that year, the Lord Mayor attended the procession by water only, and the place of his barge upon that occasion (which, according to the statement in the London Gazette, followed the barges of their Majesties, of the Lord High Admiral, and divers of the nobility), corresponds with the arrangement in the land procession at the funeral of Sir Philip Sydney.

Jan. 13.

G. F. B. L.

THE DANCE OF DEATH,

Exhibited in elegant Engravings on Wood; with a Dissertation on the several representations of that subject, but more particularly on those ascribed to Macaber and Hans Holbein. By Francis Douce, Esq. F.A. S. &c. 8vo.

The author of this volume bas long been distinguished for his great erudition in English antiquities, for his intimate acquaintance with the archæology of literature and the arts, for his extensive and valuable collections, and for the liberality and urbanity with which he has ever communicated from his stores of knowledge to other inquirers in the same pursuits. By his interesting "Illustrations of Shakspeare and his Times," his name is yet more widely honoured; for it is one of the few antiquarian works which have been at once recondite and popular.

The present dissertation was originally published forty years ago, in illustration of the republication, by Mr. Edwards of Pall Mall, of Hollar's etchings, from the same designs which have now been engraved on wood.* It is here very considerably enlarged, and it is not a little remarkable into how many branches the inquiry divides itself.

In order to investigate the subject from its origin, Mr. Douce discusses, in the first place, the figures under which Death was personified by the ancients. These were various, and the learned are not accordant on the subject; but it would appear that a skeleton was only one of their emblems, and not the most frequent. The emblem of the butterfly, by which, whilst death was implied, a resurrection was more immediat y typified, is one which from its simplicity and propriety finds a welcome in every elegant mind. The more clumsy device by which the artists of the middle ages represented the departing soul, was by a small naked figure, like an infant, issuing from the prostrate corpse;--an idea which some modern artists have varied only by representing the soul nearly as large as the body, which has been sculptured in marble so recently as in the monument of the Princess Charlotte at Windsor. To this performance Mr. Douce does not allude; but although the historian, it may be said, of skeletons and anatomies, he expresses his disapprobation of sepulchral monuments being adorned with skulls and cross-bones, as follows:

* These engravings, forty-nine in number, "have been executed," remarks Mr. Douce, "with consummate skill and fidelity by Messrs. Bonner and Byfield, two of our best artists in the line of wood engraving. They may very justly be regarded as scarcely distinguishable from their fine originals." Four of them, by way of specimen, we have borrowed for the present article (see Plate II):

THE KING. Seated at a well-covered table, Death, as a cupbearer, presents him with his last draught. The King's countenance resembles that of Francis I., and the canopy is powdered with a flower resembling a fleur-de-lis.

THE ABBAT. Death having despoiled him of his mitre and crozier, drags him by his robes away. The Abbat resists with all his might, and is about to throw his breviary at his adversary.

THE JUDGE. He is deciding a cause between a rich and a poor man; and is about to receive a bribe from the former. Death comes behind him to snatch away his rod of office.

THE NEW-MARRIED LADY. In all the splendour of the female costume of the age, she is accompanied by her husband, who endeavours to divert her attention from Death, which is insidiously crossing their path, beating vigorously on a tambour.

"If it be necessary on any occasion to personify Death, this were surely better accomplished by means of some graceful and impressive figure of the Angel of Death, for whom we have the authority of Scripture; and such might become an established representative. The skulls and bones of modern, and the entire skeletons of former times, especially during the middle ages, had probably derived their origin from the vast quantities of sanctified human relics that were continually before the eyes, or otherwise in the recollection, of the early Christians. But the favourite and principal emblem of mortality among our ancestors, appears to have been the moral and allegorical pageant familiarly known by the appellation of the Dance of Death, which it bas, in part, derived from the grotesque and often ludicrous attitudes of the figures that composed it, and especially from the active and sarcastical mockery of the ruthless tyrant upon its victims, which may be in a great measure attributed to the whims and notions of the artists who were employed to represent the subject."

But there is another origin besides the fancy of the artists, to which the representation of this series of pictures as a dance has been traced. Among other heathen customs which lingered amidst the rites and temples of the Christian faith, was that of dancing in churches and churchyards, and Mr. Douce has collected several legends and other curious matters relative to this practice. Notwithstanding the interdiction of several Councils, it was found impossible to abolish it altogether, and the clergy therefore contrived the Dance or Pageant of Death, which, whilst it afforded recreation and amusement, might at the same time convey a moral and religious sensation. Some grand spectacles of this description were celebrated in France in the fifteenth century. They became a favourite subject for the paintings with which the walls of churches were adorned; were then introduced in books of prayers and other religious works; and thus we are brought down to the early days of printing, and so to the æra of Holbein.

