-v. >'.* '.v« ..'/" tfX';-,'*?*■■'u■*■■■■'-.X'' ,t~!VT-' ■■ . ,'". *.'. 'iM-'t*'*'** i!#V'!> '&■'', ■•■■ .■■* •-■ ■'■ ■••'- - ' AM ■£'.• ' ,^,'t. ■'^*v f v.: '& "• .'-V $3 1- J \ : ^•]j .::, -..■ >v» " _ iS:>'wVi,,'-i" ' K ' ■•v.,1' ■ ' " "''.'.V*- • i .*.V'-.*,L. .-•''(*'/'•; ■ . s .< ^v: f,f.r>.: BD 444 W373a 1918 NLM QSQOOSbl b NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE NLM050005616 ASPECTS OF DEATH AND CORRELATED ASPECTS OF LIFE IN ART, EPIGRAM, AND POETRY. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Art and Epigram regarding Science and Medicine in Relation to Death, together with an Addition on Epigram and Art in Relation to the Excessive Fear of Death. 1914. Medals and Medallions of the Nine- teenth Century, relating to England, by Foreign Artists. With Two Autotype Plates. 1894. Conclusion, to the End of the Year 1900. With Four Plates. 1907. Medals of Centenarians. 1903. London : BEENARD QUAEITCH, Ltd., 11, Grafton Street, W. 1. GULIELMO OSLER LIBRI DE AEQUANIMITATE AUCTORI, MEDICO PERITISSIMO, QUI HUMANI NIHIL, NEQUE QUICQUID AGUNT HOMINES A SE ALIENUM PUTAT, VIRO STRENUO, QUI FELIX SAEPE POTUIT RERUM COGNOSCERE CAUSAS, LIBELLUM HUNC (LIBELLUM VERBIS POETARUM EXCERPTIS AUCTUM ET ORNATUM, SED CELATUM UT ARBOR TENUIS SILVA DENS A" CELATUR) DE MORTIS IMAGINIBUS, DE SPE, DOLORE, TIMORE, DE REBUM MORTALIUM VICISSITUDINIBUS, TRISTITlS. ET JUCUNDITATE, DICAT F.P.W. A philosopher lecturing on life and death. ' From a Roman lamp in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (see Fig. 127). Before him is a skeleton, at which he points. Below is a baby in swaddling clothes. Many Romans of the period would probably have interpreted the meaning of the scene somewhat as follows : " There sits a learned man trying to expound the riddle of life and death, but however learned he may be, and however wise his discourse, what does all his teaching amount to ? There is only one practical conclusion to be derived from it all, namely, the one which the skeleton tells us: Edite! bibite ! post mortem nulla voluptas! " By early Christianity, which was then commencing, this precept was (incorrectly) held up as the essence of Pagan philosophy; by mediaeval Christianity it was pointed to as a devil's maxim. An exactly similar lamp is figured by Edmond Le Blant in the Melanges d'Archtologie et d'Histoire, 1887 PI vii Fig. 2. Frontispiece. 3 3 7J~_3 .•V** . ASPECTS OF DEATH AND CORRELATED ASPECTS OF LIFE IX ART, EPIGRAM, AND POETRY. CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS AN ANTHOLOGY AND AN ICONOGRAPHY OF THE SUBJECT. ILLUSTRATED ESPECIALLY BY MEDALS, ENGRAVED GEMS, JEWELS, IVORIES, ANTIQUE POTTERY, &c. FREDERICK PARKES WEBER, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.B., F.S.A. THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND MUCH ENLARGED. WITH 145 ILLUSTRATIONS. 'As sooue as wee to bee begunue. We did be^inne to be undone." <;. Wither'S Emblem*, 1635, p. 4.">. LONDON: T. FISHER UNWTN, Ltd., I BERNARD QUARITCH, Ltd., 1, ADELPHI TERRACE, 11, GRAFTON STREET, W.C. 2. W. 1. 1918. First Edition, 1910. Second Edition, 1914 Third Edition, 1918. THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND DEATH. 0 Pain, I know thee and I fear to know Thee better. Yet I know that to mankind Thou art a friend, warner, corrector, guide, A guardian angel watching o'er the soul. Mysterious power divine, wise Nature's goad For mortals towards light and progress fair. Only when all is known—no secrets hid— Wilt thou be understood. And thou, 0 death, What is thy meaning? Some there are of men Deny thee quite. " There is no death," they say; But ever with veil'd aspects com'st thou still. Is life for .practice and experience, To help the soul to its development? Death's message in that case to all might be: "Give place to others, let them have their chance, And do thou move aside and wait awhile! Perchance thou'st work'd so hard thou needest rest. Perchance thou'st misspent time or wasted it. Repent then, and use thy next life better, For self-improvement and for other's good, To make thee worthy of eternity And fitting company for just men's souls." * F. P. W. * My prose of the first portion of this was kindly put into blank verse (the first eleven lines) for me by the late Alfred Schuster, not long before his death (November 20th, 1914). In regard to the lines commencing with Give place to others, I do not implythat anyone can possibly have more than his share of life. In fact, whether he lives to 20, 50, or 150 years, his life is indeed short (if his faculties have persisted) from my point of view. Many different paths of life-experience lead to the same thoughts and to partial opening of the gates of Truth, but many of them lead indeed through darkness and pain, and the lamps of Truth and Peace cannot always be distinguished in the distance. -p p w 444 W37£a PREFACE. The first edition of this book consisted of a series of articles reprinted, with many alterations and additions, from the Numismatic Chronicle, 1909-10, Nos. 36-38. The present edition, though further illustrated and greatly enlarged, is certainly not an exhaustive trea.tise on the " iconography" of death,1 and still less does it aim at being anything like a complete " anthology " 2 of the vast existing stores of poetry and epigrams relating to the subject of death3; but it is intended to be an essay on 1 An " Iconography of Death " would, amongst other things, have to describe and illustrate all the antique sculptures of " Dying Warriors," " Dying Barbarians," " Dying Amazons," &c. (including, of course, the so-called " Dying Gladiator " in the Capitoline Museum at Rome), the sculptured " Masks of Expiring Warriors," by Andreas Schluter (about 1699) on the keystones of the window-arches in the Court of the " Zeughaus" (Arsenal) at Berlin, and innumerable sculptures and paintings, of various periods, representing the death of historical individuals, idealistic personifications, and characters of romance. 