A GREAT MATCH 



owing to recent rains, and the horse did not show 

 to advantage in heavy going. He easily mastered 

 his conspicuous opponents, but an outsider. Hotspur, 

 stuck to him with desperate tenacity, and at one 

 moment it appeared as if the unbeaten champion 

 would at last have to own defeat. Marlow 

 struck him twice, and in the last few strides he 

 shook off his game antagonist and won by a bare 

 half length. The St. Leger he won easily, and at 

 Ascot in the following year he carried off the 

 Emperor of Russia's Plate by no less than eight 

 lengths. At the Royal meeting he was the cynosure 

 of all eyes. His condition was absolutely dazzling. 

 An admiring trainer from Newmarket was heard 

 to say, " He looks like a picture of a race-horse, 

 coloured and varnished." But the sensational 

 period of his career was now approaching. His 

 title to pre-eminence was to be challenged by a 

 younger rival, who had become the idol of all 

 Yorkshire, and whose history is one of the most 

 interesting in the records of the Turf. 



In 1847 a mare by Mulatto foaled a dark brown 

 colt with a white hind foot. He was a grandson 

 of Blacklock from the union of his sire Voltaire 

 with Martha Lynn, her dam Leda by Filho-da- 

 Puta. The pedigree of this colt shows the name 

 of Eclipse in no less than fifteen of its thirty-two 

 quarterings, the name of Herod in eighteen, and 

 Matchem in eleven, thus exhibiting more close in- 

 breeding to these distinguished old sires than any 

 animal of his date. Curiously enough, the Voltaire 

 colts were not highly valued. They were generally 

 heavy necked and fleshy, and when Hill, Lord Zet- 

 land's trainer, marked the yearling at the Doncaster 



49 D 



