The Dance of Death,

45

Salisbury.-of London-refer to it

s subject inin our ownr of the workipes, alreadyunreasonablethe Macaber

that writer,

it that now:now that itus that there

the church,ailed Pardon \

this cloysterf Machabray,Lee of Paul's:ent's cloystere were trans-igate, Monkestates 3 at the

dispence of Jenken Carpenter in the reigne of Henry theSixt." 1 Lydgate's verses were first printed at the end ofTottell's edition ox the translation of his Fall of Princes,from Boccaccio, 1554, folio, and afterwards in Sir W.Dugdale's History of St. Paul's cathedral. 2 In anotherplace Stowe records that "on the 10th April, 1549, thecloister of St. Paul's church, called Pardon churchyard,with the Dance of Death, commonly called the Danceof Paul's, about the same cloyster, costly and cunninglywrought, and the chappel in the midst of the same church-yard, were all begun to be pulled down." 3 This spoliationwas made by the Protector Somerset, in order to obtainmaterials for building his palace in the Strand. 4

The single figure that remained in the Hungerfordchapel at Salisbury cathedral, previously to its demolition,was formerly known by the title of " Death and the YoungMan," and was, undoubtedly, a portion of the MacaberDance, as there was close to it another compartmentbelonging to the same subject. In 1748, a print of thesefigures was published, accompanied with the followinginscription, which differs from that in Lydgate. Theyoung man says :

Alasse Dethe alasse a blesful thyng thou wereYf thou woldyst spare us yn ouwre lustynesse.And cum to wretches that bethe of hevy chereWhene thay ye clepe to slake their dystresseBut owte alasse thyne own sely selfwyldnesseCrewelly werneth me that seygh wayle and wepeTo close there then that after ye doth clepe.

1 Survay of London, p. 615, edit. 1618, 4 to.

2 In Tottell's edition these verses are accompanied with a single wood-cut of Death leading up all ranks of mortals. This was afterwardscopied by Hollar, as to general design, in Dugdale's St. Paul's, and inthe Monasticon.

3 Annales, p. 596, edit. 1631, folio. Sir Thomas More, treating ofthe remembrance of Death, has these words : " But if we not only herethis word Death, but also let sink into our heartes, the very fantasyeand depe imaginacion thereof, we shall parceive therby that* we wernever so gretly moved by the beholding of the Daunce of Deathpictured in Poules, as we shal fele ourself stered and altered by thefeling of that imaginacion in our hertes. And no marvell. For thosePictures expresse only y e lothely figure of our dead bony bodies, bitenaway y e flesh," &c—Works, p. 77, edit. 1557, folio.

4 Heylin's Hist, of the Reformation, p, 73.