The Hunt in Literature 27 



Perhaps to himself at that moment he said : 

 " The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead." 

 But of this in my ears not a word did he speak ; 

 And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek. 



William Wordsworth. 



The Brave Cob o o o 



I CANNOT help thinking that it was fortunate 

 for myself, who am, to a certain extent, a phi- 

 lologist, that with me the pursuit of languages 

 has been always modified by the love of horses ; 

 for scarcely had I turned my mind to the former, 

 when I also mounted the wild cob, and hurried 

 forth in the direction of the Devil's Hill, scattering 

 dust and flint-stones on every side ; that ride, 

 amongst other things, taught me that a lad with 

 thews and sinews was intended by nature for some- 

 thing better than mere word-culling : and if I have 

 accomplished anything in after life worthy of 

 mentioning, I believe it may partly be attributed 

 to the ideas which that ride, by setting my blood 

 in a glow, infused into my brain. I might, other- 

 wise, have become a mere philologist, a harmless 

 drudge, one of those beings who toil night and 

 day in culling useless words for some opus magnum 

 which Murray will never publish, and nobody 

 ever read — beings without enthusiasm, who, having 

 never mounted a generous steed, cannot detect a 

 good point in Pegasus himself; like a certain 

 philologist, who, though acquainted with the 

 exact value of every word in the Greek and 

 Latin languages, could observe no particular beauty 

 in one of the most glorious of Homer's rhapsodies. 

 What knew he of Pegasus ? he had never mounted 

 a generous steed ; the merest jockey, had the strain 



