Promenade" (Fig. 7), represents a fine couple of young lovers quite unaware that a malignant little figure of Death is watching them from his lurking-place behind a tree. Cf. Bishop Reginald Heber (1783–1826) : 66 Death rides on every passing breeze, He lurks in every flower: Each season has its own disease, [In regard to the lurking figure of Death, the following verses from The Odes of Confucius (rendered by L. CranmerByng, London, 1904, p. 21) may be compared, though they perhaps referred to some special tragedy that had happened :"Two youths into their boats descend, Two lives go drifting far from me; Death lurking at the river's bend." The contrast between the thoughtless gaiety of youth and the apparently cruel severity of "fate" has often served as a theme for artists and poets. Cf. Thomas Gray : : and, also from Gray (The Bard, II., ii., line 9):— Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ; That hush'd in grim repose expects his evening prey." It is only to the few that there comes early in life a pang of sadness in regard to "beauty that must die and joy, whose hand is ever at his lips bidding adieu."] A woodcut of 1491, representing three armed knights attacked by skeletons (emblematic perhaps of the powers of darkness), is supposed by some to be an early work of Dürer. A well-known woodcut of Death and a Fool" is one of the illustrations to Sebastian Brant's Stultifera Navis ("Narrenschiff," or "Ship of Fools ") that have been ascribed by some critics to the youthful Dürer. The first edition of Brant's satirical poem was printed at Basel in 1494, by J. Bergmann von Olpe. Fresh illustrations were added in later editions (up to 1497). By Dürer also are the following: A woodcut (1510) of Death and a soldier; a rough drawing (in the British Museum) of Death holding a scythe, riding on a lean horse (perhaps emblematic of a spreading pestilence), with the inscription, ME(M)ENTO MEI and the date 1505; an early drawing of Death swooping down upon a rider, who is being thrown from his horse (emblematic of sudden and unexpected death). In Dürer's" Wappen des Todes" (Fig. 8), a copperplate engraving dated 1503, a shield bearing the device of a skull as the emblem of death is surmounted by a helmet and the wings of the "angel of death." Death himself, who supports these arms, is represented as a hairy satyrlike "man of the woods" (like a "savage man "in heraldry) in the act of kissing a lady, who appears to be pregnant. Thus the lady may be taken as representing Life, helping through Love to feed Death by giving birth to children. She does indeed support death, for without life there could be no death, and her unborn child is already, by the pledge of that kiss, predestined, like every living being, to yield to the universal conqueror. Cf. Edward Bulwer Lytton (1805-1873), the novelist, in his poem on Love and Death: "From Love, if the infant Receiveth his breath, The love that gave life Yields a subject to Death." A biological paradox is thus expressed by Anatole France : "All union of the sexes is a sign of [coming] death; and we could not know love were we to live indefinitely." FIG. 8.-Dürer's so-called "Wappen des Todes." (Engraving in the British Museum.) In an engraving 46 by the "Meister H.W.," dated 46 Illustrated by Hermann Peters, in his work, Der Arzt und die Heilkunst in der deutschen Vergangenheit, Leipzig, 1900, p. 130. 1482 (Fig. 9), Death, a hideous shrivelled figure of skin and bones (the German Hautskelett), is seen striding through the country, and as he goes he hurls his poisoned darts at all he meets. In the background is one of those picturesque Mediaeval fortified towns with many spires and turrets, cramped up within its narrow walls, and FIG. 9.-The March of Death. Possibly an allegorical representation of the fatal spreading of an epidemic. (Engraving by the "Meister H.W.," 1482.) Note the youth climbing a tree to escape. likely to be visited by one of those fatal epidemics, spreading through the land from one town to another, like that of which, perhaps, the engraving in question is an allegorical representation. A copperplate engraving of the end of the fifteenth century shows death (a skeleton just covered with skin, the usual Hautskelett type) playing chess with a king or prince. A pope, a bishop, and other ecclesiastics and noblemen are grouped around the table, at the head of which stands an angel, holding an hour-glass.47 An engraving by the "Meister des Amsterdamer Kabinets" (" Meister von 1480") represents Death (in the form of the emaciated Hautskelett, with toad and snake) warning a fashionably dressed youth. The subject of another engraving by the same master is the story of the three living kings coming upon three dead ones (see Fig. 10). Of the thirteenth-century tale or legend ("morality" story) of three living men meeting three dead men ("les trois morts et les trois vifs "), various versions exist. One in Latin rhyming verse narrates "Cum apertam sepulturam Viri tres aspicerent Ac orribilem figuram Intus ibi cernerent," &c. It formed a favourite subject for artists, and at one time it was supposed to have inspired the preliminary versions of the "Dance of Death" ("Danse Macabre," or, in Latin, "Chorea Machabaeorum," "Chorea Leti," "Chorea Mortis"), a subject which became so popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "Le dit des trois morts et des trois vifs," and the doleful talk of the dead to the living, may well be contrasted with a story of the Chinese mystic, Chuang Tzu, to which my attention was kindly drawn by Mr. John Allan: One day the Chinese philosopher came upon a bleached human skull and (Hamlet-wise) mused as to what kind of a man it had once formed part of. In the night he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and told him that after death there were no troubles, Illustrated by F. X. Kraus, Geschichte der Christlichen Kunst, 1897, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 449, fig. 270. 48 Musings of a Chinese Mystic, London, 1906, p. 84. |