occurs at the end)er, in Goldasti'suum a, Roderico

a hermit, whose; first is describeda civilian, and the

gold and jewels.>f their respective

horrible spectresI with worms, whoogance. This isnors et trois vifs"Dtherwise cannotalternate rhymes,:hor of Philibert

the soul and theid sometimes tolis of it both in

le hermit in thisVasari in his lifesessed himself of>ject of it. He)rseback who isdrea Uguzzioneideous figure ofs and conditions>wded his picturelich were oblite-le has preservedpples, it should:h apostrophiseshis account of>ry of the Threerise, in his Pisar hen describingare all portraits,me variation as

Tne Dance of Death.

2 9

B, 4 to.i- 359-

12 Baldi-

Now the story of Les trois mors et /es^ trois vifs, wasprefixed to the painting of the Macaber Dance in thechurchyard of the Innocents at Paris, and had also beensculptured over the portal of the church, by order of theDuke de Berry in 1408. 14 It is found in numerous manu-script copies of Horae and other service-books prefixed tothe burial office. All the printed editions of the MacaberDance contain it, but with some variation, the figure ofSaint Macarius in his cell not being always introduced.It occurs in many of the printed service-books, and insome of our own for the use of Salisbury. The earliestwood engraving of it is in the black book of the "15signa Judicii," where two young men are running away toavoid the three Deaths, or skeletons, one of whom isrising from a grave. It is copied in Bibliotheca Spen-ceriana, vol. i. p. xxx.

From the preceding statement then there is every reasonto infer that the name ' of Macaber, so frequently andwithout authority applied to an unknown German poet,really belongs to the Saint, and that his name has undergonea slight and obvious corruption. The word Macabre isfound only in French authorities; and the Saint's name,which, in the modern orthography of that language, isMacaire, would, in many ancient i aanuscripts, be writtenMacabre instead of Macaure, the letter b being substitutedfor that of u from the caprice, ignorance, or carelessness inthe transcribers.

As no German copy of the verses describing the paintingcan, with any degree of certainty, be regarded as the original,we must substitute the Latin text, which may, perhaps, havean equal claim to originality. The author, at the beginning,has an address to the spectators, in which he tells themthat the painting is called the Dance of Macaber. Thereis an end, therefore, of the name of Macaber, as the authorof the verses, leaving it only as applicable to the painting,and almost if not altogether confirmatory of the precedingconjecture. The French version, from which Lydgate madehis translation, nearly agrees with the Latin. Lydgate,

14 Du Breul, Antiq. de Paris, 1612,4^. p. 834, where the verses thataccompany the sculpture are given. See likewise Sandrart, Acad.Picture, p. 101.