Before Holbein's time, however, these pictorial dances had come to be generally known as the dances of Macaber, a person of unknown origin, by some taken for an artist, and by others for a German poet; by some altered to the Maccabees; others to Macrobius; and by the learned M. Van Praet, conjectured to be not a man, but an epithet derived from the Arabic word Magbarah, signifying a churchyard. Mr. Douce rebuts this conjecture, by remarking "that personified sculpture, as well as the moral nature of the subject, cannot belong to the Mahometan religion." He has traced the word to its original in St. Macarius, the name of a hermit introduced into the story of" Les trois Morts et le trois Vifs," a metrical work written in the thirteenth century. The series of designs on this subject usually attributed to Holbein, of which the editions have been numerous, and of which accurate copies are included in the present publication, have this distinction from the ancient Dance of Macaber, that whilst in the former Death is represented in a sort of grotesque attitude in the act of leading a single character, in the latter the subject generally consists of several figures, into whose presence Death, as an unwelcome and inexorable visitor, has intruded to summon away his victim.

"In these designs," says Mr. Douce," which are wholly different from the dull and oftentimes disgusting Macaber Dance, which is confined, with little exception, to two figures only, we have the most interesting assemblage of characters, among whom, the skeletonized Death, with all the animation of a living person, forms the most important personage; sometimes amusingly ludicrous, occasionally mischievous, but always busy and characteristically employed."

The dance was painted round the cloisters of old St. Paul's cathedral; and in the Hungerford chapel at Salisbury cathedral; one of the subjects in which, Death and the graceless Gallant," is engraved in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, vol. ii. pl. lxxii. GENT. MAG. VOL. I.

2 A

Properly speaking, therefore, the designs attributed to Holbein, are not a Dance of Death, nor were they originally so called. Their title was, "Les Simulachres et historieés faces de la Mort," and in Latin, “Imagines, or Icones Mortis." But, as the idea was the same as in the earlier Dances, and as it was carried through a similar series of characters, it was almost immediately called a "Todtentanz,” in a German copy published at Augsburg; and in the modern editions that name has been generally adopted. To distinguish the original engravings, first published at Lyons in 1538, Mr. Douce has usually mentioned them as the Lyons wood-cuts. With some reluctance he states his scruples in believing that they were actually the production of Holbein; principally founded on these circumstances, that they were not mentioned with Holbein's other works, which received the praise of his contemporaries; that his name occurs in none of the old editions; and that their first editor, in 1538, expressed his regret that the "painter" who had "imagined" them, had died before he had completed his task, whereas Holbein lived till 1554. Mr. Ottley, (History of Engraving, 1816,) unwilling to detract from the name of Holbein one of his finest reputed works, was only able to meet the statement of the original editor, by supposing he had fallen into some misapprehension, from one of the engravers, instead of the painter, having died, and that the said editor was too glad of the opportunity to moralize on Death, as revenging himself upon his satirist, to inquire very particularly into the actual facts. To this interpretation of " words of plain import," Mr. Douce does not assent; and consequently, searching for an artist probable to be the painter spoken of in the dedication, he suggests the name of George Reperdius, who is ranked with Holbein in an epigram by Borbonius, but of whose history or works little is now known. If, on the death of Reperdius, Holbein was engaged to complete the series, "Holbein would thus be so connected with the work, as to obtain in future such notice, as would constitute him, by general report, the real inventor of it; and would remain in possession of a share, at least, of that inestimable work."

It must not be overlooked, that there was a Dance of Death actually painted by Holbein on the walls of the English palace of Whitehall, and that the only part of it of which a description has been preserved, (that of Death and the Elector,) proves the identity of the painting with the wood-cuts. (p. 145.)

Having now noticed the principal points of discussion in Mr. Douce's Dissertation, we will state briefly the other contents of his volume, which are several curious bibliographical catalogues, and descriptive lists of prints.

First, a list of editions of the Macaber Dance, of printed Horæ that contain it, manuscript Horæ, and other manuscripts in which it occurs.

A list of the several editions of the Lyons wood-cuts; of their copies on wood; their copies on copper; and imitations of them.

A catalogue of other Dances of Death. One of these is "A booke of Christian Prayers," printed by John Day, typographer to Queen Elizabeth; and commonly, but improperly, called Queen Elizabeth's Prayerbook.

"This book was most probably compiled by John Fox, and is accompanied with elegant borders in the margins of every page, cut in wood by an unknown artist, whose mark is though they have been most unwarrantably ascribed to Holbein, and even to Agnes Frey. the wife of Albert Durer, who is not known with any certainty to have practised the art of engraving. At the end is a Dance of Death, different from any other of the kind, and of singular interest, as exhibiting the costume of its time with respect to all ranks and conditions of life, male and female."

Having a copy of this volume at hand, we were induced to examine the cuts, and we find the letters C. I. (sometimes so placed, sometimes in the monogrammatic form, and occasionally accompanied by a graving tool), occurring on nearly every page through all the designs taken from the Scriptures; but the series of the Dance of Death has a