THE LATE ANDREW DUCROW.

[THE following éloge was intended to have been pronounced (on horseback of course) over the grave of Ducrow, Père-la-Chaise fashion. Whether the Home Secretary feared that such an addition to the excitement of the occasion might be made the handle for an émeute on the corn laws (in regard to one feature of which Ducrow was a perfect Titus Oats); or whether the parish authorities considered that so unusual a feature in the funeral rites might be deemed wrong in antiPuseyite quarters; or whether the Managing Directors of the Kensalgreen Company objected to the equestrian part of the ceremony, as likely to eclipse their portion of the show ;-certain it is that the éloge was not pronounced, and that it will be a virgin one to the readers of the New Monthly Magazine.]

The two greatest characters that ever lived-the lights respectively of heroic and of civilized times--perished prematurely for want of the appliances and means" of riding on horseback. Death has just completed the trinity of departed greatness,-1. PROMETHEUS! 2. NAPOLEON!! 3. DUCROW!!! and by the same identical cause in each case, the only difference being in the modus operandi. In the first instance the effects of the fatal privation flew to the Liver, in the second to the Heart, and in the third to the Brain.

It is but too well known to many of my hearers, that the departed genius whom we are met to lament, had been "dying daily" ever since time and the hour" compelled him to cede to others (and such others!)-the equestrian throne which he alone among us degenerate moderns ever adequately filled; and when at last he saw the proud scene of all his perished glories a flaming ruin, the sight struck him through heart and brain; he gave, like that fane itself just ere it tottered to its fall, one wild" flare-up;" and then, like it, became “dust and ashes,”—and there an end!

Peace be to his manes, whatever may await those of his beloved stud.

Alas! when he was seeing to the latter being leaded, on the day preceding the fatal conflagration, little did he think of being leaded himself before the next Easter Monday that, as he fondly hoped, was to signalize a new era of his glory! Little did he anticipate a hearsing in place of a re-hearsing! Little did he dream of "lying in cold obstruction," ignobly boxed up in six feet by three, at the tails of six solemn, heavy-heeled Flemings, instead of "flying all abroad" over the backs of as many winged Arabians, amidst the blaze of glittering gas-lights, the shouts of galleried gods, and the white waving sea of cambric which (albeit Scotch, and not always of the cleanest) touched his sensitive soul more nearly than all the rest of his triumphs!

But I am wandering. Did I talk of his end? No-there shall not be an end of such a man, if the honours that are due to his memory can save it from that "dumb forgetfulness" the mere dread of which

defeated the mortal part of him. And how can such honours be so fitly and effectually paid as by a simple record of his deeds? Such, then, shall be the ovation that we offer at his grave.

While listening to this act of tardy justice to the truly great genius who is the subject of it, should any one of my hearers imagine that I am overstepping the modesty of truth, let him try a burst with the Quorn, with his head on the saddle, and his heels in the air; or even the minor exploit of keeping his seat or his feet on half-a-dozen horses at once, all going at speed. Yet to our late departed fellow-countryman either of these feats was "as easy as lying" on an air-stuffed sofa.

If, on the other hand, the illustrious subject of my imperfect panegyric should condescend to note, from his daily promenade à cheval in the champs elysées of Hades, what is going forward in this pedestrian world, and feel that I am falling short of the mark in meting out to him the due measure of his fame, let him bear in mind that I am a mere mortal penman; and, though assuredly not a pedestrian one, am only capable of sitting one literary steed at one and the same time, and that one not a winged Pegasus (as it ought to be for the purpose in question), but a mere flesh-and-blood hackney, dressed to one duty only-that of paying "honour due" to equestrian deeds and fame. To do full justice to the merits and the miracles of Ducrow, the historian should be able to write as well as he was to ride-to command as many styles at once as he did steeds-to guide half a score pens (polygraph fashion) as he did pads, with a single finger and thumb. Now I cannot boast this rare ability. I am not Mr. Ducrow;-and as "none but himself could be his parallel," so none but himself was perhaps ever qualified to estimate his powers. And as he, in virtue of those very powers, was even less qualified than any body else to set them forth in words (for I take it for granted-and think I have heard -that he could neither read nor write-Riding-like Painting, having demanded"the whole man"), the world must be confessed to be in a very melancholy predicament, touching this interesting point in its physical and moral history. But there is no help for it. I can only do my possible to describe that which it is impossible to describe. And that I proceed to do accordingly.

