(j6 The Book of the Horse. 



Godolphin Arabian, and had evidently seen him, says : — " Whoever has seen him must remember 

 that his shoulders were deeper and lay farther into his back than any horse yet seen ; 

 behind his shoulders there was but a small space ; before, the muscles of his loin rose excessively 

 high, broad, and expanded, which were inserted into his quarters with greater strength and 

 power than any horse ever yet seen of his dimensions. It is not to be wondered at that the 

 excellence of this horse's shape was not in early times manifest to some men, considering the 

 plainness of his head and ears, the position of his fore-legs, and his stunted growth, occasioned 

 by want of food in the country where he was bred." " He was not used as a sire until 173 1, when 

 his first produce was Lath, out of Roxana, who was considered the best horse since Flying 

 Childers. After Lath, until his death in 1753, being then twenty-nine years old, the Godolphin 

 was the sire of a series of prodigies. That he was a Barb and not an Arabian I am convinced 

 more and more every time I contemplate his portrait. The name or breed assigned to foreign 

 horses by their importers is not of the smallest consequence. If a horse be purchased in Turkey 

 he is styled a Turk. Amongst us all southern horses are called Arabians. The Compton Barb 

 was more commonly called the Sedley Arabian, and Sir John William's Turk the Honeywood 

 Arabian." 



" The Darley Arabian got Flying Childers, and others less known to modern fame. He 

 had not the variety of mares that annually poured in upon the Godolphin Arabian ; indeed, 

 he covered very few excepting those belonging to the proprietor, Mr. Darley, but from these 

 sprung the largest and speediest race-horses ever known — Flying Childers and Eclipse, the 

 swiftest, beyond doubt, of all quadrupeds." 



'Flying Childers was a chestnut horse, with white upon his nose, and whited all-fours upon 

 his pasterns. He appears 15 hands high or upwards, and to have been of the short compact 

 form, his immense stride being furnished by the length of his back and loins, the former 

 appearing in every portrait of him of extraordinary length. He was foaled in 171 5 ! got by 

 the Darley Arabian out of Betty Lecdes. He was bred considerably in-and-in with a number 

 of Arabian and Barb blood. He never started but at Newmarket, and there beat all the best 

 horses of his time." 



The story of his running three miles si.Y furlongs and ninety-three yards in six minutes and 

 forty seconds, although often repeated, is now generally treated as a mistake. 



ECLIPSE.* 



" Echpse was a chestnut horse, about 15^ hands high, foaled in 1764, by Marske, a great- 

 grandson of the Darley Arabian." He was not trained until five years old. " When I first 

 saw him," says Lawrence, " he appeared in high health, of a robust constitution. His shoulder was 

 very thick, but extensive and well placed ; his hind-quarters appeared higher than his fore-hand ; 

 and it was said that no horse in his gallop ever threw his haunches with greater effect, his agility 

 and his stride being on a par. He stood over a deal of ground, and in that respect was the 

 opposite of Flying Childers — a short-backed, compact horse, whose reach lay in his lower limbs. 

 When viewed, fat as a stallion, there was a certain coarseness about him. Eclipse was never 

 beaten ; never had a whip flourished over him, or felt the rubbing of a spur — out-footing, 

 out-striding, and out-lasting every horse that started against him." 



The late Mr. Percival, a distinguished veterinary surgeon, writing on the same horse, says 



• There are doubts aliout the hei(;lit of Eclipse. A contemporary broail>ulK accdnip.inyiiij; an etching of Eclipse in racing 

 condition gives his height as 15 hands 2 inches, and equal to eighteen stone. 



