A VERY OLD MASTEK 109 



struggling up aspiringly toward perfect horsehood. In all 

 other matters the two creatures the cave man's horse 

 and Prjevalsky's closely agree. Both display large heads, 

 thick necks, coarse manes, and a general disregard of 

 ' points ' which would strike disgust and dismay into the 

 stout breasts of Messrs. Tattersall. In fact over a T.Y.C. 

 it may be confidently asserted, in the pure Saxon of the 

 sporting papers, that Prjevalsky's and the cave man's lot 

 wouldn't be in it. Nevertheless a candid critic would be 

 forced to admit that, in spite of clumsiness, they both 

 mean staying. 



So much for the two sitters ; now let us turn to the 

 artist who sketched them. Who was he, and when did he 

 live ? Well, his name, like that of many other old masters, 

 is quite unknown to us ; but what does that matter so 

 long as his work itself lives and survives ? Like the 

 Comtists he has managed to obtain objective immortality. 

 The work, after all, is for the most part all we ever have 

 to go upon. ' I have my own theory about the authorship 

 of the Iliad and Odyssey,' said Lewis Carroll (of ' Alice in 

 Wonderland ') once in Christ Church common room : ' it 

 is that they weren't really written by Homer, but by 

 another person of the same name.' There you have the 

 Iliad in a nutshell as regards the authenticity of great 

 works. All we know about the supposed Homer (if 

 anything) is that he was the reputed author of the two 

 unapproachable Greek epics ; and all we know directly 

 about my old master, viewed personally, is that he once 

 carved with a rude flint flake on a fragment of reindeer 

 horn these two clumsy prehistoric horses. Yet by putting 

 two and two together we can make, not four, as might be 

 naturally expected, but a fairly connected history of the 

 old master himself and what Mr. Herbert Spencer would 

 no doubt playfully term ' his environment.' 