2 Dr. Andrew Macphail, in the preface to his Book of Sorrow (1916), claims for that excellent anthology of his, that it " contains all that has been said—all, indeed, that can be said—upon the theme of sorrow." I might almost as well make the preposterous claim for this book of mine—that it contains all that has been said, all that can be said, upon the Aspects of Death. 3 For some of the French poetry from the fifteenth century to modern times, relating to death, including part of Victor Hugo's Epop&e du Ver and Theophile Gautier's Comidie de la Mart, see Leon Larmand, Les Podtes de la Mort (L. Michaud, Paris). Amongst very early French poetry on death there are thirteenth-century versions of Le dit des trois morts et des trois vifs, and the curious late twelfth-century Vers de la Mort, attributed to the monk Helinant de Froidmont or to Thibaud de Marly. In the edition printed at Paris in 1835, as the work of T. de Montmorency, Seigneur de Marly, called Thibaud de Marly, the follow- ing lines (p. 26) may be taken as an example of the spelling :— " Mors, tu abas a un seul jour Aussi le roi dedans sa tour Con le pouvre dessous son toit." These lines appear as follows in the Paris edition of 1905 (p. 20) by F. Wulff and E. Walberg, who attribute the poem to Helinant, Moine de Froidmont:— " Morz,- tu abaz a un seul jor Aussi le roi dedenz sa tor Com le povre dedenz son toit." viii ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. the mental attitudes towards ideas of death and immor- tality, and the various ways in which (from ancient Greek and Eoman to modern times) they have, or may be sup- posed to have, affected the living individual—his mental and physical state, and especially the direction and force of his actions—as illustrated by epigram, poetry, and minor works of art, especially medals, engraved gems, jewels, &c. The book is divided into four parts. The first is meant to serve as an introduction to the whole subject. The second is an arrangement and analysis of the various possible aspects of death and the mental attitudes towards the idea of death; this also explains the headings under which illustrative works of art may conveniently be grouped. The third deals with the medals and coins ; and in the fourth engraved gems, finger-rings, jewels, represen- tations on ancient pottery, &c, bearing on the subject, are described. The repetitions which occur in various parts of the book will, it is hoped, be excused on the ground of convenience for purposes of reference.4 I wish to thank and express my great obligation to all those who have assisted me, especially Mr. H. A. Grueber, the late Mr. Warwick Wroth, Mr. G. F. Hill, Mr. J. Allan, Sir C. H. Eead, Mr. A. II. Smith, Mr. H. B. Walters, Mr. E. J. Forsdyke, Mr. E. L. Binyon, and other officials, or late officials, of the British Museum; Mr. W. W. Watts, Mr. E. E. D. Maclagan, and other officials of the Victoria and Albert Museum ; the late Sir John Evans, President of the Eoyal Numismatic Society, Lady Evans, Dr. H. E. Storer, Dr. Oliver Codrington, Dr. C. F. L. Leipoldt, Dr. Ernest Schuster, Mr. Alfred Schuster, Mr. Martin Eeinicke, Dr. J. P. zum Busch, Dr. G. Dorner, Mr. A. H. Donaldson, Mr. W. Wale, Mr. E. Jordan, Mr. W. T. Eeady, and Mr. L. Forrer; and, needless to say, the authors of books and papers to which I have referred, from some * For: the author has certainly no hope that anyone will read the book right through like a novel. PREFACE. IX of which I have extensively quoted. To the Contessa Caetani Lovatelli's Thanatos I am particularly obliged for references to ancient inscriptions and epigrams. Dr. J. D. Eolleston has furnished me with several references to the Greek Anthology, and I have made much use of Lord Neaves's little book, The Greek Anthology, .1874 (W. Blackwood & Sons). The Eev. H. P. Dodd's Epigrammatists has, of course, been of great assistance to me. A second and enlarged edition of Dodd's book was published in Bonn's Eeference Library in 1875, and is much too little known. Mr. C J. S. Thompson has kindly drawn my attention to various objects of interest in the newly founded Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, to which I am indebted for some of my illustra- tions. In preparing the present edition I have made much use of Mrs. Arthur Strong's very suggestive Apotheosis and After Life. To Mr. W. Wale I am indebted for many further quotations. In regard to figures 25 and 26 I have made use of illustrations in Knackfuss's Kunstler-Monographien. If Eabbi Hillel was right in saying that death presents various aspects only to the unwise, then indeed very few human beings are really wise, for to most persons the aspect varies from time to time, according to moods and circumstances. Age certainly often modifies the aspect, as Mr. Edmond G. A. Holmes recently stated that it had done in his own case.5 As for death's real aspect, there have been seers enough, both in ancient and modern times, who have told us of their wonderful though contradictory visions; but, with Edward Young (Night Thoughts), one may well exclaim :— " Who can take Death's portrait? The tyrant never sat." 5 It obliged him to alter many of the stanzas in his poem "To Death," included in The Creed of My Heart and Other Poems, London, 1912. X ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. The study of human ideas of death derives most of its interest from human aspects of life. The aspects of the one are naturally more or less dependent on and modified by the aspects of the other. Death is as neces- sary as birth for the continuance and progress of the human race, and corporeal life in the higher organisms cannot even be imagined without death (except, indeed, in regard to the doctrine of the immortality of germ- plasm 6). A man's ideas on death depend largely on the particular conditions of his own life and