WHATEVER degree of small merit, the act of benignity in
favour of the midwife, might justly claim, or in whom that
claim truly rested,-at first sight seems not very material to
this history; -certain however it was, that the gentle-
woman, the parson's wife, did run away at that time with
the whole of it: And yet, for my life, I cannot help thinking
but that the parson himself, though he had not the good
fortune to hit upon the design first,-yet, as he heartily con-
curred in it the moment it was laid before him, and as
heartily parted with his money to carry it into execution,
had a claim to some share of it,-if not to a full half of
whatever honour was due to it.
The world at that time was pleased to determine the
matter otherwise.
Lay down the book, and I will allow you half a day to
give a probable guess at the grounds of this procedure.
Be it known then, that, for about five years before the
date of the midwife's licence, of which you have had so cir-
cumstantial an account,-the parson we have to do with,
bad made himself a country-talk by a breach of all decorum,
which he bad committed against himself, his station, and
his office;-and that was, in never appearing better, or other-
wise mounted, than upon a lean, sorry, jack-ass of a horse,
value about one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten all
description of him, was full brother to Rosinante, as far as
similitude congenial could make him; for he answered his
description to a hair-breadth in every thing,-except that I
do not remember 'tis any where said, that Rosinante was
broken winded; and that, moreover, Rosinante, as is the
happiness of most Spanish horses, fat or lean,-was un-
doubtedly a horse at all points.
I know very well that the HERO's horse was a horse of
chaste deportment, which may have given grounds for a
contrary opinion: But it is certain at the same time, that
Rosinante's continency (as may be demonstrated from the
adventure of the Yanguesian carriers) proceeded from no
bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the temperance
and orderly current of his blood.-And let me tell you,
Madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in the
world, in behalf of which you could not say more for your
life.
Let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice
to every creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic
work,-I could not stifle this distinction in favour of Don Quixote's
horse;- in all other points the parson's horse, I
say, was just such another,-for he was as lean, and as lank,
and as sorry a jade, as HUMILITY herself could have be-
strided.
In the estimation of here and there a man of weak
judgment, it was greatly in the parson's power to have
helped the figure of this horse of his,-for he was master
of a very handsome demi-peaked saddle, quilted on the seat
with green plush, garnished with a double row of silver-
headed studs, and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with
a housing altogether suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with
an edging of black lace, terminating in a deep, black, silk
fringe, poudré d'or,-all which he had purchased in the
pride and prime of his life, together with a grand embossed
bridle, ornamented at all points as it should be.-But not
caring to banter his beast, he had hung all these up behind
his study door: -and, in lieu of them, had seriously befitted
him with just such a bridle and such a saddle, as the figure
and value of such a steed might well and truly deserve.
In the several sallies about his parish, and in the neigh-
bouring visits to the gentry who lived around him,-you
will easily comprehend, that the parson, so appointed, would
both hear and see enough to keep his philosophy from rust-
ing. To speak the truth, he never could enter a village, but
he caught the attention of both old and young.-Labour
stood still as he passed,-the bucket hung suspended in the
middle of the well,-the spinning-wheel forgot its round,
-even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood
gaping till he had got out of sight; and as his movement was
not of the quickest, he had generally time enough upon his
hands to make his observations,-to hear the groans of the
serious,-and the laughter of the light-hearted;-all which
he bore with excellent tranquillity.-His character was,-he
loved a jest in his heart-and as he saw himself in the true
point of ridicule, he would say, he could not be angry with
others for seeing him in a light, in which he so strongly
saw himself: So that to his friends, who knew his foible
was not the love of money, and who therefore made the less
scruple in bantering the extravagance of his humour,-in-
stead of giving the true cause,-he chose rather to join in
the laugh against himself; and as he never carried one single
ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether as spare
a figure as his beast,-he would sometimes insist upon it,
that the horse was as good as the rider deserved;-that they
were, centaur-like,-both of a piece. At other times, and in
other moods, when his spirits were above the temptation
of false wit,-he would say, he found himself going off fast
in a consumption; and, with great gravity, would pretend,
he could not bear the sight of a fat horse without a dejection
of heart, and a sensible alteration in his pulse; and that he
had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not only to
keep himself in countenance, but in spirits.
