The Dance of Death 213

in " Piers Plowman? Now all the stanzas of Lydgate aregiven, and not a single one is to be found in " PiersPlowman."

And this reviewer most ingeniously and scientifically de-nominates the skeleton figure of Death " the Gothic monsterof Holbein!"

A short time after the completion of the present Dis-sertation, the author accidentally became possessed of arecently published German life of Holbein, in which nota single addition of importance to what has been gleanedfrom preceding writers can possibly be found. It containsa general, but extremely superficial account of the worksof that artist, including the Dance of Death, which, as amatter of course, is ascribed to him. As the author, a Mr.Ulrich Hegner, who is said to be a Swiss gentleman andamateur, has not conducted himself with that urbanity andpoliteness which might have been looked for from such acharacter, and has thought proper, in adverting to the slightEssay by the present writer, prefixed, at the instance of thelate Mr. Edwards, to his publication of Hollar's etchingsof the Dance of Death, to speak of it with a degree ofcontempt, which, even with all its imperfections, othersmay think it may not have deserved ; the above gentlemanwill have but little reason to complain should he meetwith a somewhat uncourteous retort in the course of thefollowing remarks on his compilation.

Had Mr. Hegner written with a becoming diffidence inhis opinions, his work might have commanded and deservedrespect, though greatly abounding in error and false conceit.He has undertaken a task for which he has shown himselfwholly unqualified, and with much unseemly arrogance,and its usual concomitant, ignorance, has assumed tohimself a monopoly of information on the subject whichhe discusses. His arguments, if worthy of the name, are,generally speaking, of a most weak and flimsy texture.In support of his dogmatical opinion that the originaldesigns for the Lyons Dance of Death exclusively belongto Holbein he has not adduced a single fact. He has not