which capacity he tells of many
hair-breadth escapes that befell him; one especially, how he rode a mad
horse into the town of Devizes; how horse and rider arrived in a foam,
to the utter consternation of the expostulating hostlers, inn-keepers,
&c. It seems it was sultry weather, piping hot; the steed tormented into
frenzy with gad-flies, long past being roadworthy; 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 sp