214 REVIEWS — THE DANCE OF DEATH. 



suggested much of the same poet's imagery in his " Lament for the 

 Makars," where he pourtrays Omnipotent Death as taking 



" All estates, 



Princes, prelates, and potentates, 



Baith rich and poor of all degree ;" 



and then describes his conquests over the knight in the field, the babe 

 at its mother's breast, the captain, the clerk, the physician, 



" The lady in hour full of beautie ;" &c. 

 The correspondence between the scenic devices of the painter and the 

 poet is still more obvious in the vision of Antichrist, introduced in 

 the twenty-first passus of "Piers Ploughman's Vision." This poem, 

 the production of an ecclesiastic, and a "Wycklifite, and written some- 

 what earlier than the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, abounds in satirical 

 allusions to the excesses of the clergy. In the passage referred to, 

 Antichrist enters, with Pride bearing his banner proudly about, and 

 speedily hundreds crowd to follow him. The pageant is then described 

 in a singularly vigorous passage, in which Nature sends forth diseases 

 at the command of Conscience. The scene is pictured with a frightful 

 vividness, and is supposed by Ellis — but without any sufiicient ground, 

 — to have suggested to Milton his sublime, though harrowing descrip- 

 tion of the Lazar-house, in B. xi. of the Paradise Lost. This loath- 

 some procession having gone by, the poet continues his vision thus : — 



" And then met these men, 



E'er minstrels might pipe, 



And ere heralds of arms 



Haden described Lords, 



Eld, the hoary 



That was in the van-ward, 



And bare the banner before Death ; 



By right he it claimed. 



***** 

 Death came driving after. 

 And all to dust passed 

 Kinges and Knightes, 

 Kaysers and Pop6s, 

 Lered and Lewed. 

 He let no man stand 

 That he hit even. 

 Many a lovely lady - 

 And leman of Knightes 

 Swon6d and swelted 

 For sorrow of his dints." 



