552 The Dog Book 



There Is also the Vandyck dog in the picture of the children of Charles 

 I. which means a dog of about 1640. This is the "stock cut" illustration re- 

 ferred to by all English writers as the absolute proof of the ancient lineage of 

 the mastiff. Wynn was right, however, when in comparing several pictures 

 of this dog, first by Vandyck and by Greenhill, who made several copies of 

 Vandyck's picture of Killegrew and this same dog. What Wynn says is that 

 he had "some doubt of its being really an English mastiff, thinking it very 

 probable to have been an importation, having too much of the boarhound 

 character about it for mastiff purity. It is therefore very empirical assum- 

 ing this dog to be a reliable representation of the type of the English mas- 

 tiff of that date." Of course Wynn wanted to see a heavy-lipped, short- 

 faced dog, because that is what he had made up his mind was what the mas- 

 tiff always had been. Mr. Wynn was no different from many other special- 

 ist writers whose style of argument and conclusions always remind us of 

 " The Marchioness " and her wine of orange peel and water. " If you make 

 believe very much it is very nice, but if you don't, you know, it seems as if it 

 would bear a little more seasoning." We want a whole lot of seasoning to 

 bring us to the point of any other belief than that the mastiff was the com- 

 mon dog, bred anyhow, and not recognised as a fit companion for the higher 

 classes. 



The dog which apparently better represented our mastiff at the time of 

 Gaston de Phoebus was what he calls the alanz veautres. The Duke of 

 York's translation, given in modern English, is as follows: "They are al- 

 most shaped as a greyhound of full shape, they have a great head, great lips 

 and great ears, and with such men help themselves well at the baiting of the 

 bull and at hunting of the wild boar, for it is natural to them to hold fast, 

 but they are so heavy and ugly, that if they be slain by the wild boar it is no 

 great loss. " " Baiting of the bull " is an interpolation of the Duke of York's. 

 The alaunt of the butcher was also used in wild-boar hunting. There is a dog 

 in the illustration we reproduce from "The Master of Game," showing the 

 characteristics of the alauntz ventreresj as it is written in " The Master of 

 Game" and the alaunts of the superior class are also shown. The latter are 

 the two dogs on Gaston's left, the white one and the muzzled one. The dog 

 in the foreground to the right is the one we take to be the alauntz ventreres, as 

 it is the only dog which appears to fill the description of having a large head, 

 great lips and great ears, a description which naturally suggests our mastiff — 

 but it is impossible to trace any connection between the two. If Buffon did 



