g CARNIVOROUS QUADRUPEDS. 



the scene of which, by the way, he has not represented as a royal menagerie, but as a wild, 

 rocky cavern his animals partake of the artificial character of which we cannot bring- ourselves to 



approve. 



Of this fact, however, we purpose to exhibit proof with our assertion. Improved versions, to 

 the best abilities of our Artists, of some of these Lions of RUBENS and the Assyrian king, will here 

 be introduced, which the reader, who pleases, may compare Avith the originals. Our second, third, 

 and fourth Plates are of the number. 



The Lions of RUBENS are humanized. We do not intend to discuss at length whether the 

 ideality of allegorical painting required this : we only state the fact : yet the opinions which we 

 felt at liberty to form on the subject, we feel at liberty to utter. So much in apology for using the 

 licence of asserting that the heads of many of the Lions of RUBENS rather resemble those of frowning 

 old gentlemen decorated with Ramillies wigs ; as if Nature's journeymen had made manes, and not 

 made them well. There is a profusion of flowing and curling- hair, which seems rather to solicit 

 the unguents of the perfumer, than to have endured the torrid heats of the desert, or the rough 

 storms of the forest. The shag of a Lion's mane is a very different sort of thing. 



However such dressed Lions may be thought to accord with Allegory, they are demonstrably 

 at variance with Nature. To be sure, what might become a Lion in the procession of the Cardinal 

 Virtues, might be rather unsuitable in his den, or within the precincts of those wild haunts, where he 

 is accustomed to roam in his natural state. We have often read of the fabled Men-bulls, or (Mino- 

 taurs,) and we find such on the coinage of Crete. These allegorical creatures of RUBENS, which, 

 alas ! have sometimes been quoted by Artists without half his genius, and placed in savage con- 

 flicts, or beside their Britannias are a species of Men-lions. Placed among the Saboean sculp- 

 tures, they might pass for incarnations of Sol in Leo ; but would very ill pass for Leo alone. 



Among the observers of this poetic improvement, or this natural and unpoetical deficiency, on 

 the part of RUBENS, TITIAN, JULIO ROMANO, and other painters, both ancient and modern ; and 

 of the consequent desideratum on the part of the public, of a cabinet or library collection of the 

 nobler wild animals in a state of Nature, so as to answer the purposes of reference, while they con- 

 duced to the pleasures of Taste, were Mr. EDGAR SPILSBURY and Mr. THOMAS LANDSEER. 

 Whether or not the public "looked up to them for light" on that subject, (to use the language of 

 STERNE,) they thought the Public " deserved it ;" and they therefore, as the best practical means 

 of eliciting that light, first copied the general forms and attitudes of most of the wild animals that 

 appear in this book, from the old masters generally speaking, from works that are well known 

 -and then, went to Nature and corrected the details. They carried with them what, in those 

 ancient masters, was meritorious in composition, attitude and chiaroscuro, and brought away, 

 to the best of their ability superadding it to, and blending it with, the above accuracy of 

 detail. 



