28o THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



of prowess. Apparently the only point about it 

 upon which our historians lay stress is that the 

 animal lived to the age of five and thirty. As 

 for Lord Nelson's connection with horses, so far 

 as I have been able to ascertain it was limited to 

 his superstitious belief that the possession of a 

 horseshoe must bring him luck. At anyrate he 

 always kept at least one horseshoe nailed to the 

 mast of his ship, the Victory. 



The story of Siegfried's horse, Grane, is of 

 course well known. In William Combe's quaint 

 tale of the simple-minded, henpecked clergyman, 

 Dr Syntax, we have a horse named Grizzle that 

 was "all skin and bone." Written in eight- 

 syllable verse, the narrative explains in rather 

 an amusing way how the eccentric old scholar 

 left home in search of the picturesque, and 

 Grizzle figures largely in it from beginning to 

 end, in much the same way that the ill-starred 

 pony, Fiddleback, figures in Goldsmith's narra- 

 tive. 



