310 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



Blank, the Duke of Grafton's Chigger by Slouch, Mr. Gott's Juba by Regulus, and 

 distancing Mr. O'Kelly's Caliban by Brilliant, and Mr. Bailey's Clanville. Two 

 days after he frightened all the other horses out of his race. He only raced for one 

 more year, yet he won eleven King's Plates, one of them at i2st., walked over for 

 seven, and beat his horses with great ease in the others. It was almost impossible 

 to get on other matches for him unless he was backed to distance his opponents, and 

 when O'Kelly completed his purchase by giving 1,100 guineas for the other half, it 

 was about the best bargain he ever made. The betting was often " ten to one on," 

 and only on one occasion was anything approaching to equality displayed, when he 

 beat Bucephalus at Newmarket in April, 1770, B.C., 8st. 7lbs., a race which nearly 

 broke the heart of this stout north-country son of Regulus. An even more creditable 

 performance was his victory at Guildford on the 23rd of August, four miles, the Sub- 

 scription Purse. He had distanced Mr. Wentworth's Tortoise and Sir Charles 

 Bunbury's Bellario (both aged) by half-way, and won as he liked. At the October 

 Meeting that year he made his last appearance on the Turf at Newmarket, beating 

 Sir Charles Bunbury's Corsica by Swiss, B.C., and after walking over the Round 

 Course for the King's Plate, i2st., he was taken out of training with an unbeaten 

 career. I can quite imagine that many owners gave a sigh of relief, and that many 

 more interesting years than 1769 and 1770 have been known in the history of 

 English racing. Nowadays we might consider it an unfortunate symptom if a 

 single animal stood head and shoulders above all his contemporaries. Certainly 

 the season of 1901 showed enough in-and-out running to satisfy anybody; and left 

 1902 in as pleasing a state of uncertainty as could possibly be desired. But in 

 the days when " O'Kelly's gang " are supposed to have fleeced every race-meeting, 

 one horse won everything, and it was almost impossible to get any profitable bets on 

 the result. This deserves remembering, for I have only reproduced sufficient of 

 Eclipses performances to fill in the portrait of one of the best horses ever seen, 

 by showing that his excellence was not only owing to the races he won, but even 

 more clearly to the astonishing ease with which he won them, and to the fact that 

 in addition to his undoubted speed and stride, he possessed sound wind, an ability to 

 carry heavy weight, and an endurance over long distances which could never be 

 thoroughly tested, for its limit was never reached. 



But O'Kelly's triumphs were far from over when Eclipse left the race-course. A 

 long and animated rivalry almost at once began between the Eclipse stock and the 

 Highflyer division, who swore by Herod blood, as may be seen in the book published 



