description of the old Romancers. The lines are in all the MSS."
And well they may be. For I think there are few of my readers, who have made the Dance of Death the subject of their attention, however cursorily, who will not remember how frequently the pick-purse, the cook, "the carter over ridden with his cart," &c. figure in that remarkable pageant-like work of art; who will not see that in describing the paintings which decorated the temple of Mars, Chaucer drew not merely from Statins, or Boccaccio, but also from his memory of some Dance of Death which he well knew would be recognised by his readers.
Read by this light we may point to the passages in question as being 'Chaucer's own;' not indeed in any apologetic spirit, but with a feeling of admiration for the poetical and graphic skill with which he has contrived to graft so popular a representation on so classical a fiction[1].
I am at present unable to state, that any work, such as the painting in the church-yard of the Innocents at Paris, or the Dance of Death pictured in "Poule's[2]," positively existed in this country at the period when Chaucer wrote[3]; Mr. Douce, however, has expressed an opinion on the authority of a poem ascribed by him to Walter Mapes, that it is not unreasonable to infer that paintings of the Macabre dance were coeval with that writer, though no specimen that now remains will warrant the conclusion. He pointed out, however, an allusion to the dance in question, in the vision of Piers Ploughman,
"Deetli cam dryvynge after,
And al to duste passed
Kynges and Knyghtes
Kaysers and Popes, &c." (1. 1424. ed. Wright.)
and I may add, that when on the eve of the publication of his learned dissertation, I called his attention to the existence of this striking allusion to a Dance of Death in one of Chaucer's
- ↑ I have not considered it necessary to occupy space by referring to the various series of the Dance of Death, in which figures of the thief, cook, waggoner, &c. severally occur. They will readily be found upon reference to the dissertation by Mr. Douce to which frequent allusion is made in this paper.
- ↑ Engraved by Hollar in Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, Ed. 1673, vol. ii. p. 368.
- ↑ There is a painting of the Dance of Death on the screen of the choir of Hexham church, Northumberland, executed apparently about the time of Henry the Seventh. This curious relic is worthy of an engraving.
