suffering—speed away with him from the hungry wolves that howl faintly and more faintly upon his track, though he hears them not, thinks not of them—his speed, his thought, is for his home—plunge with him into the wild rush of waters—strain with him " up the repelling bank"—sink with him at last beneath the overpowering trial—summon every energy to greet once more the companions of his freedom—and weep, ay, weep, that it should be too late! We know not a finer picture in all the painting of poetry than this of "the dying or the dead," with the startled denizens of the wilderness careering wildly around them, and finally scouring off to the forest from the majesty of man, unsubdued even by that agony.
There are few heroes, of whatever creed or clime, whose glory has come down to our own time, and whose names and deeds, however remote their day, are still "familiar in men's mouths as household words," whose favourite horses have not come in for a share of their well-earned fame. Alexander had his Bucephalus—that tameless steed who brooked no rider save the conqueror of the world—that faithful servant who, reeling with his death-wound, yet called up all his failing energies to bear his lord to safety, ere he sank and died? Oh Arrian! Arrian! much indeed hast thou to answer for, who darest tell us, in the teeth of so bright a legend, that he succumbed to thirty years and an Asiatic climate!
Who has not heard of the Arab Antar, and his horse Abjir, "whose hoofs were flat as beaten coin: when he neighed he seemed about to speak, and his ears were like quills: whose sire was Wasil, and whose dam Hemema?"
Who knows not of the pride of Spain and the glory of chivalry—of him "who was born in happy hour" to humble the pride of the lying infidel, the Cid Ruy Diaz Campeador, and his good horse Bavieca? From the days of Odin and his "coal-black steed" upwards, there is scarce a hero of "tradition, legend, tale, or song," who has not his favourite; and black, by the way, seems to have been a colour in high estimation. There are one or two black ones of date more modern, and reality more unquestionable, than that of the monarch of Valhalla, which, albeit disdained or over-looked by historians, may take their station in the records of their race beside the most renowned of antiquity. The Scottish peasant, as he tells his offspring the tale of the too dearly won field of Killiecrankie, still couples the name of the gallant Claverhouse with that of his charmed war-horse, Midnight:—the fame of "the horse of the highwayman, Bonny Black Bess," need fear no oblivion, so long as the "ignominious tree" spares one bold Clerk of St Nicholas to pour a midnight libation to the memory of Richard Turpin.[1]
Nor are there wanting others—foals of the fancy—steeds of the imagination—which yet stand before our eyes with all the vividness of reality, to whose existence our affections cling, in despite of our colder reason, with a regular John-Gilpin-like tenacity. Even as fabling gossips, who, by frequent repetition, bring themselves to an incorrigible belief in their own mendacious anilities, we have gradually so increased and cemented our acquaintance with them, as to render them as it were a part of our very selves; and the moment that convinced us of their positive nonentity, would, we verily believe, go far to plunge us into a state of universal scepticism. Never be thy memory uncherished, O chosen destrier of the valorous Manchegan,—most fitting bearer of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance!—thou who, though thou hadst "more corners than a real," didst yet retain, even in thine advanced age, some smack of thy
- ↑ Talking of Dick Turpin reminds us of Mr Ainsworth's novel or romance, or whatever he pleases to call it, Rookwood, and of Turpin's ride to York there in; the admirable telling of which feat has alone, we suspect, saved the rest of the book, cleverish though it be, from the "deep damnation" of the critic's "Bah!" Where may be matched the descriptions of three such rides, and for three such purposes, as those of Turpin, Mazeppa, and John Gilpin? The first for life—the second for death—and the third (which appeals more touchingly than either to the feelings of Englishmen) for good dinner.
