CHAPTER CXLVI.

DANIEL DOVE VERSUS SENECA AND BEN JONSON. ORLANDO AND HIS HORSE AT RONCESVALLES. MR. BURCHELL. THE PRINCE OF ORANGE. THE LORD KEEPER GUILDFORD. REV. MR. HAWTAYN. DR. THOMAS JACKSON. THE ELDER SCALIGER. EVELYN. AN ANONYMOUS AMERICAN. WALTER LANDOR, AND CAROLINE BOWLES.

——Contented with an humble theme
I pour my stream of panegyric down
The vale of Nature, where it creeps and winds
Among her lovely works with a secure
And unambitious course, reflecting clear,
If not the virtues, yet the worth of brutes.
                                                                    COWPER.

The Doctor liked not Seneca when that philosopher deduced as a consequence from his definition of a benefit, that no gratitude can be due to beasts or senseless things; “nam, qui beneficium mihi daturus est,” he says, “debet non tantum prodesse, sed velle. Ideo nec mutis animalibus quidquam debetur; et quam multos è periculo velocitas equi rapuit! Nec arboribus; et quam multos æstu laborantes ramorum opacitas texit!” that is,—“for he who is about to render me a good service, not only ought to render it, but to intend it. Nothing therefore can be owed to dumb animals, and yet how many have the speed of a horse saved from danger! Nor to trees, and yet how many when suffering under the summer sun, have the thick boughs shaded!” To the same tenour Ben Jonson speaks. “Nothing is a courtesy,” he says, “unless it be meant us, and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers that they carry our boats; or winds, that they be favouring, and fill our sails; or meats that they be nourishing; for these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us, but they know it not.”

What! our friend would say, do I owe thee nothing Nobs, for the many times that thou hast carried me carefully and safely, through bad ways, in stormy weather, and in dark nights? Do I owe thee nothing for thy painful services, thy unhesitating obedience, thy patient fidelity? Do I owe thee nothing for so often breaking thy rest, when thou couldest not know for what urgent cause mine had been broken, nor wherefore I was compelled by duty to put thee to thy speed? Nobs, Nobs, if I did not acknowledge a debt of gratitude to thee, and discharge it as far as kind usage can tend to prolong thy days in comfort, I should deserve to be dropt as a colt in my next stage of existence, to be broken in by a rough rider, and broken down at last by hard usage in a hackney coach.

There is not a more touching passage in Italian poetry than that in which Pulci relates the death of Orlando's famous horse, (his Nobs) in the fatal battle of Roncesvalles:

Vegliantin come Orlando in terra scese,
    A piè del suo signor caduto è morto,
E inginocchiossi e licenzia gli chiese,
    Quasi dicesse, io t'ho condotto a porto.
Orlando presto le braccia distese
    A l'acqua, e cerca di dargli conforto,
Ma poi che pure il caval non si sente,
Si condolea molto pietosamente.

O Vegliantin, tu m'hai servito tanto:
    O Vegliantin, dov'è la tua prodezza?
O Vegliantin, nessun si dia piu vanto;
    O Vegliantin, venuta è l'ora sezza:
O Vegliantin, tu m'hai cresciuto il pianto;
    O Vegliantin, tu non vuoi piu cavezza:
O Vegliantin, s'io ti feci mai torto,
Perdonami, ti priego, cosi morto.

Dice Turpin, che mi par maraviglia,
    Che come Orlando perdonami disse,
Quel caval parve ch'aprisse le ciglia,
    E col capo e co gesti acconsentisse. 1

1 MORGANTE MAGGIORE.

A traveller in South Africa, Mr. Burchell, who was not less adventurous and persevering than considerate and benevolent, says that “nothing but the safety of the whole party, or the urgency of peculiar and inevitable circumstances could ever, during his whole journey, induce him to forget the consideration due to his cattle, always regarded as faithful friends whose assistance was indispensable. There may be in the world,” he says, “men who possess a nature so hard, as to think these sentiments misapplied; but I leave them to find, if they can, in the coldness of their own hearts, a satisfaction equal to that which I have enjoyed in paying a grateful attention to animals by whose services I have been so much benefitted.”

