The Essays, vol 8 | Page 8

embowelled their
horses, to creep into their bellies and enjoy the benefit of that vital heat.
Bajazet, after that furious battle wherein he was overthrown by
Tamerlane, was in a hopeful way of securing his own person by the
fleetness of an Arabian mare he had under him, had he not been
constrained to let her drink her fill at the ford of a river in his way,
which rendered her so heavy and indisposed, that he was afterwards
easily overtaken by those that pursued him. They say, indeed, that to let
a horse stale takes him off his mettle, but as to drinking, I should rather
have thought it would refresh him.
Croesus, marching his army through certain waste lands near Sardis,
met with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured
with great appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of
ominous portent to his affairs.
We call a horse entire, that has his mane and ears so, and no other will
pass muster. The Lacedaemonians, having defeated the Athenians in
Sicily, returning triumphant from the victory into the city of Syracuse,
amongst other insolences, caused all the horses they had taken to be
shorn and led in triumph. Alexander fought with a nation called Dahas,
whose discipline it was to march two and two together armed on one
horse, to the war; and being in fight, one of them alighted, and so they
fought on horseback and on foot, one after another by turns.
I do not think that for graceful riding any nation in the world excels the
French. A good horseman, according to our way of speaking, seems
rather to have respect to the courage of the man than address in riding.
Of all that ever I saw, the most knowing in that art, who had the best
seat and the best method in breaking horses, was Monsieur de
Carnavalet, who served our King Henry II.
I have seen a man ride with both his feet upon the saddle, take off his
saddle, and at his return take it up again and replace it, riding all the
while full speed; having galloped over a cap, make at it very good shots
backwards with his bow; take up anything from the ground, setting one
foot on the ground and the other in the stirrup: with twenty other ape's

tricks, which he got his living by.
There has been seen in my time at Constantinople two men upon one
horse, who, in the height of its speed, would throw themselves off and
into the saddle again by turn; and one who bridled and saddled his
horse with nothing but his teeth; an other who betwixt two horses, one
foot upon one saddle and the other upon another, carrying the other
man upon his shoulders, would ride full career, the other standing bolt
upright upon and making very good shots with his bow; several who
would ride full speed with their heels upward, and their heads upon the
saddle betwixt several scimitars, with the points upwards, fixed in the
harness. When I was a boy, the prince of Sulmona, riding an unbroken
horse at Naples, prone to all sorts of action, held reals--[A small coin of
Spain, the Two Sicilies, &c.]--under his knees and toes, as if they had
been nailed there, to shew the firmness of his seat.

CHAPTER XLIX
OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS
I should willingly pardon our people for admitting no other pattern or
rule of perfection than their own peculiar manners and customs; for 'tis
a common vice, not of the vulgar only, but almost of all men, to walk in
the beaten road their ancestors have trod before them. I am content,
when they see Fabricius or Laelius, that they look upon their
countenance and behaviour as barbarous, seeing they are neither
clothed nor fashioned according to our mode. But I find fault with their
singular indiscretion in suffering themselves to be so blinded and
imposed upon by the authority of the present usage as every month to
alter their opinion, if custom so require, and that they should so vary
their judgment in their own particular concern. When they wore the
busk of their doublets up as high as their breasts, they stiffly
maintained that they were in their proper place; some years after it was
slipped down betwixt their thighs, and then they could laugh at the
former fashion as uneasy and intolerable. The fashion now in use
makes them absolutely condemn the other two with so great resolution

and so universal consent, that a man would think there was a certain
kind of madness crept in amongst them, that infatuates their
understandings to this strange degree. Now, seeing that our change of
fashions is so prompt and sudden, that the