Canonbury.
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"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.