128 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



standing 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 Ini'l.abis studia, nee aliena 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 best 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 dwell- 

 ing upon the description of Juno's chariot, when his reader 

 expects him to lead him into the thick of the battle ? 



1 For why should Homer deck the gorgeous car, 

 When our raised souls are anxious for the war ? 

 Or dwell on every wheel, when loud alarms, 

 And Mars, in thunder, calls 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 JEthe (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, immortalized 

 the coachman in song ay, even in letters of pure gold ? 

 Turning, then, to the Romans ; can anything be finer than 

 Juvenal's description, in his eleventh satire, of the excite- 

 ment 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 offence to such a numerous crowd, 

 To say "all Rome") will in the circus sweat: 

 Echoes already to their shouts repeat ; 

 Methinks I hear the cry Away! away! 

 The green has won the honour of the day. 

 Oh ! should the sports be for one year forborne. 

 Rome would, in tears, her loved diversion mourn ; 

 And that would now a cause of sorrow yield, 

 Great as the loss of Canute's fatal field.' 



