CHAPTER X.
Other Dances of Death.
aving thus disposed of the two most ancient and important works on the subject in question, others of a similar nature, but with designs altogether different, and introduced into various books, remain to be noticed, and such are the following:
I. “Les loups ravissans fait et composé par maistre Robert Gobin prestre, maistre es ars licencie en decret, doyen de crestienté de Laigny sur Marne au dyocese de Paris, advocat en court d’eglise. Imprimé pour Anthoine Verard a Paris, 4to.” without date, but about 1500. This is a very bitter satire, in the form of a dream, against the clergy in general, but more particularly against Popes John XXII. and Boniface VIII. A wolf, in a lecture to his children, instructs them in every kind of vice and wickedness, but is opposed, and his doctrines refuted, by an allegorical personage called Holy Doctrine. In a second vision Death appears to the author, accompanied by Fate, War, Famine, and Mortality. All classes of society are formed into a Dance, as the author chooses to call it, and the work is accompanied with twenty-one very singular engravings on wood, executed in a style perhaps nowhere else to be met with. The designs are the same as those in the second Dance of the Horæ, printed by Higman for Vostre, No. I. page 61.
II. “A booke of Christian prayers, collected out of the ancient writers, &c.” Printed by J. Day, 1569. 4to. Afterwards in 1578, 1581, 1590, and 1609. It is more frequently mentioned under the title of “Queen Elizabeth’s prayer-book,” a most unsuitable title, when it is recollected how sharply this haughty dame rebuked the Dean of Christchurch for presenting a common prayer to her which had been purposely ornamented with cuts by him.[132] This book was most probably compiled by the celebrated John Fox, and is accompanied with elegant borders in the margins of every leaf 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 every 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.
These are the characters. “The Emperor, the King, the Duke, the Marques, the Baron, the Vicount, the Archbishop, the Bishop, the Doctor, the Preacher, the Lord, the Knight, the Esquire, the Gentleman, the Judge, the Justice, the Serjeant at law, the Attorney, the Mayor, the Shirife, the Bailife, the Constable, the Physitian, the Astronomer, the Herauld, the Sergeant at arms, the Trumpetter, the Pursevant, the Dromme, the Fife, the Captaine, the Souldier, the Marchant, the Citizen, the Printers (in two compartments), the Rich Man, the Aged Man, the Artificer, the Husbandman, the Musicians (in two compartments), the Shepheard, the Foole, the Beggar, the Roge, of Youth, of Infancie.” Then the females. “The Empresse, the Queene, the Princes, the Duchesse, the Countesse, the Vicountesse, the Baronnesse, the Lady, the Judge’s Wife, the Lawyer’s Wife, the Gentlewoman, the Alderman’s Wife, the Marchantes Wife, the Citizen’s Wife, the Rich Man’s Wife, the Young Woman, the Mayde, the Damosell, the Farmar’s Wife, the Husbandman’s Wife, the Countriwoman, the Nurse, the Shepheard’s Wife, the Aged Woman, the Creeple, the Poore Woman, the Infant, the (female) Foole.” All these are designed in a masterly manner, and delicately engraved. The figures of the Deaths occasionally abound in much humour, and always with appropriate characters. The names of the unknown artists were worthy of being recorded.