278 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



equally faulty, but none the less widespread, phrase of " Gothic architecture " when 

 applied to buildings of a certain kind. Nor am I quite clear that it would mend 

 matters at all, even if it were remotely possible, to limit " thoroughbred " to pure 

 Arabians, such as Mr. Wilfrid Blunt patriotically imports. For I fear I have 

 already betrayed an opinion which was meant to be reserved for a judicial peroration 

 to the effect that the best horse ever bred, bar none, was the result of the cross 

 between the pure Arab and whatever definition may be given to the breed of horse 

 existing in England towards the end of the seventeenth century. This opinion 

 ought to have as a logical result the coining of an entirely unknown phrase for 

 every animal on the Turf during two centuries, a task which very much more 



experienced phrase- 

 mongers would not un- 

 naturally refuse. Let 

 it be granted then to 

 my modesty, if to no- 

 thing else, that in 

 future pages the word 

 "thoroughbred" will 

 be used in the sense in 

 which every racing man 

 now uses it, the sense 

 which began to be dis- 

 tinct about the time 

 when " half-breds " were 

 called " cocktails," and 

 were allowed special consideration if they competed against rivals of a better 

 pedigree. 



In gathering together, as far as is possible in these pages, the names of 

 both the horses and the owners which were famous in the eighteenth century, 

 I have been guided by two motives especially. Not merely is it necessary to 

 indicate the gradual progress of racing as such, by the most typical authenticated 

 facts, but it is also essential to the principle on which I have ventured to place this 

 work before my readers, that they should clearly understand, as far as surviving facts 

 can help them, the actual condition of affairs when deliberate breeding from 

 Eastern stock, whether Arabian, Barb, or Turk, was first continuously fashionable. 



Mr. O' Kelly's " Soldier" 

 by "Eclipse " (17/9). 



