For the Port Folio. ORIGINAL PAPERS. THE AMERICAN LOUNGER. BY SAMUEL SAUNTER, ESQ. First with nimble active force But now we talk of mounting steed, HUDIBRAS. JN my last Lounger, I exhibited a sort of wood-cut of a Virginia knight and squire. But I could not find room, even in a corner of the piece, to introduce the picture of that prancing palfrey, which makes so gallant a shew in their adventures. This omission it is now my business to supply. GOLDSMITH assures us that in an old romance, à certain knight-errant and his horse contracted an intimate friendship. The horse most usually bore the knight, but, in cases of extraordinary dispatch, the knight returned the favour, and carried his horse. I am determined to rival this redoubtable cavalier, and, as the reader will perceive in the sequel, have as much strength as he to support a steed. BUTLER, in a poem, which will not soon be forgotten by cavaliers, has very minutely described the points of that miserable jade which bore Sir Samuel Luke to the civil wars. The wit of CERVANTES has immortalized Rozinante, and in the poetical journal of the gay Charles Cotton he has not omitted to record the excellences of a certain creature, though not a zebra, which bore him over the mountains of Wales. But neither the author of Hudibras, nor the biographer of Don Quixote, nor the burlesquer of Virgil has surpas sed in picturesque description our accurate advertiser from Virginia. As in the most delightful of romances, all our attention is awakened by the titles of its chapters, "The adventure of the windmill," "The stupendous combat with the sheep," "The parliament of death," and "The encounter with the lions," so, we doubt not, after ages will peruse, with a more than ordinary degree of curiosity and rapture, that section of this enchanting history, which is intitled, A description of the horse, saddle, and bridle. His strutting ribs on both sides shew'd Like furrows he himself had plough'd. A This sprightly courser, to a list of whose perfections we are now summoned to attend, is, in fact, notwithstanding the reader has been pre the advertiser. We read, it is true, and with staring eyes, of a chunky horse; but when we have finished the paragraph, we find ourselves enquir pared to consider the beast as anothering whether this horse is a war-horse, Bucephalus, "a small chunky bay horse, about four feet, four or five inches high." We lament that the first feature of this description is rather obscure. When we read of a small bay horse, about four feet four or five inches high, we have a most accurate perception of a Virginia poney. The idea is vivid as a rainbow, clear as the sun, and "round as the shield of my fathers." We instantly figure to ourselves a horse in miniature, a tiny tit, on whose gentle back we might, in spite of all our equestrian terrors, mount securely, and ride undauntedly over all the rough roads, and through all the cursed ruts of Virginia, or any other mountainous region. Animated by so pleasing a picture, we sigh for the possession of such a pacing poney, by whose benignant aid we might amble along, indulge all the ease of a Lounger, rouse our torpid faculties by the stimulus of pure air and rural scenery, and, when flight was necessary, gallop away from Care and his myrmidons! But the brightness of the dazzling vision is completely overshadowed by a black mist, engendered by all the murky powers of Obscurity and Confusion and Night. The luckless epithet chunky, like a deformed urchin in the dreams of the night-mare, comes cowering over the disturbed fancy. Our view of the little poney in the back-ground becomes indistinct, and we awake from our trance, as the prophets used sometimes to awaken from theirs, with our thoughts sore troubled. The word chunky, however current in the speech or writings of Indian scholars, is so little to our taste, that we would not use it, if we might receive "a bay horse" in reward for our pains. Independently of our scepticism, respecting the legitimacy of this word, it is unfortunately but ill adapted to represent the meaning of like Job's, or a race-horse, like the famous Eclipse, or a dray-horse, like alderman Mashtub's, or "a genteel and agreeable horse," like those depicted by Geoffry Gambado. Of our interrogatories there is no end. We throw down the paper. We run to the barn, we run to the stable, we call the ostlers, we catch each nimble jocky by the sleeve, and implore them in the name of Ignorance to tell us whether such a horse be square or round; whether he