DEATH'S DOINGS.

INTRODUCTION.

Ir is difficult, if not impossible, in this our day of accumulated literature, to start any thing new; yet, rather than close their labours for "lack of argument," our literary adventurers ransack every corner for subject matter; and, to stimulate the public appetite, old viands are served up in new dishes, either of plate, china, or delf, as best may suit the taste or the means of the bookish epicure.

How far the subject now offered may be relished by the generality, remains to be tried. It will not want the seasoning of antiquity to recommend it, being nearly as old as the Creation; and, if a judgment may be formed from the number of works, both literary and graphic, which have appeared in ancient and modern times, and the avidity with which they

have been received, it may reasonably be expected that the present attempt to serve up a sort of Graphic Olio, with suitable garnishes of prose and verse, may not be unacceptable to the general reader; and the more so, as the endeavour has been to give (if not altogether a new), at least a more appropriate reading to the old version of the DANCE OF Death.

There is little to apprehend in the way of objection, from any application of the designs contained in the work to individual concerns or pursuits, as

"All men think all men mortal but themselves;"

and there will be no want of claimants to the heirlooms either of safety or of longevity. At any rate, the greater part of mankind will assume the privilege of exemption from such incidental casualties as are pointed out in the course of the illustrations here exhibited, and will find a clause in their own favour. Thus, for example, the sportsman will readily observe,—

"I have hunted, leapt gates, hedges, and ditches, and cleared all that came in my way; but, then, my skill and my horse brought me safe off. The foolish

fellow that broke his neck the other day could expect nothing else; instead of minding what he was about in taking his leap, he was looking another way; and, then, the hack he rode!"

"That poor devil of an artist," observes one of the same profession, "laboured his pictures till he was nearly blind, toiling till nature became exhausted; he could hardly be said to breathe the vital air; the effluvia of his colours had entirely penetrated his system; and it is no wonder he fell a victim to his confinement and his exertions together."

"Ned

is gone at last," says a bon-vivant to his companion; "but it is not surprising,-he was a careless drinker; I told him his wine-merchant sold him poison."

In this, or in some such way, all will argue in favour of themselves; while the machine of life drives on heedlessly and rapidly. It is true, the check-string may occasionally be drawn by the observing traveller, to point out to his fellow passengers some remarkable spot, stamped by some striking event connected with mortality; but the

pause will be brief, and the vehicle will again be in motion with as little care as before it was stopped. And this, in some measure, must be the case while we continue to be creatures of this world; even the gloomy ascetic will sometimes steal a look from his cloisters or his cell upon the beauties of the creation, and become a momentary sceptic to his monastic notions, and pine at the vegetative character of his own existence.

With whatever success the labours of the moralist, the philosopher, or the preacher, may have been attended in bringing into view the skeleton remains of the human frame as an emblem of Death, to warn and awaken mankind to a sense of the condition to which they must come at last, the satirist has seldom failed of exciting attention to the characteristic structure of this human machinery, stripped of those lineaments and fair proportions which in life were its charm and pride; but with this difference, that his views of the subject have ever tended to the ludicrous.

Such appears to have been the case even in those days of superstitious ignorance when the minds of men were subject to the domination of monkish

power; for, as soon as the first impression of alarm made by the ghastly phantom, as exhibited in their churches, was over, and the object became familiar, -ridicule took place of fear; and farcical representations of Death on the stage and by the pencil succeeded, in numbers and extent, perhaps, beyond those of any other subject.

One of these farcical moralities is hinted at by our immortal bard, in his play of "Measure for Measure :"

"Merely thou art Death's fool:

For him thou labourest, by thy flight, to shun,
And yet runn'st toward him still."

66

This passage is explained in a note, thus :-" In the simplicity of the ancient shows upon our stage, it was common to bring in two figures, one representing a fool, and the other, Death or Fate; the turn and contrivance of the piece was, to make the fool lay many stratagems to avoid Death, which yet brought him more immediately into the jaws of it."

It is more than probable that Shakspeare had seen and considered many of the paintings and designs on the subject of Death, and with his power