361 



mane, as might heighten the freedom and 

 animation of their character, without in- 

 juring the elegance or grandeur of their 

 form. If by giving forcibly the graces of 

 his art, nothing further is meant than 

 giving them with powerful impression, I 

 cannot help thinking that Rubens, when 

 he was transferring from nature to the can- 

 vass one of these noble animals in all the 

 fulness and luxuriancy of beauty, little 

 imagined that he was throwing away his 

 powers ; and as little suspected that any of 

 the rough high-boned cart-horses he had 

 placed in scenes with which they accorded, 

 were more striking specimens of the graces 

 of his art. 



It would indeed be a wretched degrada- 

 tion of theart, should the horses of Raphael, 

 Giulio Romano, Polidore, N. Poussin, the 

 forms and characters of which they had 

 studied with almost the same attention as 

 those of the human figure ; in which too, 

 as in the human figure, they had corrected 

 the defects of common nature from their 

 own exalted ideas of beauty, and from 

 those of their great models, the ancieftt; 



VOL. I* B B 