First, however, let me endeavour to draw a picture of the person of my hero, for heroic" were his powers and qualities, if ever that epithet was applicable to those of mortal man; nor has any thing, since the ages so called, borne the smallest resemblance, or made the slightest approach, to them; and even in those ages the approach and resemblance were slight only. Homer indeed describes one of the greatest of his heroes as leaping from ship to ship during a great sea-battle, like a horseman leaping from steed to steed as he rides ("four in hand") along the public highway.* But what is that, either in the one case or in the other, compared with the deeds of our hero! But I am anticipating.

Ducrow, like most truly great men, was a small man; and like most, if not all men who have reached the highest point of human fame, he

Iliad, B. xv...

was exceedingly handsome in face and features, and a model in form.. These two opinions may be controverted perhaps by those who possess only a superficial knowledge of the history of the human mind; or by those who, on the other hand see further into the millstone than its actual thickness, and monster little men into great ones, and great ones into little. But, meo periculo, I re-iterate the opinions, and am prepared to maintain them against all impugners, time and place befitting. The present, however, is neither; and therefore I proceed.

Ducrow's face was highly intellectual in its character; it was capable of the most vivid and the most various expression of the passions and affections; it was instinct with all the fire and the fervour of high genius ; and (what may seem extraordinary to many, though to me the most natural thing in the world) it was very like that of a horse-or rather of THE horse-the ideal of all horses-the Phidian horse from the pediment of the Parthenon. There is in each face (alas! that we must say was of one of them!) the same flaring nostril indicating indomitable courage ;-the same high, bare, and fleshless forehead, showing an excess of all the loftier intellectual qualities of its owner respectively; the same eager and severe eyes, indicating at once thought and imagination; and the same rigidity and tension of all the facial muscles, proving the constant and almost involuntary action of all the above qualities!*

The form of Ducrow was a perfect model of Apollonian beauty;with this one difference only, that all its characteristics were slightly exaggerated, by reason of their perpetual exercise in the operations of his high art. The prominent muscles were more developed in the living model than they are in the marble one; they wanted that soft roundness, and silken smoothness, which throw about the Apollo an air of voluptuous and almost effeminate beauty, very appropriate in the giver of sunshine and the god of music, but better away in an equestrian athletæ. In fact, Ducrow's person was precisely that of the dying Gladiator, which differs from the Apollo only in the particulars just noted.

There was another personal distinction possessed by Ducrow, in common with all the really great men who have gone before him. He had, under the ordinary circumstances of life, not the slightest (socalled) "dignity" of deportment, or "distinction" of appearance and manner; like the natural gentleman in one of Morton's comedies, he had "nothing of the gentleman about him." These things are, in themselves, mere pretences and mockeries, that are to be taught and imitated by art, and transmitted from one individual, and even one generation, to another; they are mere outward seemings, having no necessary reference whatever to that which they seek to set forth. They are like the "nobility" that is made by kings; and they are its appropriate symbol and accompaniment.

Ducrow had none of these. He might have been mistaken in the street for a master-tailor, or a minister of state-by those, I mean, who see nothing in a face but its features, and nothing in a form but its size and height. In short, in the "circles" he would not have shone.

This head is in the British Museum.

But see him in " the circle!" He looked nothing less than a descended god-Phaeton in his wind-borne chariot, or Phoebus on his throne of light! He could not, perhaps, have personated Coriolanus at the tent of Aufidius quite so well as the late John Kemble did; but see him as Achilles, dragging the dead body of Patroclus round the Trojan walls! It were a sight for the gods! and (to the honour of us mere "human mortals" I speak it) it was no less to the "gods" of Astley's; for when we come to the real and ultimate truth of things, the "low vulgar" are more than a match for the "high vulgar" in the quick and vivid perception of that truth; their natural sympathies with it being merely held in abeyance; whereas those of their lofty despisers are melted and frittered away in vain and unmeaning assumptions. What do the unwashed frequenters of Astley's know about the gods of the Greek mythology, or the demigods of the heroic ages? And yet see the enthusiastic sympathy with which they hailed their effigies, as offered to them by the genius of Ducrow! while the half-dozen perfumed poppinjays who, hot from their claret at the University Club, sometimes strayed into the boxes for "a lark," laughed the exhibition to scorn!

"A low fellow like that, with his tinsel helmet, tin sword, and trumpery trappings, to stick himself up for one of Homer's heroes! How pre-eminently absurd!-On horseback, too! as if any such thing occurred in the original!! It is too ridiculous!"

