i68 Silk and Scarlet. 



as he came up the cords, he was, like his son Mel- 

 bourne, remarkably fast. Old trainers all agree in 

 speaking of him as a golden yellow bay, " and as 

 splendid a horse as ever was seen." In a lucky hour 

 he was crossed with a Cervantes mare, and Melbourne, 

 the greatest hero of all the Comiad, was the produce. 

 Mr. Watts was always an enthusiast for Cervantes, 

 who was a horse of great symmetry, and a fine filly 

 getter ; and hence his mare Nitocris was Melbourne's 

 first love. Their filly foal was not a bad one to look 

 at, but her knees failed her early in John Day's 

 stable. 



Melbourne ^^ ^^^ ^^ sight of Melbourne's knees, 

 a point in which many of his stock are 

 deficient, that made Mr. Sidney Herbert decline him, 

 when he was ofi"ered to him along with two other 

 Humphrey Clinker yearlings at Carnaby, in the 

 August of '35. He gave 250 guineas a-piece for his 

 companions, which belonged to Mr. Robinson senior, 

 and as the son considered that his own colt was as 

 good as either, and declined to take a halfpenny less, 

 he kept him, and became his own trainer — first at 

 Hambleton, and then in a field near his farm. Hes- 

 seltine also had him, and then Job Marson for six 

 weeks at Beverley ; and what with diabetes, and such 

 a vagrant education, it is only a miracle that he per- 

 formed so well. He was desperately knuckle-knee'd 

 from a foal, and few horses were ever seen with so 

 thin a crest, or such length from the shoulder point to 

 the hip. A fall from Escalade at the Cawston Pad- 

 docks was fatal to him, and it was all they could do 

 after several weeks of care to coax him the three 

 miles to the station. When we saw him in September, 

 he was wasted to a shadow, his gaunt dusty neck 

 seemed a rood long, and he had a painful stringhalt 

 to boot. Speaking out of the fulness of his two 

 seasons' experience of him, Dick Stockdale assured us 

 that " he was always a most vulgar uncultivated 



