7°

The Dance of Death.

Evidence, but of a very slight and unsatisfactory nature,has been adduced that Holbein painted some kind of aDeath's Dance on the walls of a house at Basle. Whetherthis was only a copy of the old Macaber subject, or someother of his own invention, cannot now be ascertained.Bishop Burnet, in his Letters from Switzerland, 1 states that" there is a Dance which he painted on the walls of a housewhere he used to drink; yet so worn out that very little isnow to be seen, except shapes and postures, but these showthe exquisiteness of the hand." It is much to be regrettedthat this painting was not in a state to have enabled thebishop to have been more particular in his description.He then mentions the older Dance, which he places " alongthe side of the convent of the Augustinians (meaning theDominicans), now the French church, so worn out sometime ago that they ordered the best painter they had to laynew colour on it, but this is so ill done, that one hadrather see the dark shadow of Holbein's pencil than thiscoarse work." Here he speaks obscurely, and adopts theerror that Holbein had some hand in it.

Keysler, a man of considerable learning and ingenuity,and the author of a very excellent book of Travels, mentionsthe old painting at Basle, and adds, that " Holbein had alsodrawn and painted a Death's Dance, and had likewisepainted, as it were, a duplicate of this piece on anotherhouse, but which time has entirely obliterated." 2 We arehere again left entirely in the dark as to the first mentionedpainting, and its difference from the other. Charles Patin,an earlier authority than the two preceding travellers, andwho was at Basle in 1671, informs us that strangers behold,with a considerable degree of pleasure, the walls of a houseat the corner of a little street in the above town, which arecovered from top to bottom with paintings by Holbein,that would have done honour to the commands of a greatprince, whilst they are, in fact, nothing more than thepainter's reward to the master of a tavern for some mealsthat he had obtained. 3 In the list of Holbein's works, in

1 Letters containing an account of what seemed most remarkable inSwitzerland, Italy, &c. By G. Burnet, D.D. Rotterdam, 1686, 8vo.

?, 265. 2 Travels through Germany, &c. i. 138, edit 4to.

Relations historiques et curieuses de voyages en Allemagne, &aAmst. 1605. i2mo. p. 124.