PEBCHEBON PBOTOTYPES 41 



"We have before us as we write a rare old edition 

 of that famous literary landmark of the feudal ages, 

 "The Chronicles of England, France and Spain," 

 written by Sir John Froissart, "the Herodotus of a 

 barbarous age." In it are recounted the most dar- 

 ing deeds performed by the belted knights of the 

 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There are prac- 

 tically no references in the text to types of horses, 

 but there are many quaint wood engravings, repro- 

 ductions of old-time delineations, that are not with- 

 out interest in this connection. 



Crude as these old drawings may appear, there is 

 this to be said about them: they apparently demon- 

 strate, in the first place, that gray and white were 

 the prevailing, or at least the favorite, colors with 

 the French noblesse of that period; and in the second 

 place, that the artists were endeavoring to draw ' 

 horses that were not only refined, clean-limbed and 

 of good style, but that also possessed marked sub- 

 stance. Stout middles and generally thick bodies 

 are almost invariably shown. 



It can of course be said that neither Dore nor the 

 earlier artists who undertook to depict the type of 

 horses in use in the old days had any technical 

 knowledge of breeds or types. That is probably 

 true. Animal delineation was not their specialty. 

 Nevertheless, the fact that many different artists 

 working at different periods and illustrating differ- 

 ent phases of the military operations of the Cru- 

 sades and the Middle Ages, seem to have fixed upon 

 practically the same type of horse in nearly every 