his surroundings, whilst his ideas and ideals of life may be considerably modified by his views and hopes regarding the nature of death and the nature of the human soul. In this book, bulky though it has now become, I have not endeavoured to point out all the possible effects on the living of the various aspects of death as presented by medals, &c. It would, for instance, be quite unnecessary to explain that contemporary medals representing a decapitation for high treason might, at the time when they were issued, have exercised a deterrent influence on those who saw them. Vide the medals commemorating the execution of Monmouth and Argyle in 1685, with the inscription " Ambitio malesuada ruit." The " toy- shop" medals (also described in this book), issued in London on the loss of Minorca in 1756, may actually have played a part in bringing the unfortunate Admiral Byng to his death. It is pleasanter to think that the satirical "pattern" for a bank-note ("not to be imitated "), designed by George Cruikshank in 1818, and published by William Hone in Ludgate Hill, really helped to put an end to the death-penalty for forgery of bank- notes. La Eochefoucauld said that man could no more look 6 August Weismann's teaching. In regard to this and the French views of Bichat and Claude Bernard, and various physiological and philosophical aspects of life and death, see A. Dastre, Life and Death translated by W. J. Greenstreet, London, 1911. PREFACE. XI steadily at death than at the sun.7 But certainly man may, without harm to himself, see death or ideas on death reflected in works of art. Just so, in the ancient legend, Perseus was able, without being turned into stone, to behold the head of the Gorgon Medusa, reflected in the mirror given to him by Athene; and thus he succeeded in slaying the dreadful monster. At all events, a study of this kind to some extent increases one's knowledge,8 and brings with it a certain amount of satisfaction, though neither this nor any other study can quite place one in the position described by Virgil:— " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ; Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!" 9 Samuel Johnson told Boswell, during their famous tour to the Hebrides, that, " if one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still." It might l>e supposed that those who think much of death pass their mortal existence— " in one continued strife, 'Twixt fear of death and love of life." And, indeed, Isaac D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, quotes Grace Lady Gethin (1676-1697) on the subject, from her Reliquiae Gethinianae (published 1699-1700), as follows:—"The very thoughts of death disturb one's 7 Francis, Due de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), Maxim 26: " Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye." In truth, most normal persons do not meditate much on their own death, but, rather, they look on death as something concerning their neigh- bours, friends, and others—not themselves (cf. Part II., xix., xx.). 8 A man may trust in the beneficence of God (Nature) and yet be a philosopher, in spite of the following:— " Gluckselig der auf Gott vertraut, Der Philosoph viel weiter schaut." " Cf. Cicero: ''Aequo animo paratoque moriar"; and Seneca: " Optanda mors est, sine metu mortis mori." xii ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. reason; and though a man may have many excellent qualities, yet he may have the weakness of not com- manding his sentiments. Nothing is worse for one's health than to be in fear of death. There are some so wise as neither to hate nor fear it; but for my part I have an aversion to it, and with reason—ibr it is a rash, inconsiderate thing that always comes before it is looked for; always comes unseasonably; parts friends, ruins beauty, laughs at youth, and draws a dark veil over all the pleasures of life. This dreadful evil is but the evil of a moment, and what we cannot by any means avoid. . . . But when I think I must die, and that I may die every moment—and that, too, a thousand several ways —I am in such a fright as you cannot imagine. . . . And yet the best way to cure the pensiveness of the thoughts of death is to think of it as little as possible." For many persons this last may be good advice, but the fear of death must not be confused with thinking about death. The book of the " Meditations" of the Boman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 121-180), called " the philosopher," is full of Stoical reflections on the subject of death, which more probably helped to remove rather than to increase any natural fear he may have had. Montaigne, and many others, who meditated much on death, were not prevented by fear of death from enjoying and utilizing life. Francois Augustin Paradis de Moncrif (1687-1770), French poet and dramatist, the story of whose last days is quoted by Isaac DTsraeii (loc. cit.), advised others to familiarise themselves with death, which, he said, " is only dreadful for those who dread it." Montaigne had indeed remarked that whoever has learned to die has forgotten what it is to be a slave—in other words : " the man who no longer fears death, has ceased to be a slave." This, doubtless, is what Marcus Aurelius and many philosophers, besides the Stoics, of the Ancient World believed and taught. Though excessive fear of death ("thanatophobia") is PREFACE. Xlll abnormal and pathological (morbid), and can serve no legitimate or beneficial purpose, nevertheless fear of death, if not excessive, is normal, and is doubtless often useful for the race as well as for the individual. For persons with a morbid, haunting, horror of the idea of death it is probably a mistake to allow their thoughts constantly to dwell on the subject. But it may perhaps be equally a mistake to endeavour to completely banish the subject from their minds. The subject cannot, indeed, be altogether banished in