vi Preface.

two of our best artists in the line of wood engraving.They may very justly be regarded as scarcely distinguishablefrom their fine originals.

The remarks in the course of this Essay on a supposedGerman poet, under the name of Macaber, and the dis-cussion relating to Holbein's connexion with the Dance ofDeath, may perhaps be found interesting to the criticalreader only ; but every admirer of ancient art will not failto be gratified by an intimate acquaintance with one of itsfinest specimens in the copy which is here so faithfullyexhibited.

In the latest and best edition of some new designs fora Dance of Death, by Salomon Van Rusting, published byJohn George Meintel at Nuremberg, 1736, 8vo. there is anelaborate preface by him, with a greater portion of ver-bosity than information. He has placed undue confidencein his predecessor, Paul Christian Hilscher, whose work,printed at Dresden in 1705, had probably misled thetruly learned Fabricius in what he has said concerningMacaber in his valuable work, the " Bibliotheca mediae etinfimae aetatis." Meintel confesses his inability to pointout the origin or the inventor of the subject. The lastand completest work on the Dance, or Dances of Death,is that of the ingenious M. Peignot, so well and deservedlyknown by his numerous and useful books on bibliography.To this gentleman the present Essay has been occasionallyindebted. He will, probably, at some future opportunity,remove the whimsical misnomer in his engraving of Deathand the Idiot.

The usual title, " The Dance of Death," which accom-panies most of the printed works, is not altogetherappropriate. It may indeed belong to the old Macaberpainting and other similar works where Death is repre-sented in a sort of dancing and grotesque attitude in the

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