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The Dance of Death.

himself: " It cannot be denied that were there nothing tooppose to this passage, it would seem to constitute verystrong evidence that Holbein, who did not die until theyear 1554, was not the author of the designs in question ;but I am firmly persuaded that it refers in reality, not to thedesigner, but to the artist who had been employed, underhis direction, to engrave the designs in wood, and whosename, there appears reason to believe, was Hans Lutzen-berger. 12 Holbein, I am of opinion, had, shortly before theyear 1538, sold the forty-one blocks which had been sometime previously executed, to the booksellers of Lyons, andhad at the same time given him a promise of others whichhe had lately designed, as a continuation of the series, andwere then in the hands of the wood-engraver. The wood-engraver, I suppose, died before he had completed his task,and the correspondent of the bookseller, who had probablydeferred his publication in expectation of the new blocks,wrote from Basle to Lyons to inform his friend of thedisappointment occasioned by the artist's death. It isprobable that this information was not given very circum-stantially, as to the real cause of the delay, and that theperson who wrote the dedication of the book might havebelieved the designer and engraver to be one and the sameperson : it is still more probable that he thought thedistinction of little consequence to his reader, and willinglyomitted to go into details which would have rendered hisquaint moralizing in the above passage less admissible.Besides, the additional cuts there spoken of (eight cuts ofthe Dance of Death and four of boys) were afterwardsfinished (doubtless by another wood-engraver, who hadbeen brought up under the eye of Holbein), and are notapparently inferior, whether in respect of design or execution,to the others. In short, these designs have always beenascribed to Holbein, and designedly ranked amongst hisfinest works." 13

Mr. Ottley having admitted that the edition of the Danceof Death, printed in quarto, at Lyons, 1538, is the earliestwith which we are at present acquainted, proceeds to state

12 It would be of some importance if the date of Lutzenberger's deatheould be ascertained. 13 An Inquiry into the Origin and early Historyof Engraving, 1816, 4to. vol. ii. p. 759.