Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and fifty miles--viz., from a point seventy miles beyond London. In the taking of laudanum there was nothing extraordinary. But by accident it drew upon me the special attention of my assessor on the box, the coachman. And in _that_ also there was nothing extraordinary. But by accident, and with great delight, it drew my own attention to the fact that this coachman was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Virgil as
"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."
He answered to the conditions in every one of the items:--1, a monster he was; 2, dreadful; 3, shapeless; 4, huge; 5, who had lost an eye. But why should _that_ delight me? Had he been one of the Calendars in the "Arabian Nights," and had paid down his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, what right had _I_ to exult in his misfortune? I did _not_ exult; I delighted in no man's punishment, though it were even merited. But these personal distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant an old friend of mine whom I had known in the south for some years as the most masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe that could (if _any_ could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop over _Al Sirat_--that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with no side battlements, and of _extra_ room not enough for a razor's edge--leading right across the bottomless gulf. Under this eminent man, whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops _Diphrélates_ (Cyclops the Charioteer), I, and others known to me, studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand high in his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty (though, observe, not his discernment) that he could not see my merits. Let us excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye. Doubtless _that_ made him blind to my merits. In the art of conversation, however, he admitted that I had the whip-hand of him. On the present occasion great joy was at our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here? Had the medical men recommended northern air, or how? I collected, from such explanations as he volunteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit-at-law now pending at Lancaster; so that probably he had got himself transferred to this station for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit.