The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2) / Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field

by William Taplin

PACE

—is an expression to signify the motion, or progressive action, of a horse, as well as one of the human species. When speaking of a man's pace, it is usual to say, he walks, he runs, or he goes a good pace; which becomes applicable to either, meaning, that he is an expeditious WALKER, a fleet RUNNER, or perhaps both. A horse has a great variety of PACES, as a walk, trot, amble, canter, gallop, rating-gallop, and at speed; some of which many horses have in great perfection, and are exceedingly deficient in others; as for instance, a horse shall be a most excellent TROTTER, who happens to be a shuffling, execrable WALKER; he shall be a gay, airy, light figure in a CANTER, and wonderfully deceptive in speed. Good GALLOPERS are very frequently bad TROTTERS; and perfection is very difficult to obtain.

Some years after the death of that famous horse Eclipse, which happened on the 27th of February, 1789, Mr. Charles Vial De Sainbel, Professor of the Veterinary College, published a work, to prove the unprecedented speed, and astonishing powers, of Eclipse, proceeded from the peculiarity of his construction. The work was embellished with ANATOMICAL, GEOMETRICAL, and MECHANICAL drawings, to establish and confirm an opinion, that the motion of the horse became proportionally accelerated, by the precise proportions of the subject geometrically described. The work itself was elaborate, sublime, and so remotely abstruse, that its contents were very superior to common comprehension; and as it communicated but trifling information, (and that founded upon conjecture,) it established no satisfactory data to engage public attention. Whatever was advanced upon the supposed effects of the geometrical proportions of Eclipse, would but ill apply to the action of the species in general; it being a fact well ascertained by those who are the most practically concerned, and personally interested, that ill-shaped horses of equal blood frequently exceed those of the fairest proportions; and that horses inferior in SIZE shall prove superior in SPEED.