MR. JOHN MYTTON. 6:^ 



evident he was anxious to have good ones from the prices he paid ; 

 but he bought several of that sort after their day had gone by ; for 

 example, Comte d'Artois, Banker, Longwaist, &e. He had, however, 

 several good winners, old Euphrates at their head, and Whittington, 

 Oswestry and Halston were esteemed very " smart " horses in the 

 racing world. Indeed, it is believed that in some hands they would 

 have proved trump cards. As for himself as a racing man he was 

 too severe upon his horses : they rarely came out fresh after Chester 

 and one or two other places. He seldom backed his horses to any 

 serious amount, generally not at all. His stables were upon 

 Delamere Forest, in Cheshire ; his home-stud groom, Tinkler, was a. 

 careful nurser of young racing stock, but do what he would, ^Nlr. 

 Mytton was never able to breed a good racehorse. 



It would be out of place to discuss here Mr. Mytton's conduct 

 towards his wives, of whom the second fared no better than the first. 

 His brutality was inexcusable, and the most charitable supposition is 

 that it was the result of a morbid insanity. P^or the last twelve 

 years of his life it may safely be stated that he was never sober. His 

 daily quantum of port wine was from four to six bottles ; but even in 

 spite of this excess he would probably have lived far longer than he 

 did had he not in an evil hom* discarded port for brandy. Even his 

 adamantine constitution, " perhaps the hardiest ever bestowed upon 

 man," as " Nimrod " says, was not proof against that. He went from 

 bad to worse, till in the year 1830 the world heard without surprise 

 that "it was all up with Jack ^Mytton." Everything that could be 

 sold was sold, and he retired to Calais with just a small pittance 

 sufficient to keep body and soul together. There he completed the 

 wreck of his magnificent physique by drinking brandy till he really 

 was a raving lunatic. On partially recovering his senses, he came 

 over to England, when he was arrested and thrown into the King's 

 Bench Prison, beyond the gates of which he was destined never to 

 pass alive. For there he died in misery and squalor in the thirty- 

 eighth year of his age. And so ended the mournfullest, the maddest, 

 the most utterly wasted career of which the annals of the turf contain 

 any record. 



LOED GEORGE BENTINCK. 



THE fascination which Lord George Bentinck exercised over his 

 contemporaries has not yet wholly faded away, and his name 

 still awakens feelings of admiration which probably succeeding 

 generations will find it difiicult to understand. In his day he was 

 regarded with a species of awe by sportsmen of all grades, as a superior 

 being, a born king of men, whose autocratic will no one had the 

 temerity to dispute. The present generation only knows him through 

 the traditions of its elders; but it is impossible, even now, to hear 



