to roam among the men and manners of their own.
A popular poem was composed, said to be by one Macaber, which name
seems to be a corruption of St. Macaire; the old Gaulish version,
reformed, is still printed at Troyes, in France, with the ancient blocks
of woodcuts, under the title of "La Grande Danse Macabre des Hommes et
des Femmes." Merian's "Todten Tanz," or the "Dance of the Dead," is a
curious set of prints of a Dance of Death from an ancient painting, I
think not entirely defaced, in a cemetery at Basle, in Switzerland. It
was ordered to be painted by a council held there during many years, to
commemorate the mortality occasioned by a plague in 1439. The prevailing
character of all these works is unquestionably grotesque and ludicrous;
not, however, that genius, however barbarous, could refrain in this
large subject of human life from inventing scenes often imagined with
great delicacy of conception, and even great pathos. Such is the
new-married couple, whom Death is leading, beating a drum; and in the
rapture of the hour, the bride seems, with a melancholy look, not
insensible of his presence; or Death is seen issuing from the cottage of
the poor widow with her youngest child, who waves his hand sorrowfully,
while the mother and the sister vainly answer; or the old man, to whom
Death is playing on a psaltery, seems anxious that his withered fingers
should once more touch the strings, while he is carried off in calm
tranquillity. The greater part of these subjects of death are, however,
ludicrous; and it may be a question, whether the spectators of these
Dances of Death did not find their mirth more excited than their
religious emotions. Ignorant and terrified as the people were at the
view of the skeleton, even the grossest simplicity could not fail to
laugh at some of those domestic scenes and familiar persons drawn from
among themselves. The skeleton, skeleton as it is, in the creation of
genius, gesticulates and mimics, while even its hideous skull is made to
express every diversified character, and the result is hard to describe;
for we are at once amused and disgusted with so much genius founded on
so much barbarism.[140]

When the artist succeeded in conveying to the eye the most ludicrous
notions of death, the poets also discovered in it a fertile source of
the burlesque. The curious collector is acquainted with many volumes
where the most extraordinary topics have been combined with this
subject. They m