most cases, and must at times be boldly faced—when various consolatory aspects (philosophical or religious) will probably present themselves or be presented by friends, and will naturally be also pondered on and esti- mated for whatever they are worth. I shall endeavour to make my meaning clearer by an illustration drawn from an analogous subject. In a recent communication on the " Bepression of War Experiences" (Royal Society of Medicine, Section for Psychiatry, London, December 4th, 1917), W. H. li. Rivers endeavoured to show that in some cases of so-called shell-shock and psychasthenic break- down, more harm than good resulted from sedulously following the usual advice to constantly avoid and repress or suppress the vivid recollections of terrifying war- experiences. In some such cases, if the patient (by the help of active mental and physical occupation, &c.) suc- ceeded in banishing his painful memories during most of the day, the memories in question, and the depressing thoughts associated with them, were apt to recur with redoubled force during the night or on various occasions when the resistance or controlling power of the higher psychical centres of the brain was temporarily at its' minimum. It sometimes seemed preferable for the patient to boldly face the memory of his fearful experiences during the day, when his reasoning faculties ought to be at their best, and endeavour to search out and associate more or less happy or consolatory reflexions with such recollections. By these means sudden, overpowering, Xiv ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. attacks of depression (involving possibly danger of suicide) were, in favourable instances, successfully avoided. So it is, perhaps, as I have above ventured to suggest, in regard to persons with a pathological fear of death. I will add a few words to explain my own attitude in regard to questions of human immortality, &c, touched on in various portions of this book. The balance of evidence (which, however, everyone will and must admit, is mainly of a subjective kind) seems to me to point to there being something more of immortality in human souls than can be included under August Weismann's theory of the immortality of the germ-plasm of animals and plants. Whether or not this "something more" is quite as much as a " personal immortality of souls " is a question which should not really affect us. One can understand the possibility of a kind of reward or punish- ment, and of continued psychical activity after the death of the body, without being absolutely convinced of personal immortality. But there is no room to discuss that theoretical subject here. In many cases, probably—even in this mortal life—rewards and punishments are in some way or other adequately balanced according to individual deserts. Few persons nowadays would care to deny the utility of systems of morality, philosophy, and religion; most systems have, doubtless, some good in them, and good can come out of very various forms of belief. But, perhaps, in the far future, a time will come when progressive thought will have developed a single system of morality, philo- sophy, and religion common to all mankind, and when the world will look back on the old days of contending systems as eras of barbaric ignorance, comparable to past eras of party politics and civil and international wars. When wars are finally abolished by international arrangements, and when, owing to increased knowledge, religious and political strife ceases to exist, will a condition of " earthly paradise " be attained, or will the human race PREFACE. XV commence to undergo mental and bodily degeneration (cf. Charles Kingsley's Water Babies, 1863) owing to absence of necessity for menial and bodily struggle and rivalry ? Neither is likely to occur. Man will always have the evil elements in his own nature to contend against and subdue, and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and for the amelioration of the conditions of life, will still require the activity of whole armies of workers. Science will still demand restless labour, con- scientiousness, courage, and even occasional martyrdom, on the part of her followers. With every pinnacle and summit reached, the clearer atmosphere and brighter light will show hundreds of higher points to be attained. The principles of general hygiene and prevention of disease will be common property—at all events, they will be imbibed during early life as a matter of ordinary educa- tion, and no one who is not familiar with them will ever be able to attain any position of authority. Taking W. Blake's " New Jerusalem" to signify the hygienist's and the philanthropist's ideal, one might quote him as follows:— '•I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land" [and in every other land also.] (William Blake, The Building of Jerusalem.) Many other subjects might be studied as I have studied various aspects of death. I wish some lawyer with sufficient leisure and interest in the matter would write on Aspects of Law and Justice in Art and Epigram. What an undertaking this would be, even if only medals and minor works of art were taken into consideration! Think of the numberless portraits of lawyers, judges, and law-givers; medals, &c, commemorating celebrated trials, famous convictions and acquittals, the execution of the penalties of law, the miscarriage of " justice," " justice " supposed to be sold for bags of gold, the triumphs of justice and triumphant escapes from justice; the birth of new laws, their short life or their long life, the death of old effete and unjust laws ; strong laws, weak laws, useful and useless laws; the good laws of constitutional XVI ASl'ECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGPAM. countries and the cruel laws of despotic tyrants; historical periods of law and order, and times of lawlessness when law seemed altogether dead, though it came to life