For once, I'm actually writing this today, rather than in the earliest part of tomorrow. I can be proud of this, I think, even though it's always in blogging that I start trying to clean my keyboard. It inflates my statistics, a little, but it also makes my keyboard cleaner.
"I Rid first a Spanish-Horse, called Le Superbe, of a Light-Bay, a beautiful Horse; and though Hard to be Rid, yet when he was Hitt Right, he was the Readiest Horse in the World: He went in Corvets forward, backward, sidewayes, on both Hands; made the Cross perfectly upon his Voltoes; and did Change upon his Voltoes so Just, without breaking Time, that no Musitian could keep Time better; and went Terra a Terra Perfectly."
William, Duke of Newcastle , "A new method, and extraordinary invention, to dress horses, and work them according to nature as also, to perfect nature by the subtility of art, which was never found out, but by ... William Cavendishe ..."
In Underwood 53, Jonson plays an elegant compliment to William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle. On horseback, the lord brings to mind Perseus, Castor, and Sir Bevis on their own respective steeds. Together, horse and man are so in unison as to seem a centaur--"Nay, so your seat his beauties did endorse/As I began to wish myself a horse."
This is an odd sort of wish, and one Jonson quickly begins to spin into a clever appeal for patronage. It is worth pausing for a moment, to think about the precise relationship that's wished for. First and foremost, this is a hierarchical relationship along every conceivable axis: a good rider not only owns the horse but masters it. [Cavendish: English King greatest horseman in world, Spanish King greatest horseman in spain]
The ideal rider guides the horse through motions beyond its intellectual capacity to understand--"all the uses of the field and race"--
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