BLOOD SIRES. 191 



CHAPTER XI. 



BLOOD SIRES. 



" The Knight a dappled grey bestrode, 

 Whose haughty crest and eye of fire 

 Told of his tameless Eastern sire." 



" < |pHE young clovers were never so good as they 

 U are this year," was the juicy lure which once 

 caught our eye, in a Sheet Calendar advertisement, 

 towards the close of an especially frigid January. It 

 smacked so strongly of the quaint stud-literature of 

 the olden time, when Eclipse was in his glory at the 

 Clayhill Farm, near Epsom, and less ambitious co- 

 temporaries had visitors carefully consigned to them, 

 from the " The Pyed Horse, near Chairing Cross/' 

 that we could not refrain from taking a copious sur- 

 vey of those musty paddock records. How strangely 

 their laboured verbosity and facetiousness contrasted 

 with the modest and meagre recitals of the present 

 day " The Hero, at Danebury, ten so vs./' to wit ! 

 To judge from their tenour, our forefathers must have 

 thought differently to ourselves on some horse points, 

 or else it would hardly be urged in a sire's favour 

 that he "was a compleat strong horse, and well 

 whited/' or that he was " remarkably upright in the 

 pasterns/' The blendings of praise and apology are 

 also wonderfully unique. Each owner seemed to feel 

 that, if there was a blot on his favourite's fame, then 

 or never was the time to explain it away. Petru- 

 chio's last defeat, for instance, is softened down by a 



