Outside one of the gates there (in London), immediately in the suburb,
is a certain field, smooth (Smith) field in fact and name. Every
Friday, unless it be a higher day of appointed solemnity, there is in
it a famous show of noble horses for sale. Earls, barons, and many
citizens who are in town, come to see or buy. It is pleasant to see the
steppers in quick trot going gently up and down, their feet on each
side alternately rising and falling. On this side are the horses most
fit for esquires, moving with harder pace yet swiftly, that lift and
set down together, as it were, the opposite fore and hind feet; on that
side colts of fine breed who, not yet well used to the bit,
"Altius incedunt, et mollia crura reponunt."[4]
In that part are the sumpter horses, powerful and spirited; here costly
chargers elegant of form, noble of stature, with ears quickly
tremulous, necks lifted, haunches plump. In their stepping the buyers
first try for the gentler, then for the quicker pace, which is by the
fore and the hind feet moving in pairs together. When a race is ready
for such thunderers, and perhaps for others of like kind, powerful to
carry, quick to run, a shout is raised, orders are given that the
common horses stand apart. The boys who mount the wing-footed, by twos
or threes, according to the match, prepare themselves for contest;
skilled to rule horses, they restrain the mouths of the untrained with
bitted bridles. For this chiefly they care, that no one should get
before another in the course. The horses rise too in their own way to
the struggle of the race; their limbs tremble, impatient of delay they
cannot keep still in their place; at the sign given their limbs are
stretched, they hurry on their course, are borne with stubborn speed.
The riders contend for the love of praise and hope of victory, plunge
spurs into the loose-reined horses, and urge them none the less with
whips and shouts. You would think with Heraclitus everything to be in
motion, and the opinion to be wholly false of Zeno, who said that there
was no motion and no goal to be reached. In another part of the field
stand by themselves the goods proper to rustics, implements of
husbandry, swine with long flanks, cows with full udders, oxen of bulk
immense, and woolly flocks. There stand the mares fit for plough, dray
and cart, some big with foal, and others with their young colts closely
following.
William Fitzstephen, _Description of the Most Noble City of
London_, prefixed to his _Life of Thomas à Becket_. (Translation by
H. Morley, prefatory to his edition of Stow's _Survey of London_.)
[4] "Prance high, and rear their supple necks."
From Virgil's _Georgics_.