again, ut gramina sicca virescunt. Think of a book on the Aspects of Finance in Art and Caricature. The medals and caricatures relating to John Law and his financial schemes fill a volume by themselves, and the illustrations relating to the South Sea Bubble would, I suppose, easily fill another. In this connexion the medals (1753 and 1755) on the Irish Surplus Revenue Dispute have some interest (see Medallic Illustrations of English History, London, 1885, vol. ii. pp. 673, 674, and 676, G77). In regard to State Finance a specially interesting series would be the medals, coins, and tokens bearing devices or inscriptions referring to Govern- ment taxes of various countries. Such a series would, of course, include the medals of William Pitt with the words, "No Stamps," below his bust, relating to his opposition to the Stamp Act, one of the causes of the American War of Independence. I suppose that the quaint sun-dial inscription, " Mind your business,"10 on some early United States coins and paper money, must to some extent have originally referred to England's interference (in regard to tea-duty, &c.) with her American Colonies. Some satirical medals relating to Sir Robert Walpole's Excise Bill represent the devil leading the statesman by a rope round his neck towards the open jaws of a monster (hell); inscription : " Make room for Sir Robert-----No excise ! " There are, of course, medals more or less relating to the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and to Richard Cobden and other statesmen connected with the repeal move- ment. The extraordinary " beard tax," first imposed in Russia by Peter the Great, is commemorated by tokens struck in 1705 in silver and copper (bearing the device of a beard, moustaches, and nose), to serve as a receipt for having paid the tax; there is also a larger, lozenge- shaped piece with the date 1725 (the year of the succession of the Empress Catharine I). I do not know of any medals connected with the window-tax or with the hearth-tax (chimney-tax) formerly levied in England; but the hearth-tax in the Netherlands, levied in 1666 to provide money for the war against England, is commemorated by two medals, dated 1666 and 1668 respectively (G. van Loon, Histoire Mitallique des Pays Bas, French edition, 1732, vol. ii. pp. 516, 517). Curiously enough, there are no medals as yet, so far as I know, relating to the laws of State insurance of the working classes in Germany England, and elsewhere. [Numismatic collections have, of course, been formed, and have been or are going to be described, to illustrate as far as possible various '° See7 amongst the sun-dial mottoes in Charles Leadbetter's Mechanick Dialling, first edition, London, 1737, chapter xxiii No 17 • Fugio, fuge. The English equivalent given by Leadbetter is'- Beaone about your Business .'—that is to say, " I'm off (about my business? be off (about yours)! " ;' PREFACE. XV11 special subjects ; for instance, the History of Medicine and the Sciences allied to Medicine (Medicina in Nummis), Treaties of Peace in the World's History [Pax in Nummis), the different kinds of boats and ships, especially war-ships, of ancient and modern times. A similar collection might be formed of coins and medals representing cars, carts, and chariots—real and imaginary—the biga and quadriga of Greek and Roman times, the funeral carpenturn drawn by mules or elephants on Roman Imperial coins of the mortuary or consecratio kind, triumphal cars of classical and Renaissance designs, the chariot of Neptune and other imaginary marine chariots, the chariot of the Sun and other imaginary aerial chariots. The medals relating to railway engines, railways and motor vehicles, might be included ; and there are already or there soon will be armoured cars and " tanks" (and even caricatures of " tanks ") on medals and military badges. Many foreshadowings or precursors of modern armoured cars and "tanks" have been recorded or suggested in descriptions and illustrated designs of olden times—cf. Roberto Valturio, De Re Militari (1483; third edition, printed in Paris, 1532), with woodcuts from designs by Matteo de' Pasti, notably Plate 4; also the suggestion for an armoured car in the " Secrett Inventionis" (1596) of the Scotsman, John Napier, of Merchiston (1550-1617), the inventor of logarithms. The early history of balloons (the brothers Montgolfier, V. Lunardi, &c.) is illustrated by medals, and there are already medals depicting the real aerial chariots of modern times, the aeroplanes and the Zeppelin and other air-ships. Foreshadowings of modern monoplane and biplane flying-machines were represented in some prints and minor works of art of the first half of the nineteenth century, for instance, ornamental engravings at the head of note-paper, picturing a biplane flying over London, such as I have seen (a dated letter). The design on a souvenir handkerchief, showing the experimental aeroplane (monoplane) con- structed by F. Stringfellow in 1848, was reproduced in the Daily Mail, London, October 13th, 1917. The remarkable point is that some of these designs appear almost exactly like real aeroplanes now in use; but Leonardo da Vinci and others had long previously considered the problem. In regard to medical medals I do not think that the numismatic field has yet been searched for specimens illustrating mental abnormalities and mental peculiarities of various kinds. So many persons (some would say, all) are mentally peculiar in one way or another, that numerous numismatic illustrations ought to be forthcoming, but in regard to judging the psychical condition of persons by their coins and medals it must be remembered that though "the image and super- scription " on a coin or medal may be, say, Caesar's, it does not follow that Caesar had much hand in selecting the design and inscription for either the obverse or the reverse. Indeed, medals are often designed after the death of those (whether "Caesars" or private individuals) whose image and superscription they are made to bear. A man is often no more responsible for the design and inscription on a medal of b Xviii ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. himself than he is likely to be for any bad taste that may be shown his epitaph or sepulchral monument (cf. Part II. iii.)