218 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



Revenge and Ctcsar both occur to mind 

 And Flying Jib went briskly as the wind ; 

 There's Jack of Hilton, too, and John-a-Nokes 

 Have often pleased but seldom grieved the folks. 

 Let me not pass Young Afarsk in silence o'er, 

 Though once he started only and no more ; 

 Misfortune checked him in his swift career 

 Or from competitors he'd nought to fear. 

 Fain would I now attempt the whole detail, 

 Hut well I know my numbers soon would fail : 

 With Temperance therefore I shall pass the rest 

 And briefly say that Stripling stood the test. 

 Here, should my muse presume to moralise, 

 What scope for deep reflection would arise ! 

 Might she not say that life is but a race. 

 And that 'tis finished in a little space ? 

 Thousands, no doubt, will wish one day to lie 

 As safe as Monk beneath an angry sky. 



The victory of Marske in 1754 is one that needs a greater emphasis than can be 

 given to it even by the name of that great sire, for the plate he won at Newmarket 

 had been presented by an organisation, then in its infancy, which was destined to 

 become the most famous, if not the most exclusive club in the world, and to attain a 

 position of authority which is unique in the annals of sport, and would no doubt have 

 been utterly impossible in any other country but its own. Whatever decadence may 

 be observed or predicted in our pastimes, we may at least congratulate ourselves 

 that such bodies of men as, for example, the Committee of the M.C.C., the 

 Henley Stewards, and the Jockey Club, have become the recognised repositories 

 of the best traditions in cricket, in rowing, and in the world of racing respectively. 

 What they have done for us in the important spheres in which they exercise 

 their influence, only a foreigner perhaps can adequately appreciate ; for by their 

 efforts the particular form of sport they love has been kept at their own high 

 standard not in England only, but wherever men care for sport at all. 



Sir Richard, first Earl Grosvenor, was perhaps the most interesting, both 

 from his antecedents and his own personality of all those early magnates 

 of the Turf who helped the Jockey Club so soon to attain its successful 

 position in the world of sport. 



It happens that his name and his estate have been of such importance 

 in the racing world from that day to this, that I make no further excuse for 

 closing this volume of early history by going back a little into those unexpected 



