CHAPTER XI. 



MATCHEM, HEROD, AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. RECORDS AND COMPARISONS. 



Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona. 



T N the year after Eclipse was foaled, Regulus, the undefeated bay son of the 

 -*- Godolphin Arabian, followed his famous sire, and died at Low Garterly at the ripe 

 age of twenty-six. Before that the Cullen Arabian had paid the debt of nature, too, 

 and the Turf had lost for ever the services of such famous stallions as Babraham, 

 Dormouse, Snip, Bolton Star/ing, Cade, Crab, Partner, and Flying Ckilders, who was 

 buried at Chatsworth, where Basto had been laid before him, in 1741. In 1764 

 Little Prince was still alive at twenty-one, Snap was only fourteen, Marske had 

 another fifteen years to live, and Herod sixteen. Matchem, the longest-lived of them 

 all, was then sixteen years old, and was not to die till he had reached the great age 

 of thirty-three. Bay Malton was a four-year old and Goldfinder was a foal. The 

 period, in fact, was as critical in the story of the thoroughbred horse as it was 

 interesting and brilliant in the development of society. I have indicated something 

 of the latter, and it is time that I should show the importance of the former, both in 

 relation to the early breeders we met in my first chapters and in connection with the 

 present condition of things on the Turf at the beginning of the twentieth century. 



It is of very little consequence what the aboriginal horse was which Csesar's 

 legions found drawn up against them as the first Yeomanry of Kent. Whether 

 the creature was brought here by Celts or Germans as a purely northern product 

 or as an offshoot of that mixed breeding which undoubtedly resulted from Hannibal's 

 incursions into Spain and Gaul and Italy, and from other great migrations, it is 

 certain that the men who invaded this country under the banner of the White 

 Horse attached a certain value to the animal beyond that of the mere " totem." 

 The victories of their descendants in later centuries were celebrated by the 

 carving of the horse in an uncouth and conventional form upon such green 

 expanses as the Berkshire Downs, near Wantage, and elsewhere ; and we have seen 



