The Dance of Death, xoi

JTj , p. 194- The cuts are by the artist mentioned in No.

IX. of those originals, whose mark is ^[ , which is here

found on five of them. They are all reversed, except thenobleman j and although not devoid of merit, they are notonly very inferior to the fine originals, but also to theItalian copies in No. I. The first two subjects are newlydesigned \ the two Devils in that of the Pope are omitted,and there are several variations, always for the worse, inmany of the others, of which a tasteless example is foundin that of Death and the soldier, where the thigh-bone, asthe very appropriate weapon of Death, is here converted

into the common-place dart. The mark }-f i in the

original cut of the Duchess in bed, is here omitted, with-out the substitution of any other. This edition wasrepublished by the same persons, without any variation,successively in 1557, 1566, 1567, and i573- 4

Papillon, in his " Traite sur la gravure en bois," 5 whennoticing the above-mentioned mark, has, amidst theinnumerable errors that abound in his otherwise curiouswork, been led into a mistake of an exceedingly ludicrousnature, by converting the owner of the mark into a cardinal.He had found it on the cuts to an edition of Faerno'sfables, printed at Antwerp, 1567, which is dedicated toCardinal Borromeo by Silvio Antoniano, professor ofBelles Lettres at Rome, afterwards secretary to Pope PiusIV. and at length himself a Cardinal. He was the editorof Faerno's work. Another of Papillon's blunders isequally curious and absurd. He had seen an editionof the Emblems of Sambucus, with cuts, bearing the

mark ^f*, in which there is a fine portrait of the author

with his favourite dog, and under the latter the wordbombo, which Papillon gravely states to be the nameof the engraver; and finding the same word on anotherof the emblems which has also the dog, he concludes

that all the cuts which have not the /T* were engraved

4 That of 1557 has a frontispiece with Death pointing to his hour-glass when addressing a German soldier. 5 Tom. i. p. 238. 525.