Cf. Ecclesiasticus, xiv. 18: "As of the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall, and some grow." Some verses attributed to Simonides (translation by Merivale) commence thus:

"All human things are subject to decay:

And well the man of Chios [Homer] tuned his lay-
'Like leaves on trees the race of man is found.'"

Mimnermus, the Greek poet of Colophon, in the seventh century B.C., likewise used the same Homeric simile in his plaintive elegiac poetry on the fate of man, the miseries of old age, and the certainty of death.

Francis Quarles (1592-1644) has well summed up the memento mori idea of his time:

"If I must die, I'll snatch at every thing
That may but mind me of my latest breath;
Death's-heads, graves, knells, blacks,

Tombs, all these shall bring

Into my soul such useful thoughts of death,
That this sable king of fears

Shall not catch me unawares.'

There are numerous references to memento mori objects (finger-rings, &c.) in old English literature. One of the commonest memento mori devices was a skull and crossed bones, generally with the inscription, "Respice finem" or "Memento mori." Shakespeare alludes several times to such devices. In the Merchant of Venice (act i., scene 2), Portia says: "I had rather be married to a Death's head. with a bone in his mouth than to either of these." In the First Part of Henry IV (act iii., scene 3), Falstaff says to Bardolph: "I make as good use of it [Bardolph's face] as many a man doth of a death's head or a memento mori." In the Second Part of Henry IV (act ii., scene 4), Falstaff says to Doll Tearsheet: "Peace, good Doll! do not speak like a death's head; do not bid me remember mine end." In Love's Labour's Lost (act v., scene 2), Biron compares the countenance of Holofernes to "a death's face in a

ring"; and in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays (see later on) the following passage occurs: "I'll keep it as they keep death's heads in rings, to cry Memento to me.”

It is to be noted that Shakespeare ridicules commonplace and hackneyed observations or quotations on the uncertainty of human life and the certainty of death. Thus, in the Second Part of Henry IV (act iii., scene 2) he makes Justice Shallow say, "Certain, 'tis certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die.-How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair?"

E.

Modern Art relating to Death.

Comparison of Modern and Mediaeval Ideas.

AMONGST many modern pictures bearing on the subject we may recall the "Pursuit of Fortune" (at Berlin) by R. Henneberg (1826-1876), in which a knight riding his fatal race after Fortune is attended by Death in the guise of his squire. This picture has some of the weird and ghastly fancy of G. A. Bürger's ballad Lenore (1774).121 Arnold Boecklin (1827-1901), whose Isle of the Dead and Vita Somnium Breve are famous, has in a portrait (now in the National Gallery of Berlin) of himself in 1872, represented Death as a fiddler behind him (see Fig. 26), much in the same way as in the sixteenth century Sir Brian Tuke (see back, Fig. 25) had himself painted by Holbein, with Death holding a scythe behind him waiting for the hour-glass to run out. Both Holbein and Boecklin are claimed by Switzerland as Swiss artists. Boecklin paints himself without any expression of fear on his face, but rather as listening curiously to Death's tune, reminding one somewhat of W. S. Landor's verses :

"Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:

Of his strange language all I know

Is, there is not a word of fear."

121 This poem is true enough to nature, if Lenore's ghastly ride be regarded as a nightmare dream or as a delusion during the delirium period of fever in the case of a person familiar with, or rather, "steeped in," legends of vampires and such-like. This ballad was translated into English by Sir Walter Scott (1799), who doubtless admired Bürger's weird and spirited style. Bürger perhaps knew some of the ballads in Thomas Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," which appeared in 1765.

With this may be compared the lines of Andrew Marvell (1621-1678):

. . . At my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity."

Boecklin was perhaps one of the numerous distinguished men, like Michel de Montaigne, whose thoughts at various periods of their lives have frequently turned to the idea of death. Montaigne, in discussing the theme that "to study philosophy is to learn to die," wrote: There is nothing in which I have more constantly exercised my thoughts than in the idea of death, even in the most licentious season of my youth." Again, he advised: "In our feasts and revels, let there evermore occur to us, as a refrain, the thought of our condition."

By Boecklin also is "Die Pest," a picture of Death mounted on a winged monster being carried through the streets of a town, in which persons are lying dead or dying; others are fleeing in terror.

The designs of several of the numerous allegorical paintings by G. F. Watts may be mentioned as relating more or less decidedly to the subject of death (most of these are now to be seen in the National Gallery of British Art the "Tate Gallery"-in London): "Love and Death" (a majestic figure of Death, draped in white, is represented making his way through a portal, pushing Love aside into garlands of roses); "Love Triumphant " (Love rising triumphant, apparently over time and death); "Death Crowning Innocence" (Innocence, symbolized by an infant, is tenderly held in the lap of a large-winged figure of Death); "The Messenger" (the messenger of death is a stately figure appearing to a tired-out

man reclining in his chair at the end of his long life's work); "The Court of Death" (the aged and infirm, the vigorous warrior, the young woman in all her radiant

beauty, the little child, and the helpless cripple, are amongst those who have to appear at the dark court of Death); "Mammon" (the ugly, vulgar, tasteless, insolent,