and not to be part of the original design. The Berlin
drawings must therefore have been executed subsequently to the woodcuts;
and as one of them, that representing the Emperor, is dated "1527,"
we get a date before which both the woodcuts, and the designs for the
woodcuts, must have been prepared. It is generally held that they were
so prepared _circa_ 1524 and 1525, the date of the Peasants' War, of the
state of feeling excited by which they exhibit evident traces. In the
Preface to this first edition, certain ambiguous expressions, to which
we shall presently refer, led some of the earlier writers on the subject
to doubt as to the designer of the series. But the later researches of
Wornum and Woltmann, of M. Paul Mantz and, more recently, of Mr. W. J.
Linton leave no doubt that they were really drawn by the artist to whom
they have always been traditionally assigned, to wit, Hans Holbein the
younger. He was resident in Basle up to the autumn of 1526, before which
time, according to the above argument, the drawings must have been
produced; he had already designed an Alphabet of Death; and, moreover,
on the walls of the cemetery of the Dominican monastery at Basle there
was a famous wall-painting of the Dance of Death, which would be a
perpetual stimulus to any resident artist. Finally, and this is perhaps
the most important consideration of all, the designs are in Holbein's
manner.

=The Woodcutter=

But besides revealing an inventor of the highest order, the _Dance
of Death_ also discloses an interpreter in wood of signal, and even
superlative, ability. The designs are cut--to use the word which implies
the employment of the knife as opposed to that of the graver--in a
manner which has never yet been excelled. In this matter there could be
no better judge than Mr. W. J. Linton; and he says that nothing, either
by knife or by graver, is of higher quality than these woodcuts. Yet
the woodcutter's very name was for a long time doubtful, and even now
the particulars which we possess with regard to him are scanty and
inconclusive. That he was dead when the Trechsels published the book in
1538, must be inferred from the "Epistre" of Jean de Vauzelles, since
that "Epistre" expressly refers to "_la mort de celluy, qui nous en a
icy imagine si elegantes figures_"; and without entering into elaborate
enquiry as to the exact meaning of "_imaginer_" in sixteenth-century
French, it is obvious that, although the deceased is els