An essay on the knowledge of the ancients respecting the art of shoeing the horse, and of the probable period of the commencement of this art / [Bracy Clark].

  • Bracy Clark
Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the knowledge of the ancients respecting the art of shoeing the horse, and of the probable period of the commencement of this art / [Bracy Clark]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    poets we have also similar expressions favouring this impression, and which have no relation to any metallic substance, as “ quatit solidun- gula campum,” (Virg.) where the solidity and strength of the foot is evidently only in the view of the writer; also “ cavatque”—“ Tel- lurem et solido graviter sonat ungula,” (Georg, lib. 3,) and which expressions, we apprehend, are not understood to their full extent without being aware of the above circumstances and situation of the ancients in respect to their horses’ feet. And in the words “ insultare solum” &c., the poet would impress us with the idea that no defect of the foot, or fear of using the hoof existed, but the greatest firm¬ ness and strength. In the expression “ mo Hi fulta pede” of Horace, we have again the opposite condition of the foot pourtrayed; and these passages will derive a new strength and clearness also from these considerations. Brass, or a kind of brass, was the chief metal in use in those early times of Homer; and from being the strongest substance they were acquainted with, it became very naturally with them the epithet of strength, and is continued down to this day, and familiar in most languages, as with us in the phrases, brazen Towers, brazen Lungs, brazen Face, &c., that nothing could have been more perfectly natu¬ ral than Homer’s application of it where the strength and durability of the hoof was intended to perfect the character of his natural horse. The above words also, in strictness of language, can convey no such meaning as brass shoes; for if these horses had been really shod, “ brass-clad hoofs” would have been the expression of so accurate a writer, and not “ brazen-footed,” in which there appears a wide and just distinction; and in the succeeding line of the first of these quotations are given by the poet the other natural beauties of the horse, of form and colour, with which to combine such artifice would have been very uncouth, not to say improper: and in other instances in which he introduces the horse in this poem, which are
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