BRITISH TURF. 393 



in your publication, as cruelty was no part of the 

 old gentleman's character.' 



'* Thus far my respectable correspondent, whose 

 opinion simply, situated and connected as he is, 

 must have considerable weight. Sir Charles Bun- 

 bury also assured me that he w^as inclined to sus- 

 pect the old anecdote of Mr. Frampton as a 

 fabrication. There is at present no other authority 

 for it, public or private, of which T am aware, than 

 No. 37 of the Adventurer, and Dr. Hawksworth 

 in all probability received it, as we do at this day, 

 merely upon public tradition. With respect to my 

 own sentiments or prejudices, excited by a view of 

 the lineaments of Frampton's face, let me say im- 

 partially, fronti nulla fides ; and on the same view 

 let me add that the observations or opinions of an 

 ignorant smith do not so well go to the proof of a 

 naturally cruel disposition in Frampton, as to that 

 of a fit of enthusiastic weakness in mvself, which 

 alone could urge me to the repetition of such a 

 tale. Farther, it may be fair to suspect the cruel 

 anecdote of the father of the turf and his horse 

 Dragon, as a pious fraud, invented by those who 

 might think it a great merit in a religious way to 

 cast a slander that would stick well upon the 

 unholy exercise of horse-racing. On the per con- 

 tra side (for I love to reason in all cases arith- 

 metically, and whenever I suspect the omission of 

 a fraction on either side, I am never satisfied with 



