but safety and the interest of the house he rode for
were incompatible things; a fall in serge cloth was
expected; and a mad entrance they made of it.
Whether the exploit was purely voluntary, or partially;
or whether a certain personal defiguration in the
man part of this extraordinary centaur (non-assistive
to partition of natures) might not enforce the conjunction,
I stand not to inquire. I look not with ’skew
eyes into the deeds of heroes. The hosier that
was burnt with his shop, in Field-lane, on Tuesday
night, shall have past to heaven for me like a Marian
Martyr, provided always, that he consecrated the fortuitous
incremation with a short ejaculation in the exit,
as much as if he had taken his state degrees of martyrdom
in forma in the market vicinage. There
is adoptive as well as acquisitive sacrifice.
Be the animus what it might, the fact is indisputable,
that this composition was seen flying all abroad,
and mine host of Daintry may yet remember its passing
through his town, if his scores are not more faithful
than his memory. After this exploit (enough for
one man), Thomas Westwood seems to have subsided into
a less hazardous occupation; and in the twenty-fifth
year of his age we find him a haberdasher in Bow Lane:
yet still retentive of his early riding (though leaving
it to rawer stomachs), and Christmasly at night sithence
to this last, and shall to his latest Christmas, hath
he, doth he, and shall he, tell after supper the story
of the insane steed and the desperate rider.
Save for Bedlam or Luke’s no eye could have
guessed that melting day what house he rid for.
But he reposes on his bridles, and after the ups and
downs (metaphoric only) of a life behind the counter—hard
riding sometimes, I fear, for poor T.W.—with
the scrapings together of the shop, and one anecdote,
he hath finally settled at Enfield; by hard economising,
gardening, building for himself, hath reared a mansion,
married a daughter, qualified a son for a counting-house,
gotten the respect of high and low, served for self
or substitute the greater parish offices: hath
a special voice at vestries; and, domiciliating us,
hath reflected a portion of his house-keeping respectability
upon your humble servants. We are greater, being
his lodgers, than when we were substantial renters.
His name is a passport to take off the sneers of the
native Enfielders against obnoxious foreigners.
We are endenizened. Thus much of T. Westwood have
I thought fit to acquaint you, that you may see the
exemplary reliance upon Providence with which I entrusted
so dear a charge as my own sister to the guidance
of a man that rode the mad horse into Devizes.
To come from his heroic character, all the amiable
qualities of domestic life concentre in this tamed
Bellerophon. He is excellent over a glass of
grog; just as pleasant without it; laughs when he hears
a joke, and when (which is much oftener) he hears
it not; sings glorious old sea songs on festival nights;
and but upon a slight acquaintance of two years, Coleridge,
is as dear a deaf old man to us, as old Norris, rest
his soul! was after fifty. To him and his scanty
literature (what there is of it, sound) have
we flown from the metropolis and its cursed annualists,
reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink press of
that stagnant pool.