INTRODUCTORY. 7 



a good deal the most interesting part then I believe that there is some chance for 

 even a new book on these so-often-treated subjects proving acceptable as much to 

 the old hands as to the novice who has not yet stocked his sporting library. It is 

 with this plan in view that I have added as many illustrations to my narrative as a 

 long-suffering publisher would permit. Whenever it was possible 1 liavc chosen 

 them from contemporaneous sources, and I believe that Lely, Van Dyck, Rowlandson, 

 Gilray, or Sir Joshua Reynolds are just as valuable artists for my purpose as Gilpin, 

 Herring, Stubbs, or Alken 



I have been equally catholic in my choice of those artists, from whose work an 

 attempt has been made (the first of its kind, I believe) to illustrate by means of con- 

 temporary pictures, or carvings, the gradual development of the horse in England, 

 and of the breeds of other countries, so far as they are known to have affected 

 English horses. There are various sources from which it is possible to imagine the 

 appearance of the breeds which were to be found on the Continent at the end of the 

 fifteenth century, breeds, in some cases, definitely affected by Eastern blood, in others 

 enriched by the English mingled strain, in others, again, without a touch of either 

 influence. But the importations from many different countries into England at the 

 beginning of the sixteenth century, make it important to arrive at some idea of what 

 the new blood meant. Taking Italy first ; old Time himself is against anyone 

 who tries to find contemporary representations of what the famous Eerrara stud 

 really was in the latter half of the fifteenth century. For though Erancesco Cossa 

 and his friends filled the Schiafonoia Palace with their frescoes at exactly the right 

 period, the remains are hopelessly indistinct. In such works as the " Trionfo di San 

 Giorgio," Carpaccio drew a horse very like the animal Verrochio and Van Dyck saw. 

 Mantegna's similar paintings are not more convincing. But Leonardo da Vinci's 

 study, which I reproduce from the Windsor collection, reveals a very definite Arab 

 type, with which the earnest reader may compare the series that begins upon the 

 Parthenon and ends in the picture of Mambrino, of whom I have given details in 

 later chapters. Leonardo's horse is very different in build to Verrochio's magnificent 

 charger in the Colleone statue, which is more of the Stuart type of the seventeenth 

 century. Turning then to Germany, I have obtained three very distinct types from 

 contemporary records. It was, I imagine, from across between Albert Diirer's horse 

 (page. 22), and the Eastern horse of the " Master of the Housebook " (see page 23). 

 that the " Equus Germanus," which I reproduce here from Stradanus' careful picture, 

 was bred in later years. 



