Jem Mace was now on the pinnacle of success, and as—
“Envy doth merit as its shade pursue,
And by the shadow prove the substance true,”
so the newly fledged Champion was carped at, criticised, challenged, and unfavourably compared with all sorts and sizes of preceding and even contemporary heroes of the Ring. As to the unconquered little Champion, who had, after his great battle with John Heenan, in April, 1860, finally bid farewell to the fistic stage, he had left no immediate successor; so “the world seemed left” for Jem Mace “to bustle in,” and the question of the cynical Cassius was for a time unanswered—
“When went there by an age since the great flood,
But we were famed with more than with one man?
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walks encompassed but one man?”
“Time and the hour,” however, never fail to bring “the man,” and in these latter days of the Ring he came, in the person of Tom King, whose first appearance in November, 1860, and subsequent career, will form the subject of the concluding chapter of our history.
The form displayed by King in his first two battles, although neither of his opponents stood high in the pugilistic roll, was thought to give promise that the belt might again revert to a Champion of the traditional 12-stone calibre and stature.