" ECLIPSE " AND THE MODERN THOROUGHBRED. 3 1 1 



by their apostle, Mr. T. H. Morland, in 1810. He would hear of nothing else, and 

 seemed to think that Eclipse only existed to provide mares for Herod's sons. When 

 the mourning population round Cannons were eating funeral cakes and ale in 1789 

 O'Kelly's poet flung one last defiance at Mr. Tattersall. 



" True, o'er the tomb in which this favourite lies 

 No vaunting boast appears of lineage good ; 

 Yet the Turf Register's bright page defies 

 The race of Herod to show better blood." 



It was fifteen years before the good horse died that the first of his get ran in public, 

 the grey colt Horizon (out of Clio by Young Cade], who won 390 guineas at Abing- 

 don in 1774 when two years old. In twenty-three years 344 winners, of whom he 

 was the sire, won ,158,047, " an enormous sum for those cautious days," as " The 

 Druid " says in a passage which is usually misprinted to bring the figures up to half 

 a million. In the former sum a few victories by PotSos, Empress, Young Eclipse, 

 General, Dungannon, Gunpowder, and Meteor (between 1779 and 1789) are not in- 

 cluded ; and it should be added that O'Kelly reckoned his profits from the stud fees 

 at ,25,000, which is probably under the mark. 



Eclipse first stood as a stallion at Clay Hill, near Epsom, at 50 guineas. In 1788 he 

 was removed to Cannons in a two-horse van with the groom inside, which is probably 

 the first instance of such a careful transit. He died a year afterwards. He was the 

 sire of three Derby winners, Young Eclipse (1781), Saltram (1783), and Serjeant 

 (1784), and of Annette, winner of the Oaks in 1787. His blood was handed down 

 chiefly through his sons PotSos, King Fergus, Joe Andreius, Mercury, and Alexander ; 

 and modern thoroughbreds can trace their debt to him in the pedigrees of Whiskey, 

 Gohanna, Tramp, Waxy, Orville, Whalebone, Whisker, Blacklock, Touchstone, Hark- 

 away, Newminster, Stockwell, and Wcatherbit. 



Good judges have risked the assertion that PotSos was the best horse of the 

 eighteenth century, and Mr. Joseph Osborne has pointed out that if the prints of him 

 are correct, his shape was almost exactly reproduced in Birdcatcher and in Ki>ig- 

 wood, who has fine strains of him. He was a chestnut with some white on his face, 

 bred by Lord Abingdon in 1773 out of Sportmistress, tracing back to Mr. Thwaites' 

 famous dun mare by the Ancaster Turk ; and he was inbred to the Darley Arabian, 

 besides having two strains of the Godolphin and four of the Byerly Turk. Between 

 1776 and 1783 he won thirty-five out of forty-six races, most of which were over the 

 4 miles i furlong and 143 yards of the Beacon Course, and the first meeting at 