flies, like Pegasus, or stumbles, like dame Dobbins's blundering mare. We are now informed of a very wonderful circumstance in natural history, that the mane of this stupendous steed, a few months since, was cut close, but now considerably grown out, and stands erect. We are unalterably of opinion that a memoir, respecting this phenomenon, ought to be drawn up by the Virginia philosopher, that the curiosity of the learned world might be more fully gratified concerning all the particulars of this Lusus Nature. We now arrive, but not without streaming eyes, at a very melancholy description in this unparalleled advertisement. For Mr. B, in that plaintive and tender tone which graces the subject, and which would do honour to that unfortunate peasant in Sterne, who so pathetically bewailed his dead ass, proceeds to declare that the shoes of his steed are lately worn off and his hoofs ragged; the front one longer and coaser than the others, with some old nails remaining in the edges, his legs rather shaggy and dirty, not having been trimmed since I had him. We defy a compassionate man to peruse this paragraph without the rising sigh, and the starting tear. Nothing can be more forlorn than the appearance of this neglected and maltreated steed. "Babylon in ruins is not a more mournful specta cle." We feel inclined to write an Elegy, or compose an entire chapter of Lamentations, when we reflect upon the sinister fate of this chunky horse. Without shoes, without boots, and without stockings, squalid in his whole attire, no tokens of his former strength and splendor remaining, except a few old nails, he stands a melancholy monument of human ingratitude; and we cannot help sorrowing for those gloomy vicissitudes of fortune incident both to sovereigns and steeds. retreat; and although his owner makes a "feint" to amuse our Apprehension, it is very evident that the undaunted breast of this chunky charger has been galled not less than the rear of Sir Peter Parker in the attack on Sullivan's Island, or the rear of the duke of York's army, in the campaign of 1794. But to relieve the humane reader from those agonizing sensations, which the contemplation of such complicated wretchedness must excite, the scene is now suddenly changed to the familiar and the playful. In the judicious use of the figure contrast, Mr. B. is not inferior to OVID himself. After we have been tortured with a doleful recital of the evils, moral and physical, which begirt this ill-starred steed, after the passions of pity and terror have been fully rouzed and fairly exhausted, Mr. B. kindly steps in to the aid of our fainting nature, with a gay smile and a jocund note, and diverts our imagination by that airy assertion, that this is the same little horse he purchased of Joe Childress in Richmond. My paragon of a predecessor, ADDISON, in his elegant criticism upon the ballad of Chevy Chace, mentions it as honourable to the author, that he has followed the exam With a frankness, however, which we could scarcely expect, Mr. B. satisfactorily explains, in part, the cause of this dismal plight of his injured poney. It seems he has not been trimmed since he came into Mr. B.'s possession. Thus neglected, who would not make as sorry a figure? Let us imagine Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Edward the Black Prince, or Louis the Fourteenth, uncombed, unwashed, untrimmed," unhousel'd and unanel'd" and how will their towering pride dwindle! Dazzling as their forms may appear, when varnished by magnificence, yet the imposing air and the sovereign state will be lost, if the robes of royalty, like the hoofs of this horse, are suffered to become ragged. Among other whimsical peculiari-ple of the ancients, in the easy famities of this extraordinary animal, we learn that not only his left hind foot is white, but his hinder hoofs are white. This is what is termed, in the schools, an identical proposition, and Mr. B., who, from the judicious employment of the phrase, "I think," convinces us that his powers of perception and apprehension are singularly acute, leaves us admiring him, Bot less as a logician, than as a painter and a poet. The case of this pitiful palfrey appears to be singularly deplorable. He is not only ragged, and shaggy, and dirty, and forlorn; but, like a disabled soldier, has been grievously wounded. Two large spots attest that he has been a very severe sufkerer, either in some charge or some liarity of the subsequent lines. Sir Charles Murrell of Ratcliff too, But neither the ancients nor the bal- |