2i 4

The Dance of Death.

been in possession of a tenth part of the materials thatwere necessary for the proper investigation of his subject,nor does he appear to have even seen them. The verybest judges of whatever relates to the history and art ofengraving are quite satisfied that most of the persons whohave written on them, with the exception of Mr. Ottley,and of the modest and urbane Monsieur Peignot, are liableto the charge of extreme inaccuracy and imperfection intheir treatment of the Dance of Death; and the list ofsuch writers may now be closed with the addition of HerrHegner.

Some of his positions are now to be stated and exa-mined.

He makes Holbein the author of a new Dance of Death inthe Crozat or Gallitzin drawings in Indian ink which havebeen already described in the present dissertation, addingthat he also engraved them, and suppressing any mentionin this place of the monogram on one of the cuts which heelsewhere admits not to belong to Holbein. Soon afterwards,and with very good reason, he doubts the originality of thedrawings, which he says M. de Mechel caused to be copiedby Rudolph Schellenberg, a skilful artist, already men-tioned as the author of a Dance of Death of his owninvention \ and proceeds to state, that from these copiesDe Mechel employed some inferior persons in his serviceto make engravings ; advancing all this without the accom-paniment of any proof whatever, and in direct contradictionto De Mechel's authority of having himself engraved them.An apparently bitter enemy to De Mechel, whose posthu-mous materials, now in the library at Basle, he neverthelessadmits to have used for his work, he invidiously enlargeson the discrepancies between his engravings and theLyons wood-cuts, both in size and manner ; and thenconcludes that they were copied from the wood-cuts, thecopyist allowing himself the privilege of making arbitraryvariations, especially in the figure of the Eve in the secondcut, which, he says, is of the family of Boucher, who, inspite of Hegner's opinion, is regarded by better judges asa clever painter. Whether the remarks on any deviationsof De Mechel's prints from the Crozat drawings are justor otherwise can now be decided by comparison only, and