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.
CHAPTER CC.
A CHAPTER OF KINGS.