4. The Fortune-teller. Some females enter the conjurer’s study to have their fortunes told. Death seizes the back of his chair and oversets him. Below, these verses:
All fates he vow’d to him were known,
And yet he could not tell his own.
These drawings are oblong, 9 by 5 inches. In the author’s possession.
MISCELLANEOUS.
A circular carving on wood, with the mark of Hans Schaufelin
, representing Death seizing a naked female, who turns her head from him with a very melancholy visage. It is executed in a masterly manner. Diameter, 4 inches. In the author’s possession.
In Boxgrove church, Sussex, there is a splendid and elaborately sculptured monument of the Lords Delawar; and on the side which has not been engraved in Mr. Dallaway’s history of the county, there are two figures of Death and a female, wholly unconnected with the other subjects on the tomb. These figures are 9½ inches in height, and of rude design. Many persons will probably remember to have seen among the ballads, &c. that were formerly, and are still exhibited on some walls in the metropolis, a poem, intitled “Death and the Lady.” This is usually accompanied with a wood-cut, resembling the above figures. It is proper to mention likewise on this occasion the old alliterative poem in Bishop Percy’s famous manuscript, intitled Death and Liffe, the subject of which is a vision wherein the poet sees a contest for superiority between “our Lady Dame Life,” and the “ugly fiend, Dame Death.” See “Percy’s Reliques of ancient English poetry,” in the Essay on the Metre of Pierce Plowman’s Vision. Whether there may have been any connexion between these respective subjects must be left to the decision of others. There is certainly some reason to suppose so.
The sculptures at Berlin and Fescamp have been already described.