The various uses for which the horse is habitually employed require corresponding varieties in the make and shape of the animal. The dray horses of the London brewers are very handsome; but their beauty is of a different kind from that of the Newmarket racer. That which is a good quality in one kind of horse may be a defect in another. An animal, for instance, which is intended for the saddle ought to stand with his fore legs erect; if they slope backwards from shoulder to hoof the rider must be very cautious, for he has to do with a stumbler. A draught-horse, on the other hand, ought to lean a little forward over his fore feet when at rest. That portion of his own weight which brings down the ill-made saddle-horse on his knees, is by the draught-horse thrown against the collar, and helps him in his labour. Look at a team straining hard to drag a heavy wagon out of a rut or over some obstruction: they fling themselves forward, so as to be kept from falling only by the traces, just as you may see a man doing who tugs at a rope fastened to a canal-boat, or a truck. Again, though the hunter and the racer are both made for speed, they must each exhibit certain peculiarities of form adapted to the work they have respectively to do. The hunter requires great strength and elasticity in his forehand, to enable him to bear the shock with which he alights on the ground from a leap. In the racer, on the contrary, the principal power is wanted from behind, to propel the animal forward in his gallop; and the very lowness of the forehand may throw more weight in front, and cause the whole machine to be more easily and speedily moved. The hind-legs of the greyhound are longer than the fore-legs; the difference is still more remarkable in the hare, and it is seen in an extraordinary degree in the kangaroo, an animal whose running is a series of prodigious leaps. The celebrated Eclipse, who never was beaten, was remarkably low in front, his hind-quarters even rising above his fore ones. As we have mentioned the name of this unrivalled runner, we cannot do less than give some particulars of his history.
He was bred by the Duke of Cumberland, and sold at his death to Mr. Wildman, a sheep salesman, for seventy-five guineas. Colonel O’Kelly purchased a share of him from Wildman. In the spring of the following year, when the reputation of this wonderful animal was at its height, O’Kelly wished to become sole owner of him, and bought the remaining share for eleven hundred guineas.
O’Kelly, aware of his horse’s powers, backed him freely on his first race in 1769. This excited curiosity among sporting men; they thought the colonel must have had some extraordinary reason for betting largely on a horse that no one had ever heard of before, and that had not given any public proof of his powers. Some persons, accordingly, tried to watch one of his trials; which the owner, no doubt, wished to keep as secret as possible. They were a little too late on the ground; but they found an old woman, who gave them all the information they wanted. On their inquiring, whether she had seen a race, she replied, she could not tell whether it was a race or not, but she had just seen a horse with a white leg running away at a monstrous rate, and another horse, a great way behind, trying to run after him; but she was sure he would never catch the white-legged horse if he ran to the world’s end.
The first heat was easily won, when O’Kelly, observing that the rider had been pulling at Eclipse during the whole of the race, offered a wager that he would place the horses in the next heat (that is, that he would name the order in which they would be when the foremost reached the winning post). This seemed a thing so highly improbable that he immediately had bets to a large amount. Being called on to declare, he replied—“Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere!” The event justified his prediction; for all the others were distanced by Eclipse with the greatest ease (that is, he was at the winning post before they had reached another 240 yards behind it, called the distancing post), and thus, in the language of the turf, they had no place.
The pecuniary value of Eclipse and his progeny must have been something enormous. He was the sire of 354 winners, and these netted to their owners more than £160,000, exclusive of plates and cups. Ten years after he was withdrawn from the turf; O’Kelly was asked at what price he would sell him. At first he peremptorily refused to accept any price; but after some reflection, he said he would take £25,000, with an annuity of £500, besides certain privileges. The seeming extravagance of this sum excited considerable remark, but O’Kelly declared he had already cleared more than £25,000 by Eclipse, and that the animal was still young enough to earn double that sum.
From what we have said above, it appears that there are various standards of perfection for the horse’s form, and that there must be a certain vagueness in any general description which shall include them all. It is not a little remarkable that we are indebted to Terentius Varro, who wrote about the year 70 B.C., for a description of the horse which, in the opinion of so excellent a judge as Mr. Youatt, has scarcely been surpassed in modern times:—“We may prognosticate great things of a colt,” he says, “if, when running in the pastures, he is ambitious to get before his companions, and if, on coming to a river, he strives to be the first to plunge into it. His head should be small, his limbs clean and compact, his eyes bright and sparkling, his nostrils open and large, his ears placed near each other, his mane strong and full, his chest broad, his shoulders flat and sloping backwards, his loins broad and strong, his tail full and bushy, his legs straight and even, his knees broad and well knit, his hoofs hard and tough, and his veins large and swelling over all his body.”
The English thoroughbred horse, perhaps the finest animal of his kind in the world, derives his descent almost wholly from the Arab and the Barb. Instead of giving a prosaic description of his points, which those who desire it may find in books of a more technical character than ours: we will put him bodily before the reader in Barry Cornwall’s vigorous lines:—
THE BLOOD HORSE.
“Gamarra is a noble steed;
Strong, black, and of the desert breed;