- An instance of an alienist having chosen an illustration from numismatics seems to me an unfortunate one. Dr. W. W. Ireland (The Blot upon the Brain, second edition, Edinburgh, 1893, p. 116) refers to the forced currency of Muhammad ibn Taghlak, Sultan of Delhi, 1321-1351 a.d. The Sultan " had heard of the paper notes used for money in China, and thought that he could enrich the imperial treasury by fixing an arbitrary value on copper tokens. The result was that they were only accepted through fear, and could not be passed in the remote provinces," &c. Stanley Lane-Poole, however (The Coins of the Stdtans of Delhi in the British Museum, London, 1884, Intro- duction, p. xxi), explains that Muhammad ibn Taghlak's forced currency was in reality a kind of promissory currency in brass, and could easily have been redeemed at nominal prices. " Indeed, when, after about three years, the trial proved unsuccessful, in consequence of innumerable imitations, against which the Sultan had organized no regal protective marks, Muhammad ibn Taghlak took up the whole brass currency, genuine and forged alike, at the values for which they were intended to pass. In such circumstances there can be no question of dishonesty on the part of the ruler." A rather curious subject on which every numismatist knows some- thing, but which has not yet been adequately dealt with, is that of medals relating to events which were expected to occur, but which either never occurred or came off much later than the making of the medal designed to commemorate them. For English collectors the most interesting example of "medallic anticipation" is the medal (by R. V. Jeuffroy) of Napoleon I, made (under Denon's direction) in 1804, to commemorate the projected French " Descente en Angleterre," with the inscription in the exergue of the reverse: " Frappee a Londres en 1804." The British Museum now possesses an example in lead struck from the original dies, but the reverse dies were afterwards altered to be used for the reverse of the Napoleonic medal of 1806 commemorating the blockade of the British Isles. For the inscription, " Descente en Angleterre," on the original medal, was substituted, " Toto divisos orbe Britannos " (Virgil, Bucolica, i. 66); and the signatures of Denon and Jeuffroy, with the date 1806, took the place of the exergue-reading, "Frappee a Londres en 1804." In the specimen in my former collec- tion, however, and probably in all others, remains of the two last E's of DESCENTE could still be distinctly made out (see F. P. Weber, Medals and Medallions of the Nineteenth Century relating to England, by Foreign Artists, London, 1894, pp. 41 and 42, Medals 114 and 115).n 11 But the silver and bronze coin-like medals with the head of the Emperor Napoleon III on the obverse, as on a five-franc piece, and bear- ing on the reverse the inscription, FINIS GERMANIAE, 1870, within an oak and laurel wreath, were certainly not made in France or by the French. Yet a London journal, Tit-Bits, for September 22, 1888, FREFACE. XIX Almost equally interesting are the numerous English medals, of the popular " toy-shop " class (cf. Part II. v.), struck (owing to a premature dispatch) to commemorate the capture of Carthagena by Admiral Edward Vernon, in April 1741, though in reality the attack ended in failure (Medallic Illustrations of British History, London, 1885, vol. ii. pp. 548 to 554). In a somewhat similar way one or two instances could be adduced of a statue originally made to commemorate some event or personage having been afterwards, for political or personal reasons, altered so as to represent quite a different event or a different personage. For instance a statue now standing in the park of Gautby Hall, near Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, was originally intended to represent John Sobieski (who was afterwards King of Poland, and saved Vienna from the Turks in 1683), but Sir Robert Viner (Lord Mayor of London in 1674) obtained the statue and set it up in the Stocks Market of the City of London in 1672, after having the head of Sobieski replaced or altered so that the statue might pass as one of King Charles II of England. There are some numerous poetical allusions to the published the following paragraph from a foreign source: " Numis- matic Curiosity.—With what perfect assurance of victory the French entered upon the war with Germany in the year 1870 is seen by a medal struck about that time, of which very few specimens are now in existence. The reason for this scarcity probably lies in the fact that the Government tried to suppress it after their disasters in the field. The medal, which was evidently coined at the Mint, is of the size and value of a five-frans piece, and displays on its face the laurel-wreathed head of the Emperor with the inscription: Napoleon III, Impcrator. On the reverse we read : Finis Germaniae, 1870. One of these medals was lately sold at Leipsic for a hundred marks." A specimen (in silver), formerly in mv collection (now in the British Museum), bears the legend on the" obverse: NEAPOLIO III IMPERATOR, with the laureate head of Napoleon III to left. On the truncation are marks showing that some letters (? artist's signature) have been erased in the die. I bought the specimen from an Italian coin-dealer in 1888. According to R. Nadrowski (" Anticipationen auf Miinzen und Medaillen," Monthly Numismatic Circular, London, June, 1894, column 716) pieces of this type were originally produced by the medallist, Ferdinand Korn ; but this has been denied. Similar pieces were