ll 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 MR. KNIGHT will be
inclined to admit. But my paper is, I fear, extending to a limit beyond
which you have occasionally 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.

GEORGE 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-simile, but improved by good modern artists. The history 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