The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

210 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
grooming or discipline of any kind; the ridicule being greatly enhanced by
the disproportion of size betwixt the animal and its rider.
Perhaps the knight saw their wonder, for the first words he said after
they left the ground were, " Pixie, though small, is mettlesome, gentlemen,"
(here he contrived that Pixie should himself corroborate the assertion, by
executing a gambade,)-" he is diminutive, but full of spirit;-indeed, save
that I am somewhat too large for an elfin horseman," (the knight was upwards of six feet high,) "I should remind myself, when I mount him, of
the Fairy King, as described by Mike Drayton:Himself he on an ear-wig set,
Yet scarce upon his back could get,
So oft and high he did curvet,
Ere he himself did settle.
He made him stop, and turn, and bound,
To gallop, and to trot the round,
He scarce could stand on any ground,
He was so full of mettle.'"
"My old friend, Pixie," said Everard, stroking the pony's neck, "I am
glad that he has survived all these bustling days —Pixie must be above
twenty years old, Sir Henry?"
"Above twenty years, certainly. Yes, nephew Markham, war is a
whirlwind in a plantation, which only spares what is least worth leaving.
Old Pixie and his old master have survived many a tall fellow, and many
a great horse -neither of them good for much themselves. Yet, as Will
says, an old man can do somewhat. So Pixie and I still survive."
So saying, he again contrived that Pixie should show some remnants of
activity.
" Still survive?" said the young Scot, completing the sentence which the
good knight had left unfinished-" ay, still survive,'To witch the world with noble horsemanship."'
Everard coloured, for he felt the irony; but not so his uncle, whose
simple vanity never permitted him to doubt the sincerity of the compliment.
"Are you avised of that?" he said. "In King James's time, indeed, I
have appeared in the tilt-yard, and there you might have said-'You saw young Harry with his beaver up.'
As to seeing old Harry, why" Here the knight paused, and looked as a
bashful man in labour of a pun-" As to old Harry-why, you might as
well see the devil. You take me, Master Kerneguy -the devil, you know,
is my namesake-ha-ha-ha!-Cousin Everard, I hope your precision is
not startled by an innocent jest?"
He was so delighted with the applause of both his companions, that he
recited the whole of the celebrated passage referred to, and concluded with
defying the present age, bundle all its wits, Donne, Cowley, Waller, and
the rest of them together, to produce a poet of a tenth part of the genius
of old Will.
"Why, we are said to have one of his descendants among us - Sir William D'Avenant," said Louis Kerneguy; " and many think him as clever a
fellow."
"What!" exclaimed Sir Henry-" Will D'Avenant, whom I knew in the
North, an officer under Newcastle, when the Marquis lay before Hull?why, he was an honest cavalier, and wrote good doggrel enough; but how
came he a-kin to Will Shakspeare, I trow?"
"Why," replied the young Scot, "by the surer side of the house, and
after the old fashion, if D'Avenant speaks truth. It seems that his mother
was a good-looking, laughing, buxom mistress of an inn between Stratford
and London, at which Will Shakspeare often quartered as he went down to
his native town; and that out of friendship and gossipred, as we say in