DRISLER, HENRY (1818-1897), American classical scholar, was born on the 27th of December 1818, on Staten Island, New York. He graduated at Columbia College in 1839, taught classics in the Columbia grammar school for four years, and was then appointed tutor in classics in the college. In 1845 he became adjunct professor of Latin and Greek there, in 1857 was appointed to the new separate chair of Latin language and literature, and ten years later succeeded Dr Charles Anthon as Jay professor of Greek language and literature. He was acting president in 1867 and in 1888-1889, and from 1890 to his retirement as professor emeritus in 1894 was dean of the school of arts. He died in New York City on the 30th of November 1897. Dr Drisler completed and supplemented Dr Anthon’s labours as an editor of classical texts. His criticisms and corrections of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, of which he brought out a revised American edition in 1846, won his name a place on the title-page of the British edition in 1879, and in 1870 he published a revised and enlarged edition of Yonge’s English-Greek Lexicon. He was ardently opposed to slavery, and brilliantly refuted The Bible View of Slavery, written by Bishop J. H. Hopkins of Vermont, in a Reply (1863), which meets the bishop on purely Biblical ground and displays the wide range of Dr Drisler’s scholarship.
DRIVER, SAMUEL ROLLES (1846- ), English divine and Hebrew scholar, was born at Southampton on the 2nd of October 1846. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, taking a first class in Literae Humaniores in 1869. He was awarded the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship in 1866, the Kennicott scholarship in 1870 (both Hebrew), and the Houghton Syriac prize in 1872. From 1870 he was a fellow, and from 1875 also a tutor, of New College, and in 1883 succeeded Pusey as regius professor of Hebrew and canon of Christ Church. He was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee (1876-1884) and examining chaplain to the bishop of Southwell (1884-1904); received the honorary degrees of doctor of literature of Dublin (1892), doctor of divinity of Glasgow (1901), doctor of literature of Cambridge (1905); and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1902. Dr Driver devoted his life to the study, both textual and critical, of the Old Testament. Among his numerous works are commentaries on Joel and Amos (1897); Deuteronomy (1902); Daniel (1901); Genesis (1909); the Minor Prophets, Nahum to Malachi (1905); Job (1905); Jeremiah (1906); Leviticus (1894 Hebrew text, 1898 trans. and notes); Samuel (Hebrew text, 1890). Among his more general works are: Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew (1892); Isaiah, his Life and Times (1893); Introd. to the Literature of the Old Test. (1897, ed. 1909); Sermons on Subjects connected with the Old Testament (1892); The Parallel Psalter (1904); Heb. and Eng. Lexicon of the O.T. (in collaboration, 1906); Modern Research as illustrating the Bible (1909); articles in the Ency. Brit., Ency. Bibl. and Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible.
DRIVING (from “to drive,” i.e. generally to propel, force along or in, a word common in various forms to the Teutonic languages), a word used in a restricted sense for the art of controlling and directing draught animals from a coach or other conveyance or movable machine to which they are harnessed for the purpose of traction. This has been an occupation practised since domesticated animals were first put to this use. In various parts of the world a number of different animals have been, and still are, so employed; of these the horse, ox, mule and ass are the most common, though their place is taken by the reindeer in northern latitudes, and by the Eskimo dog in arctic and antarctic regions. The driving of each of these requires special skill, only to be acquired by practice combined with knowledge of the characteristics peculiar to the several animals employed. The most accomplished driver of spirited horses would probably be in difficulties if called upon to drive sixteen or twenty dogs in an arctic sledge, or a team of oxen or mules drawing the guns of a mountain battery; and the adept in either of these branches of the art might provoke the compassion of a farmer from Lincolnshire or Texas by his attempts to manage a pair of Clydesdale horses in the plough or the reaping machine.
Under all these different conditions driving is a work of utility, of economic value to civilized society. But from very early times driving, especially of horses, has also been regarded as a sport or pastime. This probably arose in the first instance from its association with battle. In the earliest historical records, such as the Old Testament and the Homeric poems, the driver of the chariot fills a place of importance in the economy of war; and on his skill and efficiency the fate of kings, and even of kingdoms, must often have depended. The statement in the Book of Kings that Jehu the son of Nimshi was recognized from a distance by his style of driving appears to indicate that the warrior himself on occasion took the place of the professional charioteer; and although it would be unsafe to infer from the story that the pleasure derived from the occupation was his motive for doing so, the name of this king of Israel has become the eponym of drivers. Among the Greeks at an equally early period driving was a recognized form of sport, to the popularity of which Horace afterwards made allusion. Racing between teams of horses harnessed to war-chariots took the place occupied by saddle-horse racing and American trotting races (see [Horse-Racing]) in the sport of modern times. The element of danger doubtless gave pleasurable excitement to chariot racing and kept alive its association with incidents familiar in war; just as at a later period, when the institution of chivalry had given the armed knight on horseback a conspicuous place in medieval warfare, the tournament became the most popular sport of the aristocracy throughout Europe.