At different times he would give fifty humorous and
apposite reasons for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-
winded horse, preferably to one of mettle;-for on such a
one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully
de vanitate mundi et fugâ saeculi, as with the advantage of
a death's head before him;-that, in all other exercitations,
he could spent his time, as he rode slowly along,-to as much
account as in his study;-that he could draw up an argu-
ment in his sermon,-or a hole in his breeches, as steadily
on the one as in the other;-that brisk trotting and slow
argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two incom-
patible movements.-But that upon his steed-he could
unite and reconcile every thing,-he could compose his ser-
mon,-he could compose his cough,-and, in case nature
gave a call that way, he could likewise compose himself to
sleep.-In short, the parson upon such encounters would
assign any cause but the true causer-and he withheld the
true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought
it did honour to him.
But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first
years of this gentleman's life, and about the time when the
superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had
been his manner, or vanity, or call it what you will,-to run
into the opposite extreme.-In the language of the county
where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and
generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing
in his stable always ready for saddling,- and as the nearest
midwife, as I told you, did not live nearer to the village than
seven miles, and in a vile country,-it so fell out that the
poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without
some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an
unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and
more distressful than the last,-as much as he loved his
beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of
which was generally this, that his horse was either clapped,
or spavined, or greazed-or he was twitter-boned, or broken-
winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him
which would let him carry no flesh;-so that he had every
nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,-and a good
horse to purchase in his stead.
What the loss in such a balance might amount to, com-
munibus annis, I would leave to a special jury of sufferers in
the same traffic, to determine;-but let it be what it would,
the honest gentleman bore it for many years without a
murmur, till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind,
he found it necessary to take the thing under consideration;
and upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his
mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other
expences, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as to dis-
able him from any other act of generosity in his parish:
Besides this he considered, that with half the sum thus
galloped away, he could do ten times as much good;- and
what still weighed more with him than an other considera-
tions put together, was this, that it confined all his charity
into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was
the least wanted, namely, to the child-bearing and child-
getting part of his parish; reserving nothing for the impo-
tent,-nothing for the aged,-nothing for the many com-
fortress scenes he was hourly called forth to visit, where
poverty, and sickness, and affliction dwelt together.
For these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence;
and there appeared but two possible ways to extricate him
clearly out of it;-and these were, either to make it an
irrevocable law never more to lend his steed upon any appli-
cation whatever,- or else be content to ride the last poor
devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and
infirmities, to the very end of the chapter.
As he dreaded his own constancy in the first-he very
cheerfully betook himself to the second; and though he
could very well have explained it, as I said, to his honour,
-yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit above it; choosing
rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter
of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story,
which might seem a panegyric upon himself.
I have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined senti-
ments of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke
in his character, which I think comes up to any of the honest
refinements of the peerless knight of La Mancha, whom, by
the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and would actually
have gone further to have paid a visit to, than the greatest
hero of antiquity.
But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had
in view was to shew the temper of the world in the whole of
this affair.-For you must know, that so long as this ex-
planation would have done the parson credit,-the devil a
soul could find it out,-l suppose his enemies would not, and
that his friends could not.-But no sooner did he bestir
himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the expences of
the ordinary's licence to set her up,-but the whole secret
came out; every horse he had lost, and two horses more than
ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their des-
truction, were known and distinctly remembered.-The
story ran like wild-fire.-'The parson had a returning fit of
pride which had just seized him; and he was going to be
well mounted once again in his life; and if it was so, 'twas
plain as the sun at noon-day, he would pocket the expence of
the licence, ten times told the very first year: -so that every
body was left to judge what were his views in this act of
charity.'
What were his views in this, and in every other action of
his life,-or rather what were the opinions which floated in
the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought
which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in
upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep.
About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune
to be made entirely easy upon that scorer-it being just so
long since he left his parish,-and the whole world at the
same time behind him-and stands accountable to a judge
of whom he will have no cause to complain.
But there is a fatality attends the actions of some men:
Order them as they will, they pass through a certain
medium, which so twists and refracts them from their true
directions-that, with all the titles to praise which a recti-
tude of heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless
forced to live and die without it.
Of the truth of which this gentleman was a painful ex-
ample.-But to know by what means this came to pass,-
and to make that knowledge of use to you, I insist upon it
that you read the two following chapters, which contain
such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry its
moral along with it.-When this is done, if nothing stops us
in our way, we will go on with the midwife.