} ut a nonenity. —

word. — Et) ntolo-with the Dance,painting in thef h the trois mors9 .r dance. — Saintof this dance in' of the InnocentsLiibeck; Leipsic ;f/ Berne; Lu-ris; Strasburg;xin.

o consider thelacaber, as con-of Death, eitherhat have usuallyi paintings and>ance itself; and

ich hazard, bee been ascribedever was a Ger-ame. The firstFrench editiontitle, "Chorealito, et a Petroinn Guidonem1490, folio."

The Dance of Death. 25

This title, from its ambiguity, is deserving of little con-sideration as a matter of authority; for if a comma beplaced after the word Macabro, the title is equally ap-plicable to the author of the verses and to the painteror inventor of the Dance. As the subject had beenrepresented in several places in Germany, and of courseaccompanied with German descriptions, it is possiblethat Desrey might have translated and altered some orone of these, and, mistaking the real meaning of the word,have converted it into the name of an author. It maybe asked in what German biography is such a person tobe found 1 how it has happened that this famous Macaberis so little known, or whether the name really has aTeutonic aspect 1 It was the above title in Desrey'swork that misled the truly learned Fabricius inadvertentlyto introduce into his valuable work the article for Macaberas a German poet, and in a work to which it could notproperly belong. 1

M. Peignot has very justly observed that the DanseMacabre had been very long known in France and else-where, not as a literary work, but as a painting ; and hefurther remarks that although the verses are German inthe Basil painting, executed about 1440, similar versesin French were placed under the Dance at the Innocentsat Paris in 1424. 2

At the beginning of the text in the early French editionof the Danse Macabre, we have only the words " la danseMacabre s'appelle," but no specific mention is made of theauthor of the verses. John Lydgate, in his translation ofthem from the French, and which was most probablyadopted in many places in England where the paintingoccurred, speaks of " the Frenche Machabrees daunce,"and " the daunce of Machabree." At the end, " Machabreethe Doctoure" is abruptly and unconnectedly introducedat the bottom of the page. It is not in the French printedcopy, from the text of which Lydgate certainly varies inseveral respects. It remains, therefore, to ascertain whetherthese words belong to Lydgate, or to whom else; not thatit is a matter of much importance.

l Bibl. Med. et Inf. JEUt. torn. v. p. 1. 2 Recherches sur les DansesQes Morts, pp. 79, 80.