"THE DANCE OF DEATH."
Amongst the numerous emblematic works, it has often appeared to me that the above work should be republished entire; to give any part of it would be spoiling a most admirable series. I should desire to see it executed not as a fac-simile, but improved by good modern artists. The history of "The Dance of Death" is too long and too obscure to enter upon here; but from the general tenor of the accounts and criticisms of the work, it does not appear to have originated at all with Hans Holbein, or even his father, who also really painted it at Basil, in Switzerland, but to have had its origin in more remote times, as quoted in several authors, that anciently monasteries usually had a painted representation of a Death's Dance upon the walls. It is a subject, therefore, open to any artist, nor could it be said he had pirated anything if he treated the subject after his own fashion. "The Dance of Death" begins of course with king, the queen, the bishop, the lawyer, the lovers, &c., and ends with the child, whom Death is leading away from the weeping mother. The original plates of Hollar, from Holbein's drawings, are possibly still extant, but they are by no means perfect, although admirable in expression. The deaths or skeletons are very ill-drawn as to the anatomical structure, and were they better the work would be excellent. The Death lugging off the fat abbot is inimitable; and the gallant way he escorts the lady abbess out the convent door is very good. I have the engravings by Hollar, and have made some of the designs afresh, intending to lithograph them at some future day; but there being thirty subjects in all, the work would be a difficult task. Mr. J. B. Yates might, indeed, with his excellent collection of Emblemata, revive this old and beautiful taste now in abeyance: it is now rarely practised by our painters. There is, however, a very fine picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition, by Mr. Goodall, which is, strictly speaking, an emblem, though the artist calls it an historical episode. Now it appears to me an episode cannot be reduced into a representation; it might embrace a complete picture in writing, but as I read the picture it is an emblem, and would have been still more perfect had the painter treated it accordingly. The old man at the helm of the barge might well represent Strafford, because, though he holds the tiller, he is not engaged in steering right, his eyes are not directed to his port. Charles himself, rightly enough, has his back to the port, and is truly not engaged in manly affairs, nor attending to his duty; but the sentiment of frivolity here painted cannot, I should say, attach itself to him, for he is not to be reproached with idling away his time with women and children, as this more strictly must be laid to his son. But the port where some grim-looking men are seriously waiting for him, completes a very happy and poetical idea, but incomplete as an emblem, which it really is; and were the emblematic rules more cultivated, it would have told its story much better.
At present, the taste of the day lies in more direct caricature, and our volatile friend Punch does the needful in his wicked sallies of wit, and his fertile pencil. His sharp rubs are perhaps more effective to John Bull's temper, who can take a blow with Punch's truncheon and bear no malice after it,—the heavy lectures of the ancients are not so well suited to his constitution.
Weld Taylor.
Bayswater.
Minor Notes.
Old Lines newly revived.—The old lines of spondees and dactyls are just now applicable:—
Cōntūrbābāntūr Cōnstāntīnōpŏlĭtānī
Innŭmĕrābĭlĭbūs sōlĭcĭtūdĭnĭbūs."