This element of danger cannot be said to enter usually into the enjoyment of driving at the present day. Though accidents occasionally happen, the pastime is practically unattended by serious risk; and the source of the pleasure it affords the driver must be sought in the skill it requires, combined with the love of the horse which is common to sportsmen, and of exercise of power. The art of driving as practised to-day for pleasure without profit, and without the excitement of racing, is of quite modern development. Oliver Cromwell, indeed, met with a mishap in Hyde Park while driving a team of four horses presented to him by the count of Oldenburg, which was the subject of more than one satirical allusion by contemporary royalist writers; but two things were needed before much enjoyment could be found in driving apart from utility. These were the invention of carriages on springs, and the construction of roads with smooth and solid surface. The former did not come into general use till near the end of the 18th century, and it was about the same period that the engineering skill of Thomas Telford and the invention of John London Macadam combined to provide the latter. The influence on driving of these two developments was soon apparent. Throughout the 18th century stage-coaches, ponderous unwieldy vehicles without springs, had toiled slowly over rough and deeply rutted tracks as a means of communication between different parts of Great Britain; but those who made use of them did so as a matter of necessity and not for enjoyment. But by the beginning of the 19th century the improvement in carriage-building and road-construction alike had greatly diminished the discomfort of travel; and interest in driving for its own sake grew so rapidly that in 1807 the first association of amateur coachmen was formed. This was the Bensington Driving Club, the forerunner of many aristocratic clubs for gentlemen interested in driving as a pastime.
In modern driving one, two or four horses are usually employed. When a greater number than four is put in harness, as in the case of the state equipages of royal personages on occasions of ceremony, the horses are not driven but are controlled by “postillions” mounted on the near-side horse of each pair. When two horses are used they may either be placed side by side, in “double harness,” which is the commoner mode of driving a pair of horses, or one following the other, in a “tandem.” Four horses, or “four-in-hand,” are harnessed in two pairs, one following the other, and called respectively the “leaders” and the “wheelers”—the same terms being used for the two horses of a tandem.
Though it is a less difficult accomplishment to drive a single horse than a tandem or four-in-hand, or even a pair, it nevertheless requires both knowledge and the skill that practice alone confers. The driver should have some knowledge of equine character, and complete familiarity with every part of the harness he uses, and with the purpose which each buckle or strap is intended to serve. The indefinable quality known in horsemanship as “good hands” is scarcely less desirable on the box-seat than in the saddle. It is often said to be unattainable by those who do not possess it by nature; but though this may be true to some extent, “good hands” are partly at least the result of learning the correct position for the arm and hand that holds the reins. The reins are held in the left hand, which should be kept at about the level of the lowest button of the driver’s waistcoat, and near the body though not pressed against it. The driving hand should never be reached forward more than a few inches, nor raised as high as the breast. The upper arm should lie loosely against the side, the forearm horizontal across the front of the body, forming a right angle or thereabouts at the elbow-joint, the wrist very slightly bent inwards, and the back of the hand and knuckles facing outwards towards the horses. In this position the three joints of the arm form a kind of automatic spring that secures the “give” to the movement of the horse’s mouth which, in conjunction with firmness, is a large part of what is meant by “good hands.” But this result is only obtained if the reins be also held with the proper degree of bearing on the bit. What the proper degree may be depends greatly on the character of the horses and the severity of the bit. Pulling horses must be restrained by a strong draw on their bits, such as would bring other animals to a standstill. But under no circumstances, no matter how sluggish the horses may be, should the reins be allowed to lie slack; for if this is done the horse receives no support in the event of a sudden stumble, and no control if he shies unexpectedly. The driver should therefore always just “feel his horse’s mouth” as lightly as possible; he then has the animal well under control in readiness for every emergency, while avoiding such a pull on the mouth as would cause a high-spirited horse to chafe and fret. Well-broken carriage horses should always be willing to run into their bits, and those that draw back when lightly held in hand should be kept up to the bit with the whip.
These principles are common to all branches of the art of driving, whether of one, two or four horses. When they are observed no great difficulty confronts the coachman who is content with single or double harness, provided he has acquired the eye for pace and distance, and the instinctive realization of the length of the carriage behind him, without which he may suffer collision with other vehicles, or allow insufficient room in turning a corner or entering a gateway. For before he can have had the practice by which alone this knowledge is to be gained, the beginner will have learnt such elementary facts as that his horses must be held well in hand going down hill and given their heads on an ascent, and that on no account should the horse’s mouth be “jobbed” by the driver jerking the reins; he will also have learnt a good deal about the character and temperament of the horse, on which so much of the art of driving depends, and which can best be studied on the box-seat and not at all in the library. If he has pursued this study with any degree of insight, he will have learnt further to be sparing in the use of the hand-brake with which most modern carriages are provided. This apparatus is most useful in case of emergency, or for taking weight off the carriage on a really steep descent; but the habit which too many coachmen fall into of using the brake on every trifling decline should be avoided. Its effect is that the horses are continually doing collar-work, and are thus deprived of the relief which ought to be given them by occasional light pole or shaft work instead.