The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective.

A mixture of passions was excited in Fred--a mad desire to thrash

Horrock's opinion into utterance, restrained by anxiety to retain the

advantage of his friendship. There was always the chance that Horrock

might say something quite invaluable at the right moment.

Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to give forth his

ideas without economy. He was loud, robust, and was sometimes spoken

of as being "given to indulgence"--chiefly in swearing, drinking, and

beating his wife. Some people who had lost by him called him a vicious

man; but he regarded horse-dealing as the finest of the arts, and might

have argued plausibly that it had nothing to do with morality. He was

undeniably a prosperous man, bore his drinking better than others bore

their moderation, and, on the whole, flourished like the green

bay-tree. But his range of conversation was limited, and like the fine

old tune, "Drops of brandy," gave you after a while a sense of

returning upon itself in a way that might make weak heads dizzy. But a

slight infusion of Mr. Bambridge was felt to give tone and character to

several circles in Middlemarch; and he was a distinguished figure in

the bar and billiard-room at the Green Dragon. He knew some anecdotes

about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses

and Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood asserted its

pre-eminence even among black-legs; but the minute retentiveness of his

memory was chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and

sold; the number of miles they would trot you in no time without

turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of

passionate asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination of

his hearers by solemnly swearing that they never saw anything like it.

In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.

Fred was subtle, and did not tell his friends that he was going to

Houndsley bent on selling his horse: he wished to get indirectly at

their genuine opinion of its value, not being aware that a genuine

opinion was the last thing likely to be extracted from such eminent

critics. It was not Mr. Bambridge's weakness to be a gratuitous

flatterer. He had never before been so much struck with the fact that

this unfortunate bay was a roarer to a degree which required the

roundest word for perdition to give you any idea of it.

"You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to anybody but me,

Vincy! Why, you never threw your leg across a finer horse than that

chestnut, and you gave him for this brute. If you set him cantering,

he goes on like twenty sawyers. I never heard but one worse roarer in

my life, and that was a roan: it belonged to Pegwell, the corn-factor;

he used to drive him in his gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to

take him, but I said, 'Thank you, Peg, I don't deal in

wind-instruments.' That was what I said. It went the round of the

country, that joke did. But, what the hell! the horse was a penny

trumpet to that roarer of yours."




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