But it recasts these elements with the vigour of a true art and in accordance with its special tendencies.

Those fantastic animals with strange out-stretched legs and backturned heads and eager eyes; those tiny scrolls scattered by way of decoration above or below them; the rude beading which serves, not ineffectively, for ornament or for dividing line; the suggestion of returning spirals; the evident delight of the artist in plant and animal forms and his neglect of the human figure--all these are Celtic.

When we turn to the rarer scenes in which man is specially prominent--a hunt, or a gladiatorial show, or Hesione fettered naked to a rock and Hercules saving her from the monster[4]--the vigour fails (Fig.

17).

The artist could not or would not cope with the human form.