Chapter 4

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.THEBRUCIAD.

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 himsi 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 maintainedqu'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 vivaceChe 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

1RICCIARDETTO.

2ORLANDOINAMORATO.

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 direChe'l principe Rinaldo e'l conte OrlandoNon ha miglior caval.3Avendo 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 cavalieroStarebbe a dar giudicio in dubbio assai,Se fusser vivi, o fatti col pennello,Tanto era l'un e l'altro egregio e bello.3

3ORLANDOINAMORATO.

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 fuerteDesenfrenado potro hasta arrojallo,En medio de la plaza de Marsella,A ojos de Bradamante, y su doncella.Alli en presencia suyo hecho pedazosAl Magancés dexó el caballo fiero:Viendole Hipalca muerto entre los brazos,Y no en su silla qual penso a Rugero,Notorios vió los cavilosos lazosDel fementido bando de Pontiero.Alteróse la bella BradamanteY el sobresalto le abortó un infante.Y al quinto dia con la nueva ciertaDe la muerte infeliz del paladino,La antes dudosa amante quedó muerta,Y cumplido el temor del adivino.Y por tantas desgracias descubiertaLa traicion de Maganza, un rio sanguinoLabró Morgana, y de la gente impiaCien 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.

4BALBUENA.

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 theLiberalesas 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.

5RUCELLAI.

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 pleaseque le cheval avoit quelque raison, et qu'il ratiocinoit entre toutes les autres bestes, à cause du temperament de son cerveau;6here, as he justly said, was sufficient proof of consideration, and good nature.

6BOUCHET.

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 guerraSfida, e cò piè fa rimbombar la tierra.7

7TASSO.

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.

WILLIAM OSMER. INNATE QUALITIES. MARCH OF ANIMAL INTELLECT. FARTHER REVEALMENT OF THE COLUMBIAN PHILOSOPHY.

There is a word, and it is a great word in this Book,1ἐπι το αὐτο,—In id ipsum, that is, to look to the thing itself, the very point, the principal matter of all; to have our eye on that, and not off it, uponalia omnia, any thing but it.—To go to the point, drive all to that, as also to go to the matter real, without declining from it this way or that, to the right hand or to the left.

BP. ANDREWS.

1The New Testament which the Preacher had before him.

A certain William Osmer once wrote a dissertation upon the Horse, wherein he affirmeth, it is demonstrated by matters of fact, as well as from the principles of philosophy, that innate qualities do not exist, and that the excellence of this animal is altogether mechanical and not in the blood. In affirming this of the Horse the said William Osmer hath gone far toward demonstrating himself an Ass; for he might as well have averred that the blood hath nothing to do with the qualities of a black pudding.—When Hurdis said

Give me the steedWhose noble efforts bore the prize away,I care not for his grandsire or his dam,

it was well said but not wisely.

The opinion which is as old as anything known concerning this animal, that the good qualities of a horse are likely to bear some resemblance to those of its sire or dam, Mr. Osmer endeavoured to invalidate by arguing that his strength and swiftness depend upon the exactness of his make, and that where this was defective these qualities would be deficient also,—a foolish argument, for the proposition rests upon just the same ground as that against which he was reasoning. But what better reasoning could be looked for from a man who affirmed that if horses were not shod they might travel upon the turnpike roads without injury to their feet, because, in his own language, “when time was young, when the earth was in a state of nature, and turnpike roads as yet were not, the Divine Artist had taken care to give their feet such defence as it pleased him.”

If the Doctor had known that Nobs was of Tartarian extraction, this fact would sufficiently have accounted for the excellences of that incomparable roadster. He explained them quite as satisfactorily to himself by the fancy which he amused himself with supporting on this occasion, that this marvellous horse was a son of the Wind. And hence he inferred that Nobs possessed the innate qualities of his kind in greater perfection than any other horse, as approaching nearer to the original perfection in which the species was created. For although animals are each in their kind less degenerate than man, whom so many circumstances have tended to injure in his physical nature, still, he argued, all which like the horse have been made subservient to the uses of man, were in some degree deteriorated by that subjection. Innate qualities, however, he admitted were more apparent in the brute creation than in the human creature, because even in those which suffer most by domestication, the course of nature is not so violently overruled.