afterwards, to my knowledge, produced in silver and bronze by the medallic establishment of Mayer, of Stuttgart; but on these the letters on the reverse are slightly smaller, and there is no mark of any erasure on the truncation of Napoleon's head on the obverse. Some of the medals produced in Germany during the Great European War might be mentioned in this connexion, for instance, the large cast medal, by F. Eue, relating to the supposed results of a Zeppelin air-ship raid (August 17 to 18, 1915) on London, with Count Zeppelin's portrait on the obverse, and, on the reverse, a scene of London in flames, with Zeppelin air-ships near the Tower Bridge. A medal of General von Kluck (1915) has on the reverse (by A. Loewental) a distant burning city, and a fury on horseback holding a torch ; with the inscription, NACH PARIS 1914. But the latter medal does not claim that Paris was reached. XX ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EITGKAM. subject. A statue of King Louis XIV of France I believe met with a somewhat similar transformation, and a chapter might perhaps be written on "metamorphoses of statues." In 1871, during the very severe illness of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII), Sir John Tenniel is said to have drawn a cartoon for Punch, representing Britannia mourning. Fortunately this was not required then, but was published thirteen years later (in 1884), on the death of the Duke of Albany. One of Sir John Tenniel's cartoons, showing the relief of General Gordon (with the words " At last! "), was actually published prematurely in Punch, in February, 1885, just before the unfortunate news arrived of the fall of Khartoum. A week later (in Punch for February 14, 1885) appeared his cartoon entitled "Too late!" The medals (Medallic Illustrations of British History, London, 1885, vol. ii. pp. 505, 506) commemorating the projected marriage of William, Prince of Orange, and Princess Anne, the eldest daughter of King George II of England, in November, 1733, has a certain kind of medical interest, for on the evening preceding the day fixed for the wedding the Prince was attacked with pleurisy, and the marriage did not actually take place till March, 1734.] Largest of all would be a work endeavouring to deal with the Aspects of Love in Art and Epigram. From the dawn of literature and art poets and artists have watched the wanderings of Love like American reporters and " snap-shot " photographers. Love has been followed in all his ups and downs, in the palaces of luxury and splendour, through enchanted scenes in mountains, valleys, forests, and meadows, and at the homely fireside, drunken, sober, in brothels and ribald taverns, playing in the gutter, sleeping on dunghills, in justly deserved durance vile and undeservedly in dungeons whose " stone walls do not a prison make." Everywhere his doings have been closely spied upon, and his resplendent aspects have formed an endless subject for classical poets, painters, and sculptors, whilst "love in the gutter" has formed a favourite theme for the satirist in literature and the caricaturist in art. But we have " moving pictures" too ; for what is not almost every romance ever written but a "love story," a kind of kinematographic show in words, of one of the innumerable up-and-down episodes in Love's long career ? All this makes it practically certain that no one with any conscientious idea of completeness will ever attempt to treat the theme of love as I (however imperfectly) have treated the theme of Thanatos. But the last word has not been said on either subject Both subjects remain incomplete. Love has still a long career before him in the world's history, with many ups and downs. His aspects may yet change greatly, as indeed they must have already done since his birth amongst the savage ancestors of mankind. But there would be still greater difficulties in treating the theme of love in the way suggested. No scheme would be complete unless Psyche were likewise taken into consideration. Psyche has always been following Love in all his up-and-down career (may I be pardoned for altering the classical PREFACE. XXI allegory !), often overtaking him, and always willing to share his hard- ships as well as his comforts and triumphs. More sensitive and more liable to suffer than Love, but sustained by some vague indefinable hope that more lasting happiness must come of it all in the end, she has attracted the attention of poets and artists almost as much as Love himself, and could not be omitted from any scheme for a work on Asjwts of Love in Art and Epigram. Many indeed would say that love altogether, like the peace of God, "passeth all understanding"; but be that as it may, he would be a bold man who would attempt in a volume of this kind to reflect all the beauty and mystic Murillo-like glamour of Eros and his mother, together with the varying Iris-tinted aspects of Psyche. Clearly, such an immense material would have to be subdivided into small divisions, amongst which some would have a good deal to do with engraved gems, medals, and minor works of art. Thus, we might expect such headings as: "The Trials of Love on Antique Gems," " Mischievous Love and Love's Punishments on Roman Gems, Lamps, &c," " The Triumph of Love as illustrated by Renaissance Artists," " The Crown of Love, as illustrated by nineteenth- century English Art (of the ' Sweet' kind) " ; and "Love in the Gutter, a study of certain Roman tesserae (so-called Spintriae), &c, and of the caricaturists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries"; but the last group could hardly be illustrated, as far as I can judge from two Roman spintriae that I have given to the British Museum. An interesting volume would be one on " Historical Marriage Medals," and many of what one might call " stock " marriage medals (for general use as gifts at private weddings) are also beautiful. There is a curious tendency