"Nascentes morimur" (Manilius); "Principium moriendi natale est"; "Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat"; "Nosce te ipsum"; "Pulvis et umbra sumus" (Horace). These sayings were introduced less probably for the benefit and instruction of the medical students than for the edification of the learned men, lawyers, travelling noblemen, fashionable ladies and sight-seers, who in former times used to visit the anatomical theatres out of curiosity or in search of emotional distractions. Note the miscellaneous crowd watching Vesalius dissecting, on the title-page (by Jan von Calear, but formerly attributed to Calcar's master, Titian) of his great anatomical work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, first edition, printed by J. Oporinus at Basel, 1543. Philosophical considerations on life and death were likewise introduced into anatomical lectures and demonstrations (cf. Fig. 144, from the woodcut, ibid., p. 164).

At one time the illustrations in Vesalius's great anatomical work were wrongly attributed to Titian, but it is now definitely settled that they are by Jan von Calcar, a pupil of Titian, whose paintings were said to be almost indistinguishable from those of that master. An original sketch by Calcar for the title-page has been recently reproduced by Paul Kristeller.118 Jan (Johann Stephan) von Calcar lived about 1500 to 1546. Amongst the paintings of the Venetian School in the National Gallery, London, he is represented by a fine picture of "Three Venetian Gentlemen and a Child."

On the famous picture, the "Triumph of Death" by Peter Brueghel the Elder (1525-1569), in the National Museum (Museo del Prado) at Madrid, Death is seen with his scythe, riding on a lean phantom-like horse, at the head of a ghastly, horrible company of armed

118 Paul Kristeller, “Eine Zeichnung von Johann Stephan von Calcar zum Titelblatte der Anatomie des Andreas Vesalius," Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst—Beilage der graphischen Künste, Vienna, 1908, No. 2, pp. 17-24.

skeletons, bringing destruction to the living. In the foreground on the left the vanity of worldly possessions is represented by a purple-robed king falling down whilst his hoarded treasures are being seized by a skeleton in armour. On the right a group of men and women, in the midst of their feasting and merrymaking, are being scared by the approach of the skeleton-soldiers of Death. In a conspicuous part of the foreground is the death-cart rolling along collecting the victims. In the landscape of the background are representations of shipwreck, accidental deaths by sea and land, executions by hanging, decapitation, &c.

What may be termed "the memento mori age" included the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, and the popularity of memento mori devices certainly culminated in the "Dance of Death" designs of the sixteenth century. One must not forget that, owing to the prevalence of, and greater mortality from, epidemic diseases, the saying, To-day red, to-morrow dead," was still more applicable to human life then than it is in quite modern times. Memento mori devices occurred everywhere, on paintings. and prints, on sepulchral monuments, as architectural ornaments, on all kinds of jewelry (especially on memorial finger-rings), in books of emblems, in books of hours and other kinds of devotional books, on devotional objects (such as rosary beads in the form of Death'sheads), and on medals. A monkish life of contemplation with "Innocentia et memoria mortis," or "Mors omnibus communis," or "Vita est meditatio," as a motto, was regarded by many as the ideal life to lead, even by those who themselves took a large and active share in the practical work of the world.

To illustrate this feeling we need only quote Sir

Thomas More, who was familiar with epigrams relating to death, the patron of Holbein, and the friend of Erasmus the great scholar, whose memento mori device as represented on his medals and favourite seal, we shall have later on to refer to. When imprisoned in the Tower of London, seeing from the window some monks going to execution, More said to his favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, who was there beside him: "Dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriages? Wherefore, thereby mayst thou see, mine own dear daughter, what a great difference there is between such as have in effect spent all their days in a straight and penitential and painful life, religiously, and such as have in the world like worldly wretches (as thy poor father hath done) consumed all their time in pleasure and ease licentiously." 120 In this connexion Dr. C.. Markus recalls the ascetic monastic motto, after the Trappist Abbot and reorganizer, A. J. de Rancé (1626-1700): "La peine de vivre sans plaisir vaut bien le plaisir de mourir sans peine."

This contrast between the life of the religious recluse and an ordinary life of worldly pursuits is exactly the same as that pictorially expressed in the famous "Triumph of Death," a fresco of the fourteenth century (already referred to) in the Campo Santo of Pisa. Compare also John Knox's discourse to the gay ladies of the Court of Mary Queen of Scots: "Oh fair ladies!' quoth he, how pleasing is this life of yours if it would ever abide, and then in the end that ye pass into heaven with all this gay gear! But fie upon the knave Death, that will come whether we will or not; and when he has laid on his arrest,

119 By Sir Thomas More are the following two Latin epigrams on the uncertainty of the time of death (Epigrammata. . . Thomae Mori, printed by J. Frobenius at Basel, 1520, p. 34) :—

"Non ego quos rapuit mors defleo; defleo vivos

Quos urunt longo fata futura metu."

"Fleres si scires unum tua tempora mensem
Rides, quum non sit forsitan una dies."

The first of these seems to be a Latin version of the Greek epigram by Lucilius, of which I have further on (Part II. xix., xx.) quoted an English translation from Dodd's Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 50.

120 W. Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More.

the foul worms will be busy with this flesh, be it never so fair and tender; and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble that it can neither carry with it gold, garnishing, targetting, pearl nor precious stones.'"

A similar train of thought is suggested by Holbein's portrait (in the Munich Pinakothek) of Sir Brian Tuke,

with a figure of Death, holding a scythe, behind him, waiting for the hour-glass to run out. Sir Brian Tuke, a contemporary of Sir Thomas More, was Secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, and afterwards Treasurer of the Household to King Henry VIII. He was a patron of learning, and was celebrated by John Leland, the "father" of English antiquaries. On the picture in question he is pointing to a passage from the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, signifying, "Will not the small number of my days be soon ended?" (Job x. 20). (See Fig. 25.)

In this connexion it is interesting that in a modern German poem (by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer) Ulrich von Hutten, during his final illness, asks Holbein to paint him slumbering in his chair, whilst Death is to be represented, not with his dreadful scythe, but with a simple vine-knife, symbolically cutting down a ripe bunch of grapes from near the window. Cicero (De Senectute, xix.) makes Cato major say: "As fruits, when they are green are plucked by force from the trees, but when ripe and mellow drop off, so violence takes away their lives from youths, maturity from old men." Cicero goes on to speak of the advantage of this " ripeness" of old age. So also Shakespeare's King Lear (Act v., Scene 2) has it: "Ripeness is all" (cf. Part II. x.). Similarly, Milton (Paradise Lost, Book xi. line 535) makes the archangel Michael say to Adam and Eve, after advising them how to maintain their health by temperance in eating and drinking :—

"So may'st thou live, till, like ripe fruit, thou drop
Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease

Gather'd, not harshly pluck'd, in death mature.
This is old age."

The same ancient metaphor is found also in the following Latin epitaph inscription (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. vi. No. 7574):—

Quomodo mala in arbore pendunt, sic corpora nostra
Aut matura cadunt aut cito acerva [acerba] ruunt";

and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the seventh book of his Meditations, quoted "poets" as saying well that "our life is reaped like a ripe ear of corn."

In regard to such metaphors, cf. the Homeric simile of human lives to the leaves on trees (Homer's Iliad, Book vi.). The passage is thus rendered by Pope:

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,-
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;

Another race the following spring supplies:

They fall successive and successive rise."