ut it was the fate of the
finest racehorse ever foaled to live before the Derby was founded, and
before he could race another horse worthy to pass the starting post with
him. Pownall, in his _History of Epsom_, has a pleasant passage
extolling Eclipse's merits. He writes in 1825: he has studied, he tells
us, Lawrence's _History of the Horse_ and Bingley's _British
Quadrupeds_, and this is the result:--

"Eclipse was withheld from the course till he was five years of age, and
was first tried at Epsom. He had considerable length of waist, and stood
over a large space of ground, in which particular he was an opposite
form to the flying Childers, a short backed, compact horse, whose reach
lay in his lower limbs; but, from the shape of his body, we are inclined
to believe that Eclipse would have beaten Childers in a race over a mile
course with equal weights. He once ran four miles in eight minutes,
carrying twelve stone, and with this weight Eclipse won eleven King's
plates.[A] He was never beaten, never had a whip flourished over him, or
felt the tickling of a spur; nor was he ever for a moment distressed by
the speed or rate of a competitor; out-footing, out-striding, and
out-lasting (says Mr. Lawrence) every horse which started against him."

Eclipse, like Homer, had many birthplaces. Mr. Theodore Cook, who has
written authoritatively of him where others have guessed or accepted
tradition, has been informed of more than seven; and, in collecting
details of relics of the great horse, he has been supplied with evidence
that Eclipse possessed no fewer than six "undoubted" skeletons, nine
"authentic" feet, sufficient "genuine" hair to have stuffed the largest
armchair in Newmarket, and "certified" portions of skin which would
easily have carpeted the yard at Tattersall's. There never was such an
omnipresent animal.

After 1780, the horse-racing crowd grew. In Pownall's time, when the
Derby and Oaks had not been established forty-five years, the Derby
attracted some sixty subscribers, and the Oaks about forty, of fifty
guineas apiece, and Epsom was full to overflowing. The watering-place
has become a circus. The race week brings down all London. "At an early
hour in the morning, persons of all ranks, and carriages innumerable,
are seen pouring into the town at every inlet. All the accommodations
and provisions that the surrounding villages can supply are put in
requisition." The royal family would come to look on; sixty tho