The Dance of Death. Douce Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ type="note">73 On the pillars of the church at Fescamp, in Normandy, the Dance of Death was sculptured in stone, and it is in evidence that the castle of Blois had formerly this subject represented in some part of it.

      In the course of some recent alterations in the new church of the Protestants at Strasburg, formerly a Dominican convent, the workmen accidentally uncovered a Dance of Death that had been whitewashed, either for the purpose of obliteration or concealment. This painting seems to differ from the usual Macaber Dance, not always confined like that to two figures only, but having occasionally several grouped together. M. Peignot has given some more curious particulars relating to it, extracted from a literary journal by M. Schweighæuser, of Strasburg.74 It is to be hoped that engravings of it will be given.

      Chorier has mentioned the mills of Macabrey, and also a piece of land with the same appellation, which he says was given to the chapter of St. Maurice at Vienne in Dauphiné, by one Marc Apvril, a citizen of that place. He adds, that he is well aware of the Dance of Macabre. Is it not, therefore, probable, that the latter might have existed at Vienne, and have led to the corruption of the above citizen’s name by the common people.75

      Misson has noticed a Dance of Death in St. Mary’s church at Berlin, and obscurely referred to another in some church at Nuremberg.

      Bruckmann, in his Epistolæ Itinerariæ, vol. v. Epist. xxxii. describes several churches and other religious buildings at Vienna, and among them the monastery of the Augustinians, where, he says, there is a painting of a house with Death entering one of the windows by a ladder.

      In the same letter he describes a chapel of Death in the above monastery, which had been decorated with moral paintings by Father Abraham à St. Clara, one of the monks. Among these were, 1. Death demolishing a student. 2. Death attacking a hunter who had just killed a stag. 3. Death in an apothecary’s shop, breaking the phials and medicine boxes. 4. Death playing at draughts with a nobleman. 5. Harlequin making grimaces at Death. A description of this chapel, and its painting was published after the good father’s decease. Nuremberg, 1710, 8vo.

      The only specimen of it in Holland that has occurred on the present occasion is in the celebrated Orange-Salle, which constitutes the grand apartment of the country seat belonging to the Prince of Orange in the wood adjacent to the Hague. In three of its compartments, Death is represented by skeletons darting their arrows against a host of opponents.76

      Nor has Italy furnished any materials for the present essay. Blainville has, indeed, described a singular and whimsical representation of Death in the church of St. Peter the Martyr, at Naples, in the following words. “At the entrance on the left is a marble with a representation of Death in a grotesque form. He has two crowns on his head, with a hawk on his fist, as ready for hunting. Under his feet are extended a great number of persons of both sexes and of every age. He addresses them in these lines:

      Eo sò la morte che caccio

      Sopera voi jente mondana,

      La malata e la sana,

      Di, e notte la percaccio;

      Non fugge, vessuna intana

      Per scampare dal mio laczio

      Che tutto il mondo abbraczio,

      E tutta la jente humana

      Perchè nessuno se conforta,

      Ma prenda spavento

      Ch’eo per comandamento

      Di prender à chi viene la sorte.

      Sia vi per gastigamento

      Questa figura di morte,

      E pensa vie di fare forte

      Tu via di salvamento.

      Opposite to the figure of Death is that of a man dressed like a tradesman or merchant, who throws a bag of money on a table, and speaks thus:

      Tutti ti volio dare

      Se mi lasci scampare.

      To which Death answers:

      Se mi potesti dare

      Quanto si pote dimandare

      Non te pote scampare la morte

      Se te viene la sorte.77

      It can hardly be supposed that this subject was not known in Spain, though nothing relating to it seems to have been recorded, if we except the poem that has been mentioned in p. 25, but no Spanish painting has been specified that can be called a regular Macaber Dance. There are grounds, however, for believing that there was such a painting in the cathedral of Burgos, as a gentleman known to the author saw there the remains of a skeleton figure on a whitewashed wall.

      CHAPTER IV

      Macaber Dance in England. – St. Paul’s. – Salisbury. – Wortley Hall. – Hexham. – Croydon. – Tower of London. – Lines in Pierce Plowman’s Vision supposed to refer to it.

      We are next to examine this subject in relation to its existence in our own country. On the authority of the work ascribed to Walter de Mapes, already noticed in p. 24, it is not unreasonable to infer that paintings of the Macaber Dance were coeval with that writer, though no specimens of it that now remain will warrant the conclusion. We know that it existed at Old Saint Paul’s. Stowe informs us that there was a great cloister on the north side of the church, environing a plot of ground, of old time called Pardon church-yard. He then states, that “about this cloyster was artificially and richly painted the Dance of Machabray, or Dance of Death, commonly called the Dance of Paul’s: the like whereof was painted about St. Innocent’s cloyster at Paris: the meters or poesie of this dance were translated out of French into English, by John Lidgate, Monke of Bury, the picture of Death leading all estates; at the dispence of Jenken Carpenter in the reigne of Henry the Sixt.”78 Lydgate’s verses were first printed at the end of Tottell’s edition of the translation of his Fall of Princes, from Boccaccio, 1554, folio, and afterwards, in Sir W. Dugdale’s History of St. Paul’s cathedral.79 In another place Stowe records that “on the 10th April, 1549, the cloister of St. Paul’s church, called Pardon church-yard, with the Dance of Death, commonly called the Dance of Paul’s, about the same cloister, costly and cunningly wrought, and the chappel in the midst of the same church-yard, were all begun to be pulled down.”80 This spoliation was made by the Protector Somerset, in order to obtain materials for building his palace in the Strand.81

      The single figure that remained in the Hungerford chapel at Salisbury cathedral, previously to its demolition, was formerly known by the title of “Death and the Young Man,” and was, undoubtedly, a portion of the Macaber Dance, as there was close to it another compartment belonging to the same subject. In 1748, a print of these figures was published, accompanied with the following inscription, which differs from that in Lydgate. The young man says:

      Alasse Dethe alasse a blesful thyng thou were

      Yf thou woldyst spare us yn ouwre lustynesse.

      And cum to wretches that bethe of hevy chere

      Whene thay ye clepe to slake their dystresse

      But owte alasse thyne own sely selfwyldnesse

      Crewelly werneth me that seygh wayle and wepe

      To close there then that after ye doth clepe.

      Death answers:

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