1773 THE LORDS 43 



anecdotes.' Of him it is related that he uncarted a 

 blind stag for his friends to hunt ; that he took the 

 town-crier's bell and perambulated the High Street 

 at Newmarket, shouting, ' Oh yes ! oh yes ! Who 

 wants to buy a horse that can walk five miles an 

 hour, trot eighteen, and gallop twenty ? ' and, when 

 some unsophisticated hearer among the collected 

 crowd cried eagerly, ' I do ! ' replied demurely, ' Then 

 I'll let you know when I come across one ; ' and that 

 he undertook for a wager to find a man who would 

 eat a live cat. It is only fair to add that he always 

 denied the truth of this disgusting story ; but it 

 appears in certain newspapers at or near the time, 

 with the circumstantial information that he actually 

 won the wager, and that the worse than cannibal who 

 enabled him to win it was ' a Harpenden man.' This 

 Lord Barrymore ran in 1788 (when he was only nine- 

 teen years of age) Feenow (purchased from Dr. John- 

 son's young friend, Sir J. Lade), by Tandem, for the 

 Derby. That the young lord, for all his wildness, 

 had his good points we know from Horace Walpole 

 (not too well-disposed towards members of the Jockey 

 Club, or towards any kind of sportsmen), who tells us 

 that he was as clever and droll in the drawing-room 

 as he was wild and eccentric on the Turf, and that, 

 with the assistance of Delpini (a male opera dancer, 

 after whom a famous racehorse and sire of racehorses 

 was called), he would get up entertainments which 

 not only set society on a roar but were distinguished 



