FAMOUS HORSES 51 



superior he was to some amongst his contemporaries 

 that were almost universally accepted as really good 

 horses. Isonomy, in spite of the fact that his chief 

 performances were in handicaps, was rated as one of 

 the ten by numerous votes ; and in fact these nine 

 received most suffrage. Donovan and Isinglass had 

 not made their names at the time when this difficult 

 question was being discussed, or no doubt both would 

 have had pronounced admirers. 



It is absolutely impossible to form any trustworthy 

 estimate of the relative capacity of horses of the 

 present day and their remote predecessors. The late 

 Sir Francis Doyle and some other lovers of the Turf, 

 who wrote plausibly and well, have endeavoured to 

 prove that the modern thoroughbred has deteriorated 

 in stamina if not in speed, and that over the Beacon 

 Course the horses of the '8o's and '90's would have 

 had no chance against the stalwart racers of the first 

 half of the century ; but there is no real basis of 

 justification for this argument. Horses were formerly 

 trained to gallop the Beacon Course ; they are not so 

 trained now ; and as to the pace at which they went, 

 we have no knowledge. In all probability they took 

 a long while about it, but records as to time are, we 

 may be sure, altogether untrustworthy, considering for 

 how many years the preposterous fiction of a mile a 

 minute received credence. It is a perplexing business 

 to endeavour to sift out the truth about the capacity of 

 horses. Some writers are given to eulogising bygone 

 •days. The horses of their youth appear to them far 



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