Chapter CXCIX

CONCERNING THE GREAT HONOURS TO WHICH CERTAIN HORSES HAVE ATTAINED, AND THE ROYAL MERITS OF NOBS.

_Siento para contarlas que me llama
El á mi, yo á mi pluma, ella á la fama._

BALBUENA.

There have been great and good horses whose merits have been recorded in history and in immortal song as they well deserved to be. Who has not heard of Bucephalus? of whom Pulteney said that he questioned whether Alexander himself had pushed his conquests half so far, if Bucephalus had not stooped to take him on his back. Statius hath sung of Arion who when he carried Neptune left the winds panting behind him, and who was the best horse that ever has been heard of for taking the water,

_Sæpe per Ionium Libycumque natantibus ire
Interjunctus equis, omnesque assuetus in oras
Cæruleum deferre patrem._

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Tramp, tramp across the land he went,
Splash, splash across the sea.

But he was a dangerous horse in a gig. Hercules found it difficult to hold him in, and Polynices when he attempted to drive him made almost as bad a figure as the Taylor upon his ever memorable excursion to Brentford.

The virtues of Caligula's horse, whom that Emperor invited to sup with him, whom he made a Priest, and whom he intended to make Consul, have not been described by those historians who have transmitted to us the account of his extraordinary fortune; and when we consider of what materials, even in our days, both Priests and Senators are sometimes made, we may be allowed to demur at any proposition which might include an admission that dignity is to be considered an unequivocal mark of desert. More certain it is that Borysthenes was a good horse, for the Emperor Adrian erected a monument to his memory, and it was recorded in his epitaph that he used to fly over the plains and marshes and Etrurian hills, hunting Pannonian boars; he appears by his name to have been like Nobs, of Tartaric race.

Bavieca was a holy and happy horse,—I borrow the epithets from the Bishop of Chalons's sermon upon the Bells. Gil Diaz deserved to be buried in the same grave with him. And there is an anonymous Horse, of whom honorable mention is made in the Roman Catholic Breviary, for his religious merits, because after a Pope had once ridden him, he never would suffer himself to be unhallowed by carrying a woman on his back. These latter are both Roman Catholic Houyhnhnms, but among the Mahometans also, quadrupedism is not considered an obstacle to a certain kind of canonization. Seven of the Emperor of Morocco's horses have been Saints, or Marabouts as the Moors would call it; and some there were who enjoyed that honour in the year 1721 when Windus was at Mequinez. One had been thus distinguished for saving the Emperor's life: “and if a man,” says the Traveller, “should kill one of his children, and lay hold of this horse, he is safe. This horse has saved the lives of some of the captives, and is fed with _cuscuru_ and camel's milk. After the Emperor has drank, and the horse after him, some of his favourites are suffered to drink out of the same bowl.” This was probably the horse who had a Christian slave appointed to hold up his tail when he was led abroad, and to carry a vessel and towel—“for use unmeet to tell.”

I have discovered only one Houyhnhnm who was a martyr, excepting those who are sometimes burnt with the rest of the family by Captain Rock's people in Ireland. This was poor Morocco, the learned horse of Queen Elizabeth's days: he and his master Banks, having been in some danger of being put to death at Orleans, were both burnt alive by the Inquisition at Rome, as magicians.—The word martyr is here used in its religious acceptation: for the victims of avarice and barbarity who are destroyed by hard driving and cruel usage are numerous enough to make a frightful account among the sins of this nation.

Fabretti the antiquary had a horse who when he carried his master on an antiquarian excursion, assisted him in his researches; for this sagacious horse had been so much accustomed to stop where there were ruins, and probably had found so much satisfaction in grazing, or cropping the boughs among them at his pleasure, that he was become a sort of antiquary himself; and sometimes by stopping and as it were pointing like a setter, gave his master notice of some curious and half-hidden objects which he might otherwise have past by unperceived.

How often has a drunken rider been carried to his own door by a sure-footed beast, sensible enough to understand that his master was in no condition either to guide him, or to take care of himself. How often has a stage coach been brought safely to its inn after the coachman had fallen from the box. Nay was there not a mare at Ennis races in Ireland (Atalanta was her name) who having thrown her rider, kept the course with a perfect understanding of what was expected from her, looked back and quickened her speed as the other horses approached her, won the race, trotted a few paces beyond the post, then wheeled round, and came up to the scale as usual? And did not Hurleyburley do the same thing at the Goodwood races?

That Nobs was the best horse in the world I will not affirm. Best is indeed a bold word to whatever it be applied, and yet in the shopkeeper's vocabulary it is at the bottom of his scale of superlatives. A haberdasher in a certain great city is still remembered, whose lowest priced gloves were what he called Best, but then he had five degrees of optimism; Best, Better than Best, Best of all, Better than Best of all, and the Real Best. It may be said of Nobs then that he was one of the Real Best: equal to any that Spain could have produced to compare with him, though concerning Spanish horses, the antiquary and historian Morales, (properly and as it were prophetically baptized Ambrosio, because his name ought ever to be in ambrosial odour among his countrymen) concerning Spanish horses, I say, that judicious author has said, _la estima que agora se hace en todo el mundo de un caballo Español es la mas solemne cosa que puede haber en animales._

Neither will I assert that there could not have been a better horse than Nobs, because I remember how Roger Williams tells us, “one of the chiefest Doctors of England was wont to say concerning strawberries, that God could have made a better berry, but he never did.” Calling this to mind, I venture to say as that chiefest Doctor might, and we may believe would have said upon the present occasion, that a better horse than Nobs there might have been,—but there never was.

The Duchess of Newcastle tells us that her Lord, than whom no man could be a more competent judge, preferred barbs and Spanish to all others, for barbs, he said, were like gentlemen in their kind, and Spanish horses like Princes. This saying would have pleased the Doctor, as coinciding entirely with his own opinions. He was no believer in equality either among men or beasts; and he used to say, that in a state of nature Nobs would have been the king of his kind.

And why not? if I do not show you sufficient precedents for it call me FIMBUL FAMBI.