THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



really, Frank, it is somewhat of a melancholy reflection, that, 

 after all the money expended on Inkleton's education, and with 

 reallj'- good parts, which he has, he should now pride himself 

 upon nothing so much as being a first-rate coacliman. Surely 

 he did not imbibe such ambition from reading the classics.' 



' Perhaps not, sir,' said our hero, a little petulantly, stand- 

 ing up for his patron and friend. ' But please to recollect, 

 uncle, that one of the best of them advises us, with his own 

 usual good taste, not to condemn the taste of others any more 

 than to extol that of ourselves. " Nee tua laudabis studia, nee 

 cdiena reprendes " ; and, moreover, if the Athenians, the most 

 polished nation of all antiquity, deemed it an honour to be 

 considered skilful charioteers, why should Englishmen consider 

 it a disgrace ? Again ; — have not their poets divided the 

 honour of the charioteer with the hero who fights in the 

 chariot ? Does not Homer make his Nestor the wisest man, 

 and the bed coachman of his day ? Does he not make Priam 

 put his own horses, with his own hands, to the car in which 

 himself and the herald demand the body of Hector ? Is he not, 

 indeed, blamed by one of his commentators for dwelling upon 

 the description of Juno's chariot, when his reader expects him 

 to lead him into tlie thick of the battle ? 



"For why should Homer deck the gorgeous car, 

 AVheu our raised souls are anxious for the war? 

 Or dwell on every wlieel, when loud alarms. 

 And Mars, in thunder, call the host to arms?" 



And is he not so minutely faithful to this part of his 



subject, that, at the games of Patroclus, he represents Menelaus 



borrowing one of the horses of Agamemnon — a horse called 



Mthe (here the uncle smiled, as much as to say : I wish your 



recollection was as good on all points, as upon this) — ^to put 



to his chariot with his own, on account of his superior action, 



no doubt. Has not the greatest poet that ever dipped pen in 



ink immortalised the coachman in song— ay, even in letters of 



pure gold ? Turning, then, to the Romans ; can anything be 



finer than Juvenal's descinption, in his eleventh satire, of the 



excitement created in Rome by the various chariot races at 



the Circensian games, which passage has been so admirably 



translated by Congreve : — 



"This day, all Rome (if I may be allowed. 

 Without ottence to such a numerous crowd, 



130 



