* ' Martingale. " 327 



note of every bird, and the genus of every wild flower 

 that grew on its banks and glades. He liked to wander 

 away from Doncaster " when the mavis and the merle 

 were singing," and regardless of the prosaic days in 

 which his lot was cast, take his dinner with him and 

 " have a word with the woods." Weaving an old legend 

 into shape pleased him best. The deserted hut, where 

 a poacher had lived and died, a very lord of the soil 

 to the last, seemed to conjure up in his mind a net- 

 work of dark romance ; and Sherwood Forest, and 

 Merrie Barnsdale were themes which never palled. 



His racing writings were very numerous ; but as 

 he rarely left Doncaster, he was too often compelled 

 to take his descriptions second-hand. In dealing 

 with current racing topics he was far too discursive, 

 and pitched his key note so high, that matter of 

 fact readers grumbled, that after wandering through 

 such a labyrinth of fine words, they could hardly 

 find one grain of fact. His strength as a turf writer 

 lay in his " Turf Characters," and his recollections 

 of the Doncaster past. If he was not in the Gazette 

 office, hard at work at his beautifully small manu- 

 script, with his voluminous velvet cap on his head, 

 or in a chancel seat in the old church, or in Edling- 

 ton or Wheatley, or Sprotborough Woods, Doncas- 

 ter Moor was a sure find for him, and he was pretty 

 certain to be talking to himself. Seeing those races, 

 and the gallops as well, was his delight, and he gene- 

 rally stationed himself, from old usage, on the St. Leger 

 day somewhere between the Red House and the Hill, 

 to catch the first symptoms of the " pace complaint." 

 St. Leger after St. Leger was to him a scene he cduld 

 unfold with a master's hand. Every little incident from 

 the Duke of Hamilton's day had been treasured and 

 invested with significance ; and as John Jackson, the 

 celebrated jockey, lodged with him for a series of years, 

 he had an opportunity of " posting himself up" during 

 the week, which he took care to use to the full, 



