on each of whose four sides are five medallions vertically
arranged. Within the great encompassing arch, on each side, is a
cluster of three more square pedestals similarly decorated. The arch
itself has seventeen medallions upon each pillar, the top five on each
side being cut in half by a moulding. Beyond the arch to right and
left are two other pedestals with the same five ornaments on their two
faces. Thus, if you count the smaller pillars only, there are
twenty-four rows of five, or 120 medallions, and adding those on the
arch, you get a total of 154. Even this is not all; for on each
medallion or panel its separate bas-relief is contained within a
quatrefoil. None of their arcs are semi-circles, and none of their
basic figures are squares, for each panel is slightly varied in size
from its neighbours. The result is that intervals of various shapes
are left at each of the four angles of every quatrefoil, and into each
interval is fitted a different animal, which gives the astonishing
result of 596 minor carvings in this one doorway, all of them
representing living things, and all of them subsidiary to the larger
subjects which they frame. If you measure these tiny sculptures you
will find the base of the curved triangle they adorn to average
about four inches long, its height being just half that distance. When
you look closer at those which are least worn away you will find them
clearly enough carved to represent unmistakably in one instance the
peculiar reverted eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and ready to
run away with it; in another, the wrinkled skin that is pressed over a
cheekbone by an angry fist; in a third, the growth of wing and scale
upon a lizard.

Think of the life and energy that were pulsing through the brain of
the craftsman who could so fill the surface of the stone. Think of the
time that he was ready to give up to patient chiselling at this one
task till it was perfect to his mind. And then consider more closely
the quatrefoils, small in themselves, which are yet far larger than
the details which surround them. The best known is one that has
suffered terribly in the wear and tear of nearly six centuries. It is
the famous bas-relief of the hooded pig playing on a violin, a motive
which recurs at Winchester and in York Minster. Its fingers are placed
so accurately upon the bow that the method of playing has formed a
type of late twelfth-century style in all collections of musical
antiquit