“A few days since, he and Dametas had furnished themselves very richly to run at the ring before me. O how mad a sight it was to see Dametas, like rich tissue furred with lamb-skins? but O how well it did with Dorus, to see with what a grace he presented himself before me on horseback, making majesty wait upon humbleness? how at the first, standing still with his eyes bent upon me, as though his motions were chained to my look, he so stayed till I caused Mopsa bid him do something upon his horse: which no sooner said, but, with a kind rather of quick gesture than show of violence, you might see him come towards me, beating the ground in so due time that no dancer can observe better measure. If you remember the ship we saw once when the sea went high upon the coast of Argos, so went the beast. But he, as if centaur-like he had been one piece with the horse, was no more moved than one with the going of his own legs, and in effect so did he command him as his own limbs; for tho’ he had both spurs and wand, they seemed rather marks of sovereignty than instruments of punishment, his hand and leg, with most pleasing grace, commanding without threatening, and rather remembering than chastising; at least if sometimes he did it was so stolen as neither our eyes could discern it nor the horse with any change did complain of it: he ever going so just with the horse, either forth-right or turning that it seemed he borrowed the horse’s body, so he lent the horse his mind. In the turning one might perceive the bridle-hand something gently stir: but indeed {149} so gently that it did rather distil virtue than use violence. Himself, which methinks is strange, showing at one instant both steadiness and nimbleness; sometimes making him turn close to the ground, like a cat, when scratchingly she wheels about after a mouse; sometimes with a little more rising before, now like a raven leaping from ridge to ridge, then like one of Dametas’s kids bound over the hillocks, and all so done, as neither the lusty kind showed any roughness, nor the easier any idleness; but still like a well-obeyed master, whose beck is enough for a discipline, ever concluding each thing he did with his face to me-wards, as if thence came not only the beginning but ending of his motions. The sport was to see Dametas, how he was tossed from the saddle to the mane of the horse, and thence to the ground, giving his gay apparel almost as foul an outside as it had an inside. But as before he had ever said, he wanted but horse and apparel to be as brave a courtier as the best, so now bruised with proof, he proclaimed it a folly for a man of wisdom to put himself under the tuition of a beast, so as Dorus was fain alone to take the ring. Wherein truly at least my womanish eyes could not discern, but that taking his staff from his thigh, the descending it a little down, the getting of it up into the rest, the letting of the point fall, and