On the other side there was Sir R Fagg, of
Sussex, of whom fame says he has the most in him and the least to
show for it (relating to jockeyship) of any man there, yet he often
carried the prize. His horses, they said, were all cheats, how
honest soever their master was, for he scarce ever produced a horse
but he looked like what he was not, and was what nobody could
expect him to be. If he was as light as the wind, and could fly
like a meteor, he was sure to look as clumsy, and as dirty, and as
much like a cart-horse as all the cunning of his master and the
grooms could make him, and just in this manner he beat some of the
greatest gamesters in the field.
I was so sick of the jockeying part that I left the crowd about the
posts and pleased myself with observing the horses: how the
creatures yielded to all the arts and managements of their masters;
how they took their airings in sport, and played with the daily
heats which they ran over the course before the grand day. But
how, as knowing the difference equally with their riders, would
they exert their utmost strength at the time of the race itself!
And that to such an extremity that one or two of them died in the
stable when they came to be rubbed after the first heat.
Here I fancied myself in the Circus Maximus at Rome seeing the
ancient games and the racings of the chariots and horsemen, and in
this warmth of my imagination I pleased and diverted myself more
and in a more noble manner than I could possibly do in the crowds
of gentlemen at the weighing and starting-posts and at their coming
in, or at their meetings at the coffee-houses and gaming-tables
after the races were over, where there was little or nothing to be
seen but what was the subject of just reproach to them and reproof
from every wise man that looked upon them.
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