GEORGE IV. 115 



Highness, and you'll find him to be the sweetest goer 

 you ever mounted," was invariably responded to. 

 Hunting, to a man who stood not very much short of 

 six feet, and latterly weighed more than 23st., was of 

 course out of the question ; but when he was able to 

 don his blue coat with gilt buttons, and top-boots, and 

 buckskins, after the fashion of the bucks of those 

 days, he cared very little what Milton or anyone else 

 chose to ask for a clever hack. It used to be a saying 

 of the period in Brighton, that, heavy as he was, "he 

 rode so well that he never soiled his nankeens/" but 

 the exact meaning of the remark is too deep for us. 

 He was more fortunate than the late Mr. Thornhill, 

 who was as nearly as possible his weight, and 

 gave up riding on the heath at Newmarket, " not 

 because I can't get a horse to carry me, but because 

 / can't get a horse to stand still under me ;" as his 

 hacks, Tiger and Tobacco-Stopper, carried him to 

 perfection. Of the former, when he was at last told 

 that his legs were so unsafe, through age, that he 

 was certain to come down with him, he remarked 

 " No, no! Tiger scorns to fall down " while the latter 

 was, strange to say, the lightest horse below the knee 

 in the whole of his stud. 



Asparagus and Curricle did all that pluck and 

 muscle could do under his weight, when he hunted 

 with Mr. Villebois in Hampshire; and the Princess 

 Feathers are still preserved on the buttons of the 

 H.H. When he gave up Kempshot Park, the Duke 

 of Richmond's hounds were purchased and installed 

 in the Ascot kennels, and the yellow-pied Minos 

 was its most favoured occupant. Still race-horses 

 and the Hampton Court paddocks lay nearest to his 

 heart. Arabs used to be perpetually arriving there 

 from Eastern donors, and one Bassora sent him a 

 inare and sire of the CEil Nugdy breed, with a cer- 

 tificate that the blood had b3en preserved stainless 

 for 300 years. Jack llatford used to declare, on his 



