horse, but they want expansion; and what is most monstrous of all,
thick and fleshy lips are given, and an open mouth, which no power
of association can ever teach us to admire.
There is a spirit in the expanded nostril, a fire in the eye;
a kind of intelligence in the horse’s head taken altogether; there
is a beauty in the form of the neck, and an ease and grandeur in
the carriage of the head, where strength and freedom are combined,
which I am afraid cannot be excelled by the substitution of an ideal
form. No doubt the painter in this instance wished to avoid that
commonness of form, which represses the elevation of sentiment in
the beholder, and destroys the poetical influence of the picture; but
it is attempted here at too great an expense of truth. It may be
remembered, that in the utmost excitement of animals of this class
they will not open the mouth. They cannot breathe through the
mouth, a valve in the throat prevents it, so that animation will be
exhibited only in the nostril and the eye. The opening of the
mouth is from the checking of the bit betwixt their teeth, and will
never be seen when the horse is untrammeled and free.
Such were the opinions delivered in the first edition of this
work, and they were drawn from an observation of nature, on which
I always rest with absolute reliance. Since that time, the Elgin
collection of sculptures has arrived in this country. These remains
of antiquity are of great value to the arts of this country, as they
obviously tend to turn the artist’s attention to nature, and exhibit
to him the consistency of natural form and beauty. The horse’s
head in that collection is perfectly natural, and if there be ex-
aggeration, it is only in the stronger marking of that which is the
natural distinction of the animal*.
* Mr. Haydon has published an essay in French, drawing a comparison betwixt
the head of the Venetian horses, and those from the ruins of Athens. He shows that
the sculpture of the head in the latter is in the better times of Grecian art, when
they respected the beautiful in nature; and he has done me the honour of sustaining
and amplifying my opinions on this subject.
H