FOURTH DUKE OF PORTLAND. 13 



ance that his young colts and fillies should be 

 made very tractable and quiet, and for this purpose 

 he insisted that they should be familiarised with, 

 and accustomed to, every object and every sound 

 that was likely to render them nervous and timid. ^ 

 The number of horses kept in training by his 

 Grace was always limited, as in the course of some 

 years he did not annually start more than three or 

 four animals. One good horse, Tiresias by Sooth- 

 sayer, he was so fortunate as to breed, and with 

 him won the Derby in 1819, beating Mr Crock- 

 ford's Sultan and Lord Kous's Euphrates (both 

 good horses) and twelve other starters. Tiresias 

 was a sound and powerful horse, and won nine 

 times as a three-year-old, and five times as a 

 four-year-old, over all distances. Next year he 

 was put to the stud, where he proved a most 

 unsuccessful stallion. So infatuated, however, 

 was his princely owner about him, that, in spite 



1 In his ' Silk and Scarlet ' Mr Henry Dixon (" The Druid ") 

 remarks : " Like all Lord Fitzwilliam's horses when Scaife trained 

 them. Mulatto was very badly broken. Clift, the jockey, used to 

 say of him, and in fact of every one of them, ' Here's a pretty brute! 

 I never get on one on 'em but I've a good chance of breaking my 

 neck ; no mouth, no nothing. I've all to make.' Welbeck, on the 

 contrary, was quite as remarkable for the height to which it carried 

 its breaking. The fourth Duke of Portland used to say that a horse 

 should never go on to a race-course till it could face anything. Hence, 

 in order to complete their education they were marched over and over 

 again past a drum and fife band, with a flag flying, in the park ; and 

 so many screws of powder were let off in the corn-bin that at last 

 they would hardly lift their heads out of the manger for a pistol 

 report." 