I except the Duck, he would say. That bird, which Nature hath made free of earth, air and water, loses by servitude the use of one element, the enjoyment of two, and the freedom of all three.

Look at the Pig also, said the Doctor. In his wild state no animal is cleaner, happier, or better able to make himself respected. Look at him when tamed,—I will not say in a brawn-case, for I am not speaking now of those cruelties which the Devil and Man between them have devised,—but look at him prowling at large about the purlieus of his sty. What a loathsome poor despised creature hath man made him!

Animal propter convivia natum.2

Every cur thinks itself privileged to take him by the ear; whereas if he were once more free in the woods, the stoutest mastiff or wolf-dog would not dare look him in the face.

2JUVENAL.

Yet he was fond of maintaining that the lower creation are capable of intellectual improvement. In Holland indeed he had seen the school for dogs, where poodles go through a regular course of education, and where by this time perhaps the Lancasterian inventions have been introduced. But this was not what the Doctor contemplated. Making bears and elephants dance, teaching dogs to enact ballets, and horses to exhibit tricks at a fair, he considered as the freaks of man's capricious cruelty, and instances of that abuse of power which he so frequently exercises over his inferior creatures, and for which he must one day render an account, together with all those whose countenance of such spectacles affords the temptation to exhibit them.

In truth the power which animals as well as men possess, of conforming themselves to new situations and forming new habits adapted to new circumstances is proof of a capability of improvement. The wild dogs in the plains of La Plata, burrow, because there is no security for them above ground against stronger beasts of prey. In the same country owls make their nests in the ground, because there are neither trees nor buildings to afford them concealment. A clergyman in Iceland by sowing angelica upon a Lake-island some miles from the sea, not only attracted gulls and wild ducks to breed there, but brought about an alliance between those birds, who are not upon neighbourly terms elsewhere. Both perceived that the new plants afforded better shelter from wind and rain, than any thing which they had seen before; there was room enough for both; and neighbourhood produced so much good will, that the gulls protected the weaker birds not only against the ravens who are common enemies, but against another species of gull also which attacks the duck's nest.

A change more remarkable than either of these, is that which the common hearth-cricket has undergone in its very constitution as well as in all its ways of life, since men built houses and inhabited cold climates.

The field-cricket in North America, which buries itself during the winter ten inches deep and there lies torpid, began about an hundred years ago to avail itself of the work of man and take up its abode in the chimnies. This insect even likes man for a bed-fellow, not with any such felonious intentions as are put in execution by smaller and viler vermin, but for the sake of warmth. The Swedish traveller, Kalm, says that when he and his companions were forced to sleep in uninhabited places, the crickets got into the folds of their garments, so that they were obliged to make some tarriance every morning, and search carefully before they could get rid of them.

Two species of Swallows have domesticated themselves with man. We have only that which builds under the eaves in England, but in North America they have both the house swallow and the chimney swallow; the chimnies not being made use of in summer, they take possession, and keep it sometimes in spite of the smoke if the fire is not very great. Each feather in this bird's tail ends in a stiff point, like the end of an awl; they apply the tail to the side of the wall, and it assists in keeping them up, while they hold on with their feet. “They make a great thundering noise all day long by flying up and down in the chimnies;” now as the Indians had not so much as a hearth made of masonry, it is an obvious question, says Kalm, where did these swallows build before the Europeans came, and erected houses with chimnies? Probably, it is supposed, in hollow trees, but certainly where they could; and it is thus shown that they took the first opportunity of improving their own condition.

