In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the horse continued to figure largely in romance, and thus it comes that we find horses, fictitious and otherwise, playing important rôles in the works of fiction of the principal authors of about that period. Ariosto's immortal narrative of “Orlando Furioso,” written towards the close of the fifteenth or in the beginning of the sixteenth century, has given us “the little vigilant horse,” Vegliantio, called Veillantif in the French romance, where Orlando appears as Ronald. Then we have “the horse of the golden bridle,” Orlando's remarkable charger, Brigliadoro, whose speed equalled Bajardo's; also Sacripant's steed, Frontaletto, “the horse with the little head,” that was capable of doing many extraordinary things. Sacripant, who was King of Circassia, and a Saracen, held secret consultations with Frontaletto, and the horse could understand its master's every word. Rinaldo's horse, Bajardo, made famous in Ariosto's celebrated book, was a bright bay and very fast, and at one time it had belonged to Amadis of Gaul. When Malagigi, the wizard, found it in the cave guarded by “a dragon of great size,” he at once, at considerable personal risk, attacked the dragon, which in the end he succeeded in slaying. According to the legend, Bajardo is still alive, but under no circumstances can man approach it, nor will any man ever do so. Though Bajardo figures in several stories, it occurs first in “Orlando Furioso.” The original of Rinaldo was the son of the fourth Marquis d'Este, and Malagigi was Rinaldo's cousin. The habit of drawing fictitious characters to resemble closely living persons, or well-known persons of a previous period, was very prevalent among the writers of the sixteenth century, and therefore it often is difficult to disassociate the real from the fictitious character. This may be said too of the horses that we come upon in some of the better-known of the old-world romances. Indeed in several stories that could be named, the famous chargers of notable princes can be recognised under several assumed names. With the close of Henry VIII.'s reign—that is, in 1547—we come to an end of what was without doubt a period in which the horse played a more conspicuous part than it had done since the Norman Conquest. Upon ascending the throne Henry had found the condition of horse breeding in this country in rather a bad way. With others, as we have seen, he had set to work in earnest to improve, to the best of his ability, the breed of English horses, and though some of the statutes that he enacted—also some of the methods to which he had recourse in order to accomplish his object—undoubtedly were drastic, directly and indirectly they helped to bring about the improvement he desired, and for this the nation still owes him a debt of gratitude.