through the country lanes, imagining himself a veritable Dick Turpin. By no other process of reasoning, can the fact that he never seriously tried to emulate a hero so intensely admired, be plausibly explained. But he is quite certain that there must have been many a brave fellow, who has been animated by the thought of Turpin, as he has ridden defiant amid the perils of night in pursuit whether of gold or of bronze upon an errand, whether of mercy or of money, of license or of love.

Yes! There is a good deal of poetry about the popular legend, into which has gradually become inwoven a large amount of topographical tradition and of fugitive folk lore. The outlaw, "Dick Turpin," has won for himself a secure place in the heart of the people. The boy's story, the chap book, the circus, the mime, the melodrama, and the ballad, are the natural depositories of the rich store of Turpin tradition. But the legend has occasionally risen into a higher stratum of literature, though it must be freely avowed that it is reflected there in a somewhat confused and indeterminate fashion. It can hardly be claimed for the ornaments of English Letters that they have maintained the Rookwoodian current of Turpin tradition as pure and undefiled as could be desired.

The name Turpin was conjured with, it is true, by Dickens in his most popular masterpiece. But the Turpin ballad in the second volume of The Pickwick Papers, presents the far-famed fable in a strangely perverted form. In extenuation of these distortions, it can only be said that the ballad was penned about Christmas time-the good old brandified Christmastide of "'Tis Sixty Years Since," when Dickens, never sordidly realistic, invariably soared above every point of contact with the grossness of mere actuality. As to Thackeray his sadly sceptical, not to say ribald attitude on the Turpin question has already been adverted to. But what are we to say to the highly perplexing and mystifying references to Turpin in the poems of Thomas Hood and Dante Gabriel Rossetti ? Whether the Turpin therein referred to be one and the same and the right Richard Turpin, we must leave to the discrimination of our readers, for we have never been able to discover. We are glad, however, to recognise the true Simon Pure in Mr. Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. At Greenhill Sheep Fair in the fascinating province of Wessex, we find Sergeant Troy playing Turpin's ride

Drawn by Phiz.

to York (as given at Astleys) in a travelling circus; and the fair Bathsheba is assured that it is perfectly true-all of it. "When the last scene came and the body of the gallant and faithful Bess had to be carried out on a shutter by 12 volunteers from among the spectators, nothing could restrain Joseph Poorgrass from lending a hand. If, as some thinkers hold, immortality consists in being enshrined in other's memories, then did Black Bess become immortal that day, if she never had done so before.”* But this reminds us, low though the sands of this prolusory paper have run, that the last words are due not to our spotted hero, but to our spotless heroine.

In the Valhalla of highwaymen Dick is permitted to share an immortality with his noble Arabian. Elevated to an enduring place amid the constellations of those whose memory on earth is undying, he finds, like Pope's Indian, that

"Admitted to that equal sky

His faithful mare shall bear him company."

Among all the horses of history or fiction where shall we find -one to equal Black Bess in assured celebrity? Not Alexander's charger nor Warwick's, nor Wellington's, nor Marbot's, not even Napoleon's "Marengo." Neither the patient Grizzle of Dr. Syntax, nor the bisected steed of Baron Munchausen, neither the sorry hack of Dr. Slop, nor even the "White Horse so largely celebrated by "Tom Brown "Hughes. subject of great chargers, we must not omit Gargantua's horse

