viti PREFACE. 



mainly accounts for the compilation of these volumes. 

 Whether the subject is worth the pains its production 

 incurred remains to be seen. It is a (very) plain un- 

 varnished tale, told by a sportsman, for sportsmen, who 

 has endeavoured throughout the work to faithfully 

 depict scenes of bygone days in Newmarket by re- 

 producing as closely as possible the characteristics and 

 incidents of those times as they were then portrayed. 



The same course, but in a more marked degree, 

 has been observed in compiling the Annals of the 

 Turf " Veracity is their only ornament " — to quote 

 the words of a celebrated writer ; " but it is an orna- 

 ment beyond all others in historical anecdotes." The 

 Annals are often crude, and sometimes may be found 

 unpalatable — replete with bad spelling, shocking 

 grammar, and wretched diction. If we want elegant 

 orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, and all 

 the flowers of rhetoric, these will be found abounding 

 in the " Histories of the British Turf from the Earliest 

 Times to the Present Day," by James Christie Whyte 

 (2 vols., London, 1840), and by James Rice (2 vols., 

 London, 1879) ; but, unfortunately, the rhetoric seems 

 to have crowded out the historical information given 

 in our Annals from the earliest times to the end of the 

 sixteenth century ; the seventeenth century is but little 

 better off; the eighteenth century is no more than a 

 poor and imperfect summary of the Racing Calendars ; 

 and from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 