The Prince of Orange would once have been surprised and taken in his tent by the Spaniards if his dog had not been more vigilant than his guards. Julian Romero planned and led this night attack upon the Prince's camp; the camisado was given so suddenly, as well as with such resolution, “that the place of arms took no alarm, until their fellows,” says Sir Roger Williams, “were running in with the enemy in their tails; whereupon this dog hearing a great noise, fell to scratching and crying, and withal leapt on the Prince's face, awaking him, being asleep, before any of his men.” Two of his secretaries were killed hard by the tent, and “albeit the Prince lay in his arms, with a lacquey always holding one of his horses ready bridled, yet at the going out of his tent, with much ado he recovered his horse before the enemy arrived. One of his squires was slain taking horse presently after him, and divers of his servants which could not recover theirs, were forced to escape amongst the guards of foot. Ever after until the Prince's dying day, he kept one of that dog's race;—so did many of his friends and followers. The most or all of these dogs were white little hounds, with crooked noses, called camuses.”

The Lord Keeper Guilford “bred all his horses, which came to the husbandry first colts, and from thence, as they were fit, were taken into his equipage; and as by age or accident they grew unfit for that service, they were returned to the place from whence they came, and there expired.” This is one of the best traits which Roger North has related of his brother.

“A person,” says Mr. Hawtayn, who was a good kind-hearted clergyman of the Church of England, “that can be insensible to the fidelity and love which dumb animals often express, must be lower in nature than they.”

Grata e Natura in noi; fin dalla cuna
    Gratitudine è impressa in uman core;
    Ma d'un instinto tal questo è lo stile,
    Che lo seconda più, chi è piu gentile. 2

2 CARLO MARIA MAGGI.

The gentlest natures indeed are the best, and the best will be at the same time the most grateful and the most tender. “Even to behold a flourishing tree, first bereft of bark,” says Dr. Jackson, “then of all the naked branches, yet standing, lastly the green trunk cut down and cast full of sap into the fire, would be an unpleasant spectacle to such as delighted in setting, pruning, or nourishing plants.”

The elder Scaliger as Evelyn tells us, never could convince Erasmus but that trees feel the first stroke of the axe; and Evelyn himself seems to have thought there was more probability in that opinion than he liked to allow. The fall of a very aged oak, he says, giving a crack like thunder, has been often heard at many miles distance; nor do I at any time hear the groans without some emotion and pity, constrained, as I too often am, to fell them with much reluctancy. Mr. Downes in his Letters from the Continent says, “There is at this time a forest near Bolsena so highly venerated for its antiquity that none of the trees are ever cut.”

One who, we are told, has since been honourably distinguished for metaphysical speculation, says in a juvenile letter to the late American Bishop Hobart, “I sometimes converse a considerable time with a tree that in my infancy invited me to play under its cool and refreshing shade; and the old dwelling in which I have spent the greater part of my life, though at present unoccupied and falling into ruin, raises within me such a musing train of ideas, that I know not whether it be pleasing or painful. Now whether it arise from an intimate association of ideas, or from some qualities in the insensible objects themselves to create an affection, I shall not pretend to determine; but certain it is that the love we bear for objects incapable of making a return, seems always more disinterested, and frequently affords us more lasting happiness, than even that which we feel toward rational creatures.”

But never by any author, ancient or modern, in verse or prose, has the feeling which ascribes sentience as well as life to the vegetable world, been more deliciously described than by Walter Landor, when speaking of sweet scents, he says,

They bring me tales of youth, and tones of love;
And 'tis and ever was my wish and way
To let all flowers live freely and all die,
Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart,
Among their kindred in their native place.
I never pluck the rose; the violet's head
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank
And not reproach'd me; the ever sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands
Felt safe, unsoil'd, nor lost one grain of gold.

These verses are indeed worthy of their author when he is most worthy of himself. And yet Caroline Bowles's sweet lines will lose nothing by being read after them.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

How happily, how happily the flowers die away!
Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they;
Just live a life of sunshine, of innocence and bloom,
Then drop without decrepitude or pain into the tomb.

The gay and glorious creatures! “they neither toil nor spin,”
Yet lo! what goodly raiment they're all apparelled in;
No tears are on their beauty, but dewy gems more bright
Than ever brow of Eastern Queen endiademed with light.

The young rejoicing creatures! their pleasures never pall,
Nor lose in sweet contentment, because so free to all;
The dew, the shower, the sunshine; the balmy blessed air,
Spend nothing of their freshness, though all may freely share.

The happy careless creatures! of time they take no heed;
Nor weary of his creeping, nor tremble at his speed;
Nor sigh with sick impatience, and wish the light away;
Nor when 'tis gone, cry dolefully, “Would God that it were day.”

And when their lives are over, they drop away to rest,
Unconscious of the penal doom, on holy Nature's breast;
No pain have they in dying, no shrinking from decay.
Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they!