It has hitherto been practically impossible to trace the exact origin of the Toy Spaniel, as notwithstanding numerous theories it remained a matter for speculation. The chief cause of this has been the extraordinarily irresponsible and contradictory evidence of writers whose mistranslations, added to spontaneous errors of their own, have confused history almost past redemption. It has cost me years of research both in the British Museum and in the picture galleries of Europe to disentangle the truth from the cocoon of falsehood into which it was spun. Years ago I began my search with a light heart, imagining that the undertaking was a simple one, but the further I advanced the more contradictory my authorities appeared, and the more deeply involved in mystery my work became. At last I began to see daylight in the fact that the names and the breeds had been shuffled like a pack of cards, and I think I have succeeded in reducing them at length to their proper order. The chief point on which there is no doubt whatever is that the present square-jawed, heavy, noseless type was introduced comparatively recently, certainly no earlier than the year 1840. There is an overwhelming mass of evidence to prove that pointed noses were the original type of the Black-and-tan and Tricolour, though the Red-and-white alone had in all stages of evolution a fairly short face and always a high skull.

No doubt the fanciers who read this will exclaim: "Everybody knows that already. Of course they came from the Marlboroughs and Sporting Spaniels." But if they will have the patience to go carefully through the facts I am about to give them, they will find that this is an error.

The first records we have of red-and-white Toy Spaniels in Europe are those in Titian's pictures about 1505, but Italy was not their place of origin. Then comes Palma Vecchio, about 1515, and Paul Veronese, 1550. It will be seen that the Veronese dogs had already a high-domed skull and a short, though pointed, nose, and had the cobby, compact and smart shape that is so essential in a Blenheim, not too low to the ground, yet not leggy. They were square, the height being approximately the same as the length, which is right. They carried their tails high and turned over the back. The sudden appearance of the Veronese type of pet dog in Italy puzzled me for a long time and the absolute absence of the least trace of it in any direction led me to the only possible conclusion, namely, that it originated there in the fifteenth century. Now a breed cannot originate from nothing. It must, therefore, have been manufactured, and I set myself to consider how this was done. In Italy and Malta the indigenous dogs were the Shock dog and the "Pomeranian" Melitaeus, but Italy traded with China from the eighth and ninth centuries onwards, and I thought the secret of the puzzling upspringing of the new type might lie in a cross between an indigenous dog and a red-and-white variety of Chinese dog imported to Italy. This Chinese dog I traced with infinite trouble, and he was undoubtedly the foundation of the red-and-white Toy. I also came across Toy Spaniels approximating to the Veronese type, and if they existed before the fifteenth century, this Italian Spaniel might possibly have been evolved from them without actual crossing, though I think the very sharp nose must have come from a cross.1 The longer nosed Chinese Toy Spaniels can be seen on a bowl of the Taok-wang period, 1821, and I rather doubt the type being very ancient.

After Veronese come Rubens, date about 1600, and Netscher of 1639. Heist Tischbein and Tempel, as well as the two Van Mieris's Ter Borch, Metsu, and Steen, all show liver-and-white and a few yellow-and-white Toy Spaniels of the seventeenth century, also two fawn-and-white ones, and a red one with white face, breast and toes, and one of the Dutch Princesses is represented with a black-and-white dog with the spot. Juan de Valdes Leal and Velasquez, of about 1600 to 1660, showed the Alicantes or Cayenne variety of mongrel white Toy Spaniel with very short nose and high skull, said by Buffon to be a cross between l'Epagneul and the Doguin or Pug. These dogs were said to be brown-and-white-and-tricolour or black-and-white, and some were entirely white. An old writer on Spanyuolles says the "Alauntez" (query Alicantes) were brought to Scotland from Spain in 1360. There appears, however, to have been a breed of large hounds called by the same name. I can find no trace of "Blenheim" or tricolour Toy Spaniels in Spain, and the red-and-white Toy Spaniels undoubtedly came to England from Italy where they apparently were evolved, as I have said, from the Chinese Spaniels. Pictorially they can be traced back to the fifteenth century, and probably existed in Italy in the time of the Roman empire.

In Rural Sports I find the following passages regarding the Spaniel about Naples: "They possess a kind of Spaniel so excellent that the king has taken pains to increase the breed." The Italian pictures show many red-and-white Toy Spaniels.

1 The Papillon, which is the modern descendant of the Italian Spaniel on the Continent, shows the "Pomeranian" type very strongly, even to the erect ears of one of the varieties.

Henri III of France kept small pet Spaniels, and can only have come across his little dogs when he landed in Italy after the flight from Poland. Mr. Belloc is my authority for this. They were called "Damarets."1 There is only an allusion to them in Brantome.

One of Caius's many translators and revisers speaks of "a new kind of (pet) Spaniel brought out of Fraunce, rare, strange, and hard to get." This is not in Caius's original Latin, and was probably an interpolation of the translator himself after the time of Charles II, as it was a common practice with translators to add their own experience and opinions and embody them with the original text. This is very annoying, as the translator often lived several hundred years after the original writer under whose name his opinions appear, and it naturally falsifies the dates. It is especially misleading where descriptions of types are given, and it is only by going back to the original that the matter can be verified.