian fashion with storax and other perfumes burning, and a supply of storax near wrapt in dry leaves of maize, and over the larger bone an Indian coronet. These he was told upon enquiry, were the bones of the Horse which the Great Captain had committed to the care of their Cacique long ago.

If it had been the fate of Nobs thus to be idolified, and the Iztaex had been acquainted with his character, they would have compounded a name for him, not from Thunder and Lightning, but from all the good qualities which can exist in horse-nature, and for which words could be found in the Maya tongue.