[238] The folio volume of sketches in the Ambrosian Library at Milan contains designs for all these works. The collection in the Royal Library at Windsor is no less rich. Among Lionardo's scientific drawings in the latter place may be mentioned a series of maps illustrating the river system of Central Italy, with plans for improved drainage. [239] Shelley says of the poet:-- He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy bloom; Nor heed nor see what things they be, But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality. [240] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, p. 143, for this story. [241] In the _Treatise on Painting_, da Vinci argues strongly against isolating man. He regarded the human being as in truth a microcosm to be only understood in relation to the world around him, expressing, as a painter, the same thought as Pico. (See Vol. II., _Revival of Learning,_ p. 35.) Therefore he urges the claims of landscape on the attention of artists. [242] I might refer in detail to four studies of bramble branches, leaves, and flowers and fruit, in the royal collection at Windsor, most wonderful for patient accuracy and delicate execution: also to drawings of oak leaves, wild guelder-rose, broom, columbine, asphodel, bull-rush, and wood-spurge in the same collection. These careful studies are as valuable for the botanist as for the artist. To render the specific character of each plant with greater precision would be impossible. [243] See the series of anatomical studies of the horse in the Royal Collection. [244] Engraved by Edelinck. The drawing has obvious Lionardesque qualities; but how far it may be from the character of the original we can guess by Rubens' transcript from Mantegna. (See above, Chapter VI, Mantegna's Biography.) De Stendhal says wittily of this work, "C'est Virgile traduit par Madame de Staël," op. cit. p. 162. [245] In the Royal Collection at Windsor there are anatomical drawings for the construction of an imaginary quadruped with gigantic claws. The bony, muscular, and venous structure of its legs and feet is accurately indicated. [246] See the drawings engraved and published by Gerli in his _Disegni di Lionardo da Vinci_, Milan, 1784. [247] Vasari is the chief source of these legends. Giraldi Lomazzo, the Milanese historian of painting, and Bandello, the novelist, supply further details. It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed his contemporaries as a singular and most commanding personality. There is a touch of reverence in even the strangest stories, which is wanting in the legend of Piero di Cosimo. [248] Even Michael Angelo, meeting him in Florence, flung in his teeth that "he had made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not cast it, and through shame left it as it was unfinished." See _Arch. St. It._, serie terza, xvi. 226.