96 The Post and the Paddock. 



and he accordingly selected Sam to ride Dervise 

 for the Oatlands at the Ascot Meeting of the next 

 year. Taking one year with another His Majesty 

 had 20 seasons on the Turf, and won 313 races, 

 including I Derby, 30 King's Plates, and 10 Cups, 

 the value of which reached in all about 57,628 

 guineas. 



When his growing days were past, Sam was a trifle 

 over five feet six inches, and fully an inch taller than 

 his father, but considerably shorter in the legs and 

 arms than his elder brother, who had nearly an inch 

 the advantage of him in height. He was a large but 

 still a light-boned man, and at the best of times a very 

 bad waster. At eighteen, /st. 7lbs. was the very 

 lowest weight he could scale, and as he soon walked 

 Qst. 7lbs. in the winter, 8st. 4lbs. became his nominal 

 lowest weight. As may be imagined, the weary weeks 

 before Epsom, Doncaster, and Ascot, when the 

 foolishly low racing scale of that day invariably called 

 upon him to boil two pounds more off his lean frame, 

 were looked forward to with no very pleasurable feel- 

 ings. Will was so fond of exercise, that he walked by 

 Priam's side nearly the whole way to Epsom, while 

 Sam loved the saddle quite as much because it was 

 not walking as for its own sake, and used to delay 

 going into physic, and putting on the sweaters, till so 

 near the day that he invariably found himself sadly 

 feverish when the task was done. Many were the ex- 

 hortations which Will Chifney used to give Robinson 

 and Harry Edwards (whom we can see sitting as of 

 yore, after half his walk was done ; smoking on a 

 corn-bin, and enveloped in horse-cloths), to take plenty 

 of exercise in the winter, and to act neither winter 

 nor summer as " that lazy Sam does." Both of them 

 were large-boned men, who stood in ample need of 

 such advice ; but with all his exertions, the weeks 

 before the Craven Meeting of 1837 were so co ^> tnat 

 Robinson could only just ride 8st. 7lbs., and Sam gave 



