OF FARRIERY. 



415 



ponsibility. In the Prince's service, the 

 orders seem generally to have been discre- 

 tionary ; and the discretion appears to have 

 been lodged with the gentleman who managed 

 His Royal Iligliness's racing concerns and 

 the jockey, jointly. A difference of opinion 

 between the two, and the firm adherence of 

 each to his own judgment, seem to have bred 

 much confusion of management ; unless, in- 

 deed, we allow that the inconvenience was, 

 in a great degree, obviated by the firmness 

 and practical experience of Chifney. 



This difference of opinion is particularly 

 striking in respect to the Horse Escape, which 

 the Prince, the manager, and the train-groom, 

 always valued for his stoutness or ffame ; 

 whilst the jockey, who so often rode him, ap- 

 pears thoroughly convinced that speed was 

 his best. 



From a detailed account of Esca^s trials 

 and public races, he clearly appear^To have 

 been a most uncertain runner ; to have pos- 

 sessed capital speed, and even great powers 

 of continuance, when well to run ; but to be 

 materially affected by very slight and very 

 usual errors in training ; to be subject to have 

 the edge of his speed totally blunted by a few 

 degrees of over work, and his powers, both of 

 speed and continuance, paralyzed and rendered 

 inert, by want of due exercise, or by errors in 

 feeding, more particularly near the time of his 

 running:. There also most assuredly is — and 

 they who do not practically know, have free 

 liberty to laugh at the idea ; a perfect analogy 

 of nervous sensibility, of irritability, and vacil- 

 lation of fibre, between tne human animal and 

 race-horse ; a sharer, at least, in the labours 

 and anxieties, if unfortunately not in the pro- 

 fits and satisfactions, of his master. As men 

 diHer, so do Horses ; and the warm tempered, 



free, unequal, and nervous Escape, ought to 

 have had for his trainer and manaofer, as well 

 as his jockey, that man, who, if we may judge 

 by his account of himself, seems, in >-o many 

 respects, an exact counterpart of the Horse. 

 Hard-headed and indiscriminating grooms of 

 the common type, could entertain no appre- 

 hension of the delicacy, vigilance, and care, 

 with which such an animal required to be 

 treated. Of this Chifney has not failed full 

 often to remind his reader. 



Escape beat the best Horses in England, 

 over the course, or four miles, and v\as him- 

 self beaten on the same course by middling 

 Horses. He beat Nimble, one of the speediest 

 Horses of his day, across the Flat, a distance 

 of a mile and a quarter ; and was beaten on 

 the same course, in a private trial, by Don 

 Quixote, and Lance, Horses, we believe, of 

 inferior speed to Nimble, several lengths before 

 half the course was ran, and very easily, and 

 a great way at the end ; yet, in another trial, 

 two miles over Epsom, he beat Baronet and 

 Pegasus, giving the former, a Horse of his own 

 year, and a winning racer, the enormous weight 

 of twenty pounds ; which Horse, Baronet, 

 nevertheless beat him, at the same weight 

 and distance, a few days after, at Ascot. 

 Chifney did not ride Escape either in the 

 trial or the race. 



It may be asserted, that Chifney was insin- 

 cere in his pretended opinion that speed was 

 the best of Escape ; and that, inwardly know- 

 ing the contrary, he had waited with him, on 

 I he first day's race, on purpose to get him 

 beat ; but a mere opinion of a man's inten- 

 tions, however universal it may be, can never 

 form a just ground of crimination. Open and 

 explicit as he has been in his publication, and 

 letting out every thing which came upper- 



