J. H. Hopkins of Vermont, in a Reply (1863), which meets the bishop on purely Biblical ground and displays the wide range of Dr Drisler’s scholarship.
DRIVER, SAMUEL ROLLES (1846– ), English divine and Hebrew scholar, was born at Southampton on the 2nd of October 1846. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, taking a first class in Literae Humaniores in 1869. He was awarded the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship in 1866, the Kennicott scholarship in 1870 (both Hebrew), and the Houghton Syriac prize in 1872. From 1870 he was a fellow, and from 1875 also a tutor, of New College, and in 1883 succeeded Pusey as regius professor of Hebrew and canon of Christ Church. He was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee (1876–1884) and examining chaplain to the bishop of Southwell (1884–1904); received the honorary degrees of doctor of literature of Dublin (1892), doctor of divinity of Glasgow (1901), doctor of literature of Cambridge (1905); and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1902. Dr Driver devoted his life to the study, both textual and critical, of the Old Testament. Among his numerous works are commentaries on Joel and Amos (1897); Deuteronomy (1902); Daniel (1901); Genesis (1909); the Minor Prophets, Nahum to Malachi (1905); Job (1905); Jeremiah (1906); Leviticus (1894 Hebrew text, 1898 trans. and notes); Samuel (Hebrew text, 1890). Among his more general works are: Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew (1892); Isaiah, his Life and Times (1893); Introd. to the Literature of the Old Test. (1897, ed. 1909); Sermons on Subjects connected with the Old Testament (1892); The Parallel Psalter (1904); Heb. and Eng. Lexicon of the O.T. (in collaboration, 1906); Modern Research as illustrating the Bible (1909); articles in the Ency. Brit., Ency. Bibl. and Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible.
DRIVING (from “to drive,” i.e. generally to propel, force along or in, a word common in various forms to the Teutonic languages), a word used in a restricted sense for the art of controlling and directing draught animals from a coach or other conveyance or movable machine to which they are harnessed for the purpose of traction. This has been an occupation practised since domesticated animals were first put to this use. In various parts of the world a number of different animals have been, and still are, so employed; of these the horse, ox, mule and ass are the most common, though their place is taken by the reindeer in northern latitudes, and by the Eskimo dog in arctic and antarctic regions. The driving of each of these requires special skill, only to be acquired by practice combined with knowledge of the characteristics peculiar to the several animals employed. The most accomplished driver of spirited horses would probably be in difficulties if called upon to drive sixteen or twenty dogs in an arctic sledge, or a team of oxen or mules drawing the guns of a mountain battery; and the adept in either of these branches of the art might provoke the compassion of a farmer from Lincolnshire or Texas by his attempts to manage a pair of Clydesdale horses in the plough or the reaping machine.
Under all these different conditions driving is a work of utility, of economic value to civilized society. But from very early times driving, especially of horses, has also been regarded as a sport or pastime. This probably arose in the first instance from its association with battle. In the earliest historical records, such as the Old Testament and the Homeric poems, the driver of the chariot fills a place of importance in the economy of war; and on his skill and efficiency the fate of kings, and even of kingdoms, must often have depended. The statement in the Book of Kings that Jehu the son of Nimshi was recognized from a distance by his style of driving appears to indicate that the warrior himself on occasion took the place of the professional charioteer; and although it would be unsafe to infer from the story that the pleasure derived from the occupation was his motive for doing so, the name of this king of Israel has become the eponym of drivers. Among the Greeks at an equally early period driving was a recognized form of sport, to the popularity of which Horace afterwards made allusion. Racing between teams of horses harnessed to war-chariots took the place occupied by saddle-horse racing and American trotting races (see Horse-Racing) in the sport of modern times. The element of danger doubtless gave pleasurable excitement to chariot racing and kept alive its association with incidents familiar in war; just as at a later period, when the institution of chivalry had given the armed knight on horseback a conspicuous place in medieval warfare, the tournament became the most popular sport of the aristocracy throughout Europe.
This element of danger cannot be said to enter usually into the enjoyment of driving at the present day. Though accidents occasionally happen, the pastime is practically unattended by serious risk; and the source of the pleasure it affords the driver must be sought in the skill it requires, combined with the love of the horse which is common to sportsmen, and of exercise of power. The art of driving as practised to-day for pleasure without profit, and without the excitement of racing, is of quite modern development. Oliver Cromwell, indeed, met with a mishap in Hyde Park while driving a team of four horses presented to him by the count of Oldenburg, which was the subject of more than one satirical allusion by contemporary royalist writers; but two things were needed before much enjoyment could be found in driving apart from utility. These were the invention of carriages on springs, and the construction of roads with smooth and solid surface. The former did not come into general use till near the end of the 18th century, and it was about the same period that the engineering skill of Thomas Telford and the invention of John London Macadam combined to provide the latter. The influence on driving of these two developments was soon apparent. Throughout the 18th century stage-coaches, ponderous unwieldy vehicles without springs, had toiled slowly over rough and deeply rutted tracks as a means of communication between different parts of Great Britain; but those who made use of them did so as a matter of necessity and not for enjoyment. But by the beginning of the 19th century the improvement in carriage-building and road-construction alike had greatly diminished the discomfort of travel; and interest in driving for its own sake grew so rapidly that in 1807 the first association of amateur coachmen was formed. This was the Bensington Driving Club, the forerunner of many aristocratic clubs for gentlemen interested in driving as a pastime.
In modern driving one, two or four horses are usually employed. When a greater number than four is put in harness, as in the case of the state equipages of royal personages on occasions of ceremony, the horses are not driven but are controlled by “postillions” mounted on the near-side horse of each pair. When two horses are used they may either be placed side by side, in “double harness,” which is the commoner mode of driving a pair of horses, or one following the other, in a “tandem.” Four horses, or “four-in-hand,” are harnessed in two pairs, one following the other, and called respectively the “leaders” and the “wheelers”—the same terms being used for the two horses of a tandem.
Though it is a less difficult accomplishment to drive a single horse than a tandem or four-in-hand, or even a pair, it nevertheless requires both knowledge and the skill that practice alone confers. The driver should have some knowledge of equine character, and complete familiarity with every part of the harness he uses, and with the purpose which each buckle or strap is intended to serve. The indefinable quality known in horsemanship as “good hands” is scarcely less desirable on the box-seat than in the saddle. It is often said to be unattainable by those who do not possess it by nature; but though this may be true to some extent, “good hands” are partly at least the result of learning the correct position for the arm and hand that holds the reins. The reins are held in the left hand, which should be kept at about the level of the lowest button of the driver’s waistcoat, and near the body though not pressed against it. The driving hand should never be reached forward more than a few inches, nor raised as high as the breast. The upper arm should lie loosely against the side, the forearm horizontal across the front of the body, forming a right angle or
