76 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 195. 



And that he — 



" Exhausted worlds and then imagined new." 



There is no passion that he has not pourtrayed, 

 and laid bare in its beauty or deformity ; no feel- 

 ing or affection to which his genius has not given 

 the stamp of immortality : and does he want an 

 interpreter ? It is treading on dangerous ground 

 to attempt to improve him. Even Mb. Knight, 

 enthusiast as he is in his veneration for Shak- 

 speare, and who, by his noble editions of the poet's 

 works, has won the admiration and secured the 

 gratitude of every lover of the poet, has gone too 

 far in his emendations when he changes a line in 

 Romeo and Juliet from 



to 



Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell." 



" Hence will I to my ghostly friar's close cell." 



As in the latter case the line will not scan unless 

 the word "friar" be reduced to a monosyllable, 

 which, on reflection, I think Mb, Knight will be 

 inclined to admit. But my paper is, I fear, ex- 

 tending to a limit beyond which you have occa- 

 sionally warned your correspondents not to go, 

 and I must therefore draw my remarks to a close, 

 with a hope that not any offence will be taken 

 where none is intended by those to whom any of 

 my observations may apply. Geokge Blink. 



Canonbury. 



"the dance of death. 



Amongst the numerous emblematic works, it 

 has often appeared to me that the above work 

 should be republished entire ; to give any part of 

 it would be spoiling a most admirable series. I 

 should desire to see it executed not as a fac-slmile, 

 but improved by good modern artists. The his- 

 tory of " The Dance of Death " is too long and too 

 obscure to enter upon here ; but from the general 

 tenor of the accounts and criticisms of the work, 

 it does not appear to have originated at all with 

 Hans Holbein, or even his father, who also really 

 painted it at Basil, in Switzerland, but to have 

 had its origin in more remote times, as quoted 

 in several authors, that anciently monasteries 

 usually had a painted representation of a Death's 

 Dance upon the walls. It is a subject, therefore, 

 open to any artist, nor could it be said he had 

 pirated anything if he treated the subject after 

 his own fashion. " The Dance of Death " begins 

 of course with king, the queen, the bishop, the 

 lawyer, the lovers, &c., and ends with the child, 

 whom Death is leading away from the weeping 

 mother. The original plates of Hollar, from 

 Holbein's drawings, are possibly still extant, but 

 they are by no means perfect, although admirable 

 in expression. The deaths or skeletons are very 

 ill-drawn as to the anatomical structure, and were 

 they better the work would be excellent. The 



Death lugging off the fat abbot is inimitable; and 

 the gallant way he escorts the lady abbess out the 

 convent door is very good. I have the engravings 

 by Hollar, and have made some of the designs 

 afresh, intending to lithograph them at some 

 future day ; but there being thirty subjects in all, 

 the work would be a difficult task. Mr. J. B. 

 Yates might, indeed, with his excellent collection 

 of Emblemata, revive this old and beautiful taste 

 now in abeyance : it is now rarely practised by 

 our painters. There is, however, a very fine 

 picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition, by 

 Mr. Goodall, which is, strictly speaking, an emblem, 

 though the artist calls it an historical episode. 

 Now it appears to me an episode cannot be re- 

 duced into a representation ; it might embrace a 

 complete picture in writing, but as I read the 

 picture it is an emblem, and would have been still 

 more perfect had the painter treated it accord- 

 ingly. The old man at the helm of the barge 

 might well represent Strafford, because, though he 

 holds the tiller, he is not engaged in steering 

 right, his eyes are not directed to his port. 

 Charles himself, rightly enough, has his back to the 

 port, and is truly not engaged in manly affairs, 

 nor attending to his duty ; but the sentiment of 

 frivolity here painted cannot, I should say, attach 

 itself to him, lor he is not to be reproached with 

 idling away his time with women and children, as 

 this more strictly must be laid to his son. But 

 the port where some grim-looking men are se- 

 riously waiting for him, completes a very happy 

 and poetical idea, but incomplete as an emblem, 

 which it really is ; and were the emblematic rules 

 more cultivated, it would have told its story much 

 better. 



At present, the taste of the day lies in more 

 direct caricature, and our volatile friend Punch 

 does the needful in his wicked sallies of wit, and 

 his fertile pencil. His sharp rubs are perhaps 

 more effective to John Bull's temper, who can take 

 a blow with Punch's truncheon and bear no malice 

 after it, — the heavy lectures of the ancients are 

 not so well suited to his constitution. 



^Veld Taylob. 



Bayswater. 



iHt'nnr ^attS. 



Old Lines newly revived. — The old lines of 

 spondees and dactyls are just now applicable : — 

 " Conturbabantur Constantinopolitanl 

 Innumerabilibus solicitudinibus." 



AY. COLLYNS. 



Harlow. 



Inscription near Cirencester. — In Earl Bathurst's 

 park, near Cirencester, stands a building — the 

 resort in the summer months of occasional pic-nic 

 parties. During one of these visits, at which I 



