74 The Dance of Death.

German edition, if he really intended by it a completework; but it is most likely that he adverted to someseparate impressions of the cuts with printed inscriptionson them, but which are only the titles of the respectivecharacters or subjects. To such impressions M. Malpe hascertainly referred, adding that they have, at top, passagesfrom the Bible in German, and verses at bottom in the samelanguage. Jansen follows him as to the verses at bottomonly. Now, on forty-one of these separate impressions, inthe collection of the accurate and laborious author of thebest work on the origin and early history of engraving thathas ever appeared, and on several others in the presentwriter's possession, neither texts of scripture, nor verses atbottom, are to be found, and nothing more than the above-mentioned German titles of the characters. M. Huber, inhis " Manuel des curieux et des amateurs de l'art," vol. i. p.155, after inaccurately stating that Holbein engraved thesecuts, proceeds to observe, that in order to form a properjudgment of their merit, it is necessary to see the earliestimpressions, printed on one side only of the paper; andrefers to twenty-one of them in the cabinet of M. Otto, ofLeipsig, but without stating any letter-press as belonging tothem, or regarding them as a part of any German edition ofthe work.

In the public library of Basle there are proof impressions,on four leaves, of all the cuts which had appeared in theedition of 1538, except that of the astrologer. Over eachis the name of the subject printed in German, and withoutany verses or letter-press whatever at bottom.

It is here necessary to mention that the first knownedition in which these cuts were used, namely, that of 1538,was accompanied with French verses, descriptive of thesubjects. In an edition that soon afterwards appeared,these French verses were translated into Latin by GeorgeyEmylius, a German divine; and in another edition, pub-lished at Basle, in 1554, the Latin verses were continued.In both these cases, had there been any former Germanverses, would they not have been retained in preference %

There is a passage, however, in Gesner's Pandectse, asupplemental volume of great rarity to his well-knownBibliotheca, that slightly adverts to a German edition of