Appendix I 



'Tis money, they say, makes the mare to go kind ; 



The proverb has vouch'd for this time out of mind ; 



But though of this truth you admit the full force, 



It may not hold so good of every horse. 



If it did, Ellis Charles need not bustle and hug, 



By name, not by nature, his favourite Slug.^ 



Yet Slug as he is — the whole of this chase 



Charles ne'er could have seen, had he gone a snail's pace. 



Old Gradus,2 whose fretting and fuming at first 



Disqualify strangely for such a tight burst, 



Ere to Tilton arrived, ceased to pull and to crave, 



And though fresh/j-/^ at Stretton, he stepp'd 2i pas gravel 



Where, in turning him over a cramp kind of place, 



He overturn'd George, whom he threw on his face ; 



And on foot to walk home it had sure been his fate, 



But that soon he was caught, and tied up to a gate. 



Near Wigston occurr'd a most singular joke, 

 Captain Miller averr'd that his leg he had broke, — 

 And bemoan'd, in most piteous expressions, how hard, 

 By so cruel a fracture, to have his sport marr'd. 

 In quizzing his friends he felt little remorse. 

 To finesse the complete doing up of his horse. 

 Had he told a long story of losing a shoe. 

 Or of laming his horse, he very well knew 

 That the Leicestershire creed out this truism worms, 

 "Lost shoes and dead beat are synonymous terms." 

 So a horse must here learn, whatever he does. 

 To die game — as at Tyburn — and " die in his shoes." 

 Bethel Cox, and Tom Smith, Messieurs Bennett and 



Hawke, 

 Their nags all contrived to reduce to a walk. 



1 Mr. Charles Ellis's horse. ^ Mr. George Ellis's horse. 



