Meanwhile John Rosedew was speeding merrily, according to his ideas of speed (which were relative to the last degree), along a narrow bridle–way, some two miles to the westward. It would be a serious insult—so the parson argued—to the understanding of any man who understood a horse, and now John Rosedew had owned Coræbus very nearly nine months, and though he had never owned a horse before, surely by this time he could set papers in the _barbara celarent_ of the most recondite horse–logic—or was it dialectics?—an insult it would be to that Hippicus who felt himself fit now to go to a fair and discuss many points with the jockeys, if anybody suggested to him that Coræbus ought to trot. “Trot, sir”! cried John Rosedew, to an imaginary Hippodamas, “hasnʼt he been trotting for nearly an hour to–day, sir? Quite an _equus tolutarius_. And upon my word, I only hope he is not so sore as I am”. Then he threw the reins over the ponyʼs neck, and let him crop some cytisus. “Coræbus, have no fear, my horse, you shall not be overworked. Or if Epirus or Mycenæ be thy home and birthplace—_incertus ibidem sudor_—thrice I have wiped it off, and no oaten particles in it; _urit avenœ_, so I suppose oats must dry the skin. ‘Ad terramque fluit devexo pondere cervix’, a line not to be rendered in English, even by my Cradock. How fine that whole description, but made up from alien sources! Oh how Lucretius would have done it! Most sad that he was not a Christian”. A believer was what John Rosedew meant. But by this time he was beginning to look upon all his classical friends as in some sort Christians, if they only believed in their own gods. Wherein, I fear, he was far astray from the text of one of the Articles.