Re: Made me do about the horse free

K. Edgcombe wrote:
Marius Hancu wrote:

I've no idea what he means by:
"made me do about the horse free."

There really doesn't seem to be any horse around or horsing about:-),
just studying.

--------
[Previously tutored by his father, Ernest was enrolled in a (prep?)
school. ]

"My Dear Mamma,--I am very well. Dr Skinner made me do about the horse
free and exulting roaming in the wide fields in Latin verse, but as I
had done it with Papa I knew how to do it, and it was nearly all
right, and he put me in the fourth form under Mr Templer, and I have
to begin a new Latin grammar not like the old, but much harder."

I would guess that this refers to some standard exercise in Latin that
would have been known to Butler's readers. Somewhere in either a
Latin text or a standard Latin textbook (or even a standard English
text often set for translation into Latin) there must be a reference
to a horse which is "free and exulting" and is "roaming in the wide
fields". Someone else here may be able to track down the origin.

_Elements of Latin Hexameters and Pentameters_ by Robert Bland, 1822.
Page 13, Exercise #1 The Horse.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=yMoDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=%
22free+and+exulting%22+latin>

Mind the wrap.

This is apparently one of the standard exercize books of the time, since
the 1922 edition was the Third Edition, and by 1850, it was in its
Twentieth Edition. In 1902, in _works_ George Gordon Byron says that
"several generations of schoolboys have learned to write Latin Verse
from his _Elements of Latin Hxameters and Pentameters...."
.

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