A VERY OLD MASTER 109 



strugglinjj up aspiringly toward perfect horsohood. 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 hreasts of ^lessrs. 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 

 Iliac" in a nutshell as regards the anther*^' -^.ity 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 

 tw^o 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.' 