In the mean time this despised exhibition was, by the force and truth of its acted poetry, kindling in the hearts and spirits of those above and below them, feelings and aspirations which the written poetry that gave rise to it, noble and unequalled as it is, was never able to do, even in the boyish breasts of its most" classical" admirers.

This brings me at once to the more immediate consideration of my subject-namely, the riding exploits of Ducrow.

Napoleon, by means of equestrianism, crossed the Alps, and conquered the world. Ducrow, by the same means, effected infinitely more: he subdued the vast world of Imagination and of Poetry to his will, and PUT IT ON HORSEBACK! I do not here allude to his equestrian dramas-his "Siege of Troy," "Wars of Wellington," "Mazeppa," and the rest. These were capital things in their way; but they were merely clever extensions and improvements of the "Timours," "Bluebeards," &c., of our boyish days. It is of his own individual performances I speak-his "Scenes in the Circle"— which were high efforts of genius. His embodying of the individual creations of poetry and putting them on horseback, was a great original invention. The mere idea of it was a stroke of genius; but the idea and execution together, correspondent as they were with each other, and at the same time conducing to a perfectly consistent, homogenous, and pleasurable result, form an epoch in the history of the Fine Arts, which is precisely analogous to the invention of "The Opera," as practised in the present day. A certain kind of writing has been called, disparagingly," prose on horseback." The serious opera of modern times may be called, not disparagingly, a kind of “drama on horseback"-tragedy lifted above itself-suspended-like the prophet's coffin-between earth and heaven.

Now what the inventor of the Opera was in respect of the written

drama, Ducrow was in respect of the BALLET, as it existed among the ancients, when it was only second in point of power and dramatic expression to the written drama itself. He, not metaphorically, but literally, put the Ancient Ballet on horseback. Whatever the very finest and most celebrated ballet-actors of modern times have done, or been able to do, on the motionless and solid ground, Ducrow did-or was able to do—on the back of a horse going at full speed! Just as whatever Mrs. Siddons, or Miss O'Niel, could do in the way of poetic and tragic expression with their natural voices, Pasta and Malibran, or: Giulietta Grisi, and Adelaide Kemble, were and are able to do, though. compelled to use their voice in singing instead of speaking-and in singing to prescribed notes. Nay, the triumph over difficulties must be regarded as still greater in favour of the great riding and singing: artists, over the merely acting ones above named,-when we call to mind that in the case of the acted drama, the result is, generally speaking, more than aided, it is almost engendered, by the character, sentiment, passion, and poetry, that are put into the mouths of tragedians; whereas in the case of Pasta and her younger rivals, the libretto is avowedly a by-word of mingled inanity and nonsense; and in the case of the (to use a modern slip-slopism) "legitimate" ballet, which Ducrow elevated to the "equestrian order,"-every thing was done by dumb show merely, and in a species of dumb show, the knowledge of which the spectator can have no means of acquiring beforehand, except in so far as it " comes by nature." And in fact this is the secret of the universal power of what is called "expression," whether exercised by. the voice, the action, or the look. It appeals to the instincts of our nature; and therefore, if genuine, it cannot fail to produce an effect correspondent with the cause from which it springs. None but a native ever arrived at the perfect understanding of a spoken drama, or the full reception of the various sentiments and expressions sought to be conveyed by the actors. But a well-constructed and well-acted ballet is intelligible to all the world-to the newly-caught Indian from the wilds of America, as to the most inveterate habitué of the Académie Royale.

I am not going to enter on a dry detail of the wonderful performances which have called forth the foregoing remarks; first, because I have not a folio at my disposal to do it in; and secondly, because, if all the "appliances and means" even of the pictorial art were at my command, I could not perform the task effectually. Happily for men of genius belonging to the class of which Ducrow was at the head, you cannot see them at secondhand. Their works are the least translateable of any in the world. A foreigner, by devoting his life to the study of the English language, may, just as he is about to die, get glimpses of the beauties of "Paradise Lost, or the wonders of Hamlet and Macbeth. Meantime, the creators of these miracles of poetic genius were fain to sell them for a dinner, and wait till after their death for the fame that could alone satisfy the craving of their intellectual appetites.

But the riding of Ducrow (like the acting of Kean) could only be witnessed and enjoyed face to face with the illustrious originator of it. We may find a tolerable substitute for the pictures of Claude in the