FRENCH HORSES 293 



Spanish horses best, and they were iDopular in England. 

 Don Diego Salgado speaks of them, in a book dedicated to 

 our Charles II., as ' incomparably nimble and pretty.' The 

 Spaniard, till, say, 1G50 or so, was probably the best animal 

 to go hmiting on. But there are now, and were then, 

 Spaniards and Spaniards. In spite of the sprightly ballotade 

 he is throwing, I never quite liked the shoulders of the 

 animal the magnificent Olivarez is riding so bravely in the 

 great Velasquez at Madrid ; but Olivarez evidently rode a 

 great weight, and so had to ride the wrong class of Spaniard. 

 We may feel certain that Eosinante had plenty of quality, 

 for Don Quixote tells Sancho that you can always recognise 

 a gentleman by the smoothness of his seat. This rather 

 formidable and arbitrary formula depends at least as much 

 on the breeding of the horse as on the gentihty of the man. 

 It is a Quixotic and therefore attractive way of saying that 

 well-bred people insisted on well-bred horses. They always 

 should. Cumberland remarks that there seems a pleonasm 

 in the manes and tails of Velasquez' horses. There is cer- 

 tainly a want of shoulders; but Sir W. Stirling Maxwell 

 points out that Velasquez was an Andalusian who painted 

 according to the ideas of Andalusia, not of Newmarket ; and, 

 speaking of the equestrian portraits of Philip lA^. and 

 Olivarez, he goes on to say that they enable us to judge 

 accurately of the Spanish horse of the seventeenth century. 



The bounding steeds tbey pompously bestride, 

 Share with their lords the pleasure and the pride. 



(^Hcc. vol. ii. p. 15.) 



Odd colours were at this time in great favour: and 

 the old strain of piebalds and skewbalds still flourishes in 

 Holland. Utrecht Fair, held on Easter Monday, is the great 

 market for them, and a great many come over here. They 

 have many merits, and make capital coach-horses. ' Soupe 

 de lait,' a sort of cream colour, ' Tigre ' (fleabitten) and 



