Upon the strength of water-gruel?
But who shall stand his rage and force,
If first he rides, then eats his horse?”
And this metrical allusion to ancient banquets, and characteristic prowess connected with them, recalls to my memory the singular story touching the strangest of facts, which has been told in choice verse by Ludwig Uhland. The German poet, in narrating it, has condemned himself to execute a sort of double hornpipe in fetters, having set himself the task to introduce one word, the subject of his poem, into every stanza of his rhymed romance. “Done into English,” the legend runs thus:—
THE CASTELLAN OF COUCY, OR THE HEART.
“How deeply young De Coucy sigh’d,
How sad the feeling that came o’er him,
And smote his heart, when first he saw
The Lady of Fayal before him!
“How suddenly his song assumed