THE HORSE IN ENGLAND TO BEGINNING OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 39 



search in vain in that epitome of the past and future which is Shakespeare, he has 

 something to say of racing, too, in " Cymbeline " : 



" .... I have heard of riding wagers 

 Where horses have been nimbler than the sands." 



But when a sport has reached the stage at which it can be satirised and caricatured, 

 there is some certainty that it has got a fairly deep hold upon its advocates. Bishop 

 Hall, for example, who was sixteen 

 when the sixteenth century died, 

 writes as follows about the turfites of 

 his day : 



" Tell me, thou gentle Trojan, dost thou 



prize 

 Thy brute beasts' worth by their dam's 



qualities ? 

 Sayest thou this Colt shall prove a swift-pac'd 



steed 



Only because a jennet did him breed ? 

 Or sayest thou this same horse shall win the 



prize 



Because his dame was swiftest Trunchefice, 

 Or Ruiicevall his syre, himself a Galloway?" 



I must confess that " Trunchefice " 



beats me, but the learned prelate 



may have had Roncesvalles in his 



mind when he wrote the second 



name, though the mention of that 



place is more suggestive of the Barb Sir Walter Hvngerford and his Hawk. 



than of that Irish stock which is 



usually signified by Galloway. Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, is another 



writer who seems to object to Racing at this time, and he goes even farther than 



the Duke of Newcastle in the next century. After expressing some toleration 



for the stately, if unproductive, joys of the manege, Lord Herbert writes : 



" I do not approve of riding of running horses, there being much cheating in 



that kind of exercises ; neither do I see why a brave man shou'd delight in a 



creature whose chief use is to help him to run away. I do not much 



like hunting horses " He further condemns unsparingly " dicing 