While we are on the

*The subject is still a most popular one for tableaux and circus acts, for marts and fairs and merry makings all over the country, notably at the May-Day festivities at Knutsford, where traditions of the ubiquitous Turpin yet abound. Such references as that in the 4th chapter of The Bible in Spain, where Turpin is treated as the type of efficiency in highwaymen, are naturally numerous. The references of Borrow and of Leigh Hunt in his Thieves, Ancient and Modern, are both to the real and not the Rookwoodian robber. On the stage Turpin figures in a highly ridiculous farce by Alfred Wigan (Lyceum, 28th January, 1847), called Five Hundred Pounds a Year, in which Turpin is represented roasting an old lady of Andover over a slow fire. Rookwood: A romantic drama in two Acts by G. Dibdin Pitt, was produced at the Victoria Theatre, 27th October, 1845, and printed as No. 307 of Dick's Standard Plays. In a novel called Dick Turpin, by H. D. Miles, a 4th edition of which appeared in 1845, some very fair fiction of the road of the G. P. R. James order is evolved. Such Apocryphial matter is contemptuously dismissed by Mr. Harper in his road books, and we are a little surprised to find that Mr. Athol Maudslay has admittted into his recent Highways and Horses (1888), some of the very tallest of these Milesian tales. An equestrian Club, called the Two Pins' (commemorative of Gilpin and Turpin) was formed by the late Sir Frank Lockwood. The members deriving their title from "the names of the two most celebrated English equestrians known to the road," were to represent the dash of the one and the respectability of the other. It was said of them, we believe by Lord Rosebery, that they had but one horse and one joke among them, but this, we are assured by Mr. Birr 11, was a calumny. (See Birrell's Lockwood, 1898, 217.) Turpin is well though briefly touched upon in articles in All the Year Round, May, 1867, in Friswell's Varia' (1866), in Pelham's Chronicles of Crime' (1841), and in Griffith's Mysteries of Police and Crime' (1898). Penny dreadfuls dealing with Dick's career have appeared in English, French, Italian, and doubtless in other tongues. It is permissible to refer the reader for a survey of the primary authorities to the present writer's article on Turpin in the Dictionary of National Biography.

<l as big as six elephants"; and then there was Hereward's Swallow and O'Kelly's Eclipse, which left the "rest nowhere"; nor do we forget the horse that Caligula made a consul, or the Houyhnhnm who condescended to raise his hoof gently to Lemuel Gulliver's mouth. The Cid's Babieca and Tom Faggus's

Winnie in Lorna Doone, Anna Sewell's "Black Beauty," and Captain Starlight's "Rainbow," Rainbow," these will fascinate a long succession of readers, but not among them all shall we find a serious rival to the more heroic proportions of Turpin's Black Bess. No! There is only one horse which has a serious claim to stand above Bucephalus and above even Black Bess in the affections of those who linger in the world of dreams

-of imagination, of literature. We could mean but Rozinante, "companion for ever more" of the famous knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha. There might be a place in such a competition for the chargers of John Gilpin and of Mr. Pickwick. But alas ! (so whimsical is the partiality of fate) the art of writing which has preserved so much, has not handed down to us the very names of those ever to be remembered coursers. The two Pins (Turpin and Gilpin) the Knight of the Doleful Countenance and Mr. Pickwick all are alike at any rate in this, that their fame is undying that they are indeed immortal!

"So let us sing, Long Live the King,

And Turpin long live he,

And when he next doth ride abroad,
May I be there to see!"

Turpin in Loughton (E.R., vol. xi., p. 17).—It may not be uninteresting to note that the house in which Turpin performed the ungallant feat of placing an old lady on her kitchen fire, and keeping her there until she was tortured into discovering the whereabouts of her money, still exists. It is now known as Priors, recently as Traps Hill Farm, and in old days as Trapps Hall (many old houses in Essex, some small and unimportant, were honoured by the appellation "hall"); part of the original building remains as it was a hundred years and more before the birth of the butcher-highwayman whose story Mr. Seccombe tells in lively fashion in the pages of the Essex Review.

The open hearth, whose wood fire provided Turpin's persuasive argument, has long yielded place to that acme of ugliness a modern kitchener-but the opening to the wide. fireplace and chimney is plain to trace. The thick oak door with its abundance of iron boltheads is said to have been put up after Turpin's visit, presumably to guard against a repetition of his unwelcome attentions. I believe another house in Loughton claimed to be the one subjected to the noted highwayman's call, but there is fair evidence that the classic incident referred to by Mr. Seccombe occurred at the old farm house.

I. CHALKLEY GOULD, Loughton.