Breeding of Hunters. 229 



but if you'll give me 900 guineas for the other two, I'll 

 make you a present of himr The purchaser jumped 

 at the offer ; and although he found that the gift-horse 

 for whom he ventured so much was a roarer and all 

 but worthless, the terms of the bargain estopped him 

 from complaining publicly, however much he might 

 tell his grief in private. Mr. Mat Milton was, after all, 

 one of the greatest originals that ever closed a horse 

 bargain ; and the American poet might with justice 

 be supposed to have had him in his eye, when he 

 wrote of a regular " Down Easter" — 



*' He'd kiss a queen till he raised a blister, 

 With his arm round her neck, and his old felt hat on ; 

 He'd address a king by the title of Mister, 

 And ask him the price of the throne that he sat on." 



We have hinted at the terms of his equestrian invi- 

 tation to the Prince Regent ; but he is said to have 

 been a man of deeds and not of words only to a noble 

 lord, who returned him a horse because he considered 

 it to be a roarer. When his lordship next came to his 

 stables, the subject was renewed pretty warmly. Mat 

 ironically asked him, after making four horses grunt 

 successively by a sudden blow of the fist, if that was 

 the roaring he meant, and wound up his discourse by 

 giving him a dig below the waistcoat, and an adjura- 

 tion of " Whyy you're grunting now — ha7ig it, yoiire a 

 roarer yourself — be out of the yard with you /" — which 

 caused him to fly swiftly. Mat used to prof ess to give 

 5/. to each hunting-groom, when they returned a horse 

 in good condition at the end of the season, but they 

 had sad work to " draw" him of it. 



The chief buyers of carriage horses at Howden Fair 

 are the Messrs. Collins, Wimbush, Gray, East, &c., 

 and the most paying colour is a brown or a ''Jersey 

 bay." This class of animal does not come there so 

 much from the county of Durham as formerly, but is 

 principally bred in the neighbourhood of Howden and 



