182 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1773- 



gentleman would run against him ; and the third, 

 begun in 1800, was concluded in 1830 by the inter- 

 vention of grim Death himself. It is well known how 

 His Eoyal Highness, before he withdrew — mightily and 

 not perhaps unjustly incensed — in 1791 from New- 

 market, if not entirely from the Turf, had indulged in 

 high jinks at ' head-quarters ' ; how he would ' post ' 

 thither in queer fashion, himself riding the near leader 

 and the illustrious Mr. C. J. Fox (the statesman and 

 orator) riding the near wheeler of the four horses that 

 drew the chaise, with the two ' jolly post-boys ' enjoy- 

 ing the unwonted luxury of ' going inside,' and reflect- 

 ing, no doubt, that it is ' a mad world, my masters ' ; 

 how he once ' shoved Orleans into the pond ' in front 

 of the palace at Newmarket, to the unspeakable indig- 

 nation of old ' Egalite,' who had been intently ob- 

 serving the gold-fish in the tank, and whom it took 

 twenty- four hours of envoy-sending, apologising, and 

 diplomatic parleying to pacify ; how, with the best 

 and kindest and most polite intentions in the world, 

 when the Bibury Club Meeting was held at Burford, 

 he would call on his old tutor at Christ Church, 

 Oxford, in full 'Bibury Club costume,' to the conster- 

 nation of the worthy divine who ruled * the House ' ; 

 and how, at a very early age, in the Second Spring 

 Meeting of 1784, when he was barely twenty-two, he 

 had an opportunity of studying the difference between 

 professional and unprofessional riding, when, weight 

 and distance the same in both cases, his horse Hermit 



