202 RACING. 



was a consummate judge of hounds and horses, and of every- 

 thing connected with what Mr. Dehne Radcliffe calls * the noble 

 science of fox-hunting.' Mr, Charles James Apperley's or 

 'Nimrod's' books, such as 'Remarks on the Condition of Hun- 

 ters, the Choice of Horses and their Management ' (London, 

 1831); '■ Northern Tours, a Description of the principal Hunts 

 in Scotland and the North of England ' (London, 1838); 'The 

 Life of a Sportsman' (London, 1842), possess a value from which 

 time can subtract little : but they have reference solely to the 

 hunting-field. * Nimrod ' was also a fairly good coachman and 

 judge of driving, and had at any rate a long and practical ac- 

 quaintance with the mails and stage-coaches running upon the 

 great high roads which led to London. But when it came to 

 writing about horse-racing, he had to acquire most of his infor- 

 mation at second-hand. As a gentleman jockey he occasionally 

 put in a not discreditable appearance at Hunt meetings, but the 

 frequenters of Newmarket hardly knew him by sight, and he 

 had at best but scanty knowledge of the pedigrees and perform- 

 ances of famous racehorses. The results of his unfamiliarity 

 with the Turf may be seen in swarms of inaccuracies which 

 deface the third and least valuable of his * Quarterly Review ' 

 essays. To begin with, it owes many of its best passages 

 to acknowledged and unacknowledged plagiarisms. In addi- 

 tion to long quotations from ' Holcroft's Memoirs,' for which 

 credit is given to that jockey-dramatist, 'Nimrod' borrowed 

 largely from Taplin's 'Sporting Dictionary,' published in 1803, 

 while his sketch of Colonel Mellish, said by 'The Druid' to be 

 the best thing in his Turf essay, was mainly taken from one of 

 Pierce Egan's books. Perhaps, however, the most ridiculous 

 of * Nimrod's ' many mistakes will be found in the following 

 passage : — 



After quitting Newmarket, his late Majesty (George IV.) was a 

 great supporter of country races, sending his horses to run heats for 

 plates ; and he particularly patronised the meetings at Brighton 

 and Lewes, which acquired high repute. But Bibury was his 

 favourite raceground, where, diverting himself of the shackles of 



