12 THE COACHING ERA 



and Sedan," which requests the drivers to "Leave in 

 any case that ill habit ye have of running over people in 

 a dark night, and then bid them stand up!" 



Pedestrians of those days, either by custom or the 

 toughness of their constitutions, seem to have become 

 used to such misadventures, for Pepys recounts how he 

 saw a coach run over a man's neck, but who got up 

 seeming none the worse for the experience. 



The coaching era had undoubtedly begun and the 

 alarmists of the period rushed into print on the subjedl. 

 Their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, 

 to go no further back, had been content to exist without 

 such luxuries, but considered the back of a horse the 

 right place for a man of courage. Should the present 

 generation presume to question the wisdom of their 

 revered ancestors on this subjedl? It was presumption 

 even to suggest such a thing. 



John Taylor, one of the Thames watermen^ who were 

 nearly ruined by the introdudion of coaches, launched 

 out very bitterly against them. Taylor, when he found 

 his trade was threatened, took to writing; his output 

 was prodigious, and though not of high Hterary merit, 

 materially helps later generations to reconstru6l the 

 times in which he lived. He was so bitten with poetry 

 that he would never write in prose if he could help it, 

 and an added grievance against the coach was that so 

 few words would rhyme with it. Encroach did, however, 



1 Before the introdudion of coaches the river had been the 

 chief highway of the city. "Up and by water to Whitehall" is a 

 constantly recurring phrase in the early part of Pepys' s Diary. 