But the Doctor dwelt with most pleasure on the intellectual capabilities of Dogs. There had been Dogs, he said, who from the mere desire of following their master's example had regularly frequented either the Church or the Meeting House;—others who attended the Host whenever they heard the bell which announced that it was carried abroad; one who so modulated his voice as to accompany instrumental music through all the notes of a song; and Leibnitz had actually succeeded in teaching one to speak. A dog may be made an epicure as well as his master. He acquires notions of rank and respectability; understands that the aristocracy are his friends, regards the beggar as his rival for bones, and knows that whoever approaches in darkness is to be suspected for his intentions. A dog's physiognomical discernment never deceives him; and this the Doctor was fond of observing, because wherever he was known the dogs came to return the greeting they expected. He has a sense of right and wrong as far as he has been taught; a sense of honour and of duty, from which his master might sometimes take a lesson; and not unfrequently a depth and heroism of affection, which the Doctor verily believed would have its reward in a better world. John Wesley held the same opinion, which has been maintained also by his enemy Augustus Toplady, and by his biographer the laureated L. L. D. or the El-el-deed Laureate. The Materialist, Dr. Dove would argue, must allow upon his own principles that a dog has as much soul as himself; and the Immaterialist, if he would be consistent, must perceive that the life and affections and actions of an animal are as little to be explained as the mysteries of his own nature by mere materiality. The all-doubting and therefore always half-believing Bayle has said thatles actions des bêtes sont peut-être un des plus profonds abîmes sur quoi notre raison se puisse exercer.

But here the Doctor acknowledged himself to be in doubt. That another state of existence there must be for every creature wherein there is the breath of life, he was verily persuaded. To that conclusion the whole tenour of his philosophy led him, and what he entertained as a philosophical opinion, acquired from a religious feeling something like the strength of faith. For if the whole of a brute animal's existence ended in this world, then it would follow that there are creatures born into it, for whom it had been better never to have been, than to endure the privations, pains and wrongs and cruelties, inflicted upon them by human wickedness; and he would not, could not, dared not believe that any, even the meanest of God's creatures, has been created to undergo more of evil than of good (where no power of choice was given)—much less to suffer unmingled evil, during its allotted term of existence. Yet this must be, if there were no state for animals after death.

A French speculator upon such things (I think it was P. Bougeant) felt this so strongly as to propose the strange hypothesis that fallen Angels underwent their punishment in the bodies of brutes, wherein they were incarnate and incarcerate as sentient, suffering and conscious spirits. The Doctor's theory of progressive life was liable to no such objections. It reconciled all seeming evil in the lower creation to the great system of benevolence. But still there remained a difficulty. Men being what they are, there were cases in which it seemed that the animal soul would be degraded instead of advanced by entering into the human form. For example, the Doctor considered the beast to be very often a much worthier animal than the butcher; the horse than the horse-jockey or the rider; the cock, than the cock-fighter; the young whale than the man who harpoons the reasonable and dutiful creature when it suffers itself to be struck rather than forsake its wounded mother.

In all these cases indeed, a migration into some better variety of the civilized biped might be presumed, Archeus bringing good predispositions and an aptitude for improvement. But when he looked at a good dog (in the best acceptation of the epithet),—a dog who has been humanized by human society,—who obeys and loves his master, pines during his illness, and dies upon his grave, (the fact has frequently occurred,) the Doctor declared his belief, and with a voice and look which told that he was speaking from his heart, that such a creature was ripe for a better world than this, and that in passing through the condition of humanity it might lose more than it could gain.

The price of a dog might not, among the Jews, be brought into the House of the Lord, “for any vow,” for it was an abomination to the Lord. This inhibition occurs in the same part of the Levitical law which enjoins the Israelites not to deliver up to his master the servant who had escaped from him; and it is in the spirit of that injunction, and of those other parts of the Law which are so beautifully and feelingly humane, that their very tenderness may be received in proof of their divine origin. It looks upon the dog as standing to his master in far other relation than his horse or his ox or his ass,—as a creature connected with him by the moral ties of companionship and fidelity and friendship.

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 themeI pour my stream of panegyric downThe vale of Nature, where it creeps and windsAmong her lovely works with a secureAnd 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:

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