for both dealers and collectors to attribute marriage medals of the latter class, by such medallists as Peter van Abeele, Sebastian Dadler, Johann Buchheim, Johann Blum, &c, to particular (historical) marriages. In regard to " Arrhae" or " tokens of spousage" see a very interesting article by Hubert Thurston, reprinted in the American Journal of Numismatics, Boston, 1906, vol. xli. pp. 31-36. At one time in France the arrhae (" earnest money ") consisted of thirteen coins or jetons, a treizain as it was called. They were sometimes preserved in cases, and handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation. Thus Poey d'Avant spoke of a set of thirteen hardis of Edward the Black Prince in his collection, which had been gilded and fitted in a case, the workmanship of the latter pointing to a date a century or more later than the coins themselves. The treizains for spousage sometimes consist of pieces specially struck for the purpose in bronze, silver or gold. The devices and inscriptions on such pieces vary considerably. Amongst the legends are the following: DENIER POUR EPOUSER; DENIER TOURNOIS POUR EPOUSER; LA FOY UNIT NOS DEUX COEURS ; QUOD DEUS CONIUNX1T HOMO NON SEPARET. A jeton dated 1559 has on the reverse: IAM NON SUNT DUO SED UNA CARO. It has been supposed that certain gold pieces of Louis le Debonnaire (son of Charles the Great, whom he succeeded in a.d. 814), and of Vigmund, Archbishop of xxii ASPECTS OF DEATH IN AKT AND EPIGKAM. York (a.d. 831-854), with the reverse inscription MUNUS DIVINUM, were struck as marriage pieces or to serve some similar religious purpose. On the use of the old German " Schraubthaler " or " Box- dollars"—large silver coins cleverly hollowed out so as to form a case to enclose a portrait, &c—as marriage gifts, see an article by M. Kirmis, in Daheim, May 5, 1900. A very interesting subject for a small work would be the Aspects of Evolution in Epigram and Art. This would include poems and various minor works of art relating to Progress—bodily or mental— by struggle, and the rdle played by Resistance in physical and psychical development.12 The motto, Marcet sine adversario virtus (from Seneca, 12 In this connexion it is interesting to note that Field-Marshal Count von Moltke, in a letter to Professor Bluntschli, dated December 11, 1880, and translated in the Times (London, February 1, 1881, p. 3, column 4), wrote: " Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream. War is an element in the order of the world ordained by God. In it the noblest virtues of mankind are developed: courage and the abnegation of self, faithfulness to duty, and the spirit of sacrifice: the soldier gives his life. Without war the world would stagnate, and lose itself in materialism." One may believe, however, in the doctrine of progress by pain and struggle, and yet not believe in the necessity for wars. By the laws of evolution and the " survival of the fittest " struggle of some kind there must be for the fittest to progress, but the struggle, or rather struggles (however severe and " painful"), may be of a peaceful kind, and not the strife of war. Just as an individual human being may become stronger and make progress in every way by battling against his physical and moral vices—the " evil " in his nature—and compensating his own infirmities, so may a nation gain strength and steadily progress, not by destructive wars, but by resisting its own national vices (and the vices of its individual components), by compensating its own shortcomings, and by peaceful competition with its neighbours. Doubtless, the kind of progress made through the trials and "survival of the fittest" in warfare is different to the kind of progress made by means of peaceful competitions and self-restraint, but in the civilised world of modern times surely it is the latter kind of progress which is preferable and more needed. In short, it is probable that wars and harsh conditions in the " struggle for existence " are no longer necessary or salutary for the progress of civilised human races. Men could surely always find sufficient to oppose and counteract in their own weaknesses and faulty tendencies, to give them abundant scope for salutary mental and bodily exercise. Sir Theodore Martin (Horace, Edinburgh, 1876, p. 63), regarding the relations of Horace to his Roman contemporaries, wrote (the italics are mine): " He told them, in every variety of phrase and illustration—in ode, in satire, and epistle—that witlwut self-control and temperance in all things, there would be no joy without remorse no pleasure without fatigue—that it is from within that happiness must come, if it comes at all, and that unless the mind has schooled itself to peace by the renunciation of covetous desires, ' We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest.' " This sounds exaggerated, but Horace was both a poet and a philosopher. PREFACE. xxiii De Providentid, cap. ii.), which appears on the reverse of a medal (which I have referred to in Part II., under Heading xv.) by Jean de Candida, with the portrait of his friend and patron, Robert Brieonnet (a French statesman and Archbishop of Rheims, an enlightened scholar of the " new learning," who died in 1497), may to some extent be taken as suggesting the evolutionary doctrine of the necessity for resistance of some kind for the maintenance of bodily and mental health. By the laws of evolution the only alternative to idleness with regression is activity with progression. Practically no middle course is possible. Resistance of some kind and of some degree is necessary for " vital reaction," whether physical or psychical. Without resistance (i.e. resistance in the form of blood-pressure) the heart, for instance, would degenerate or cease beating altogether, though Alexis Carrel has (by cultivation in chicken plasma) succeeded in keeping a fragment of the heart of an embryonic chicken pulsating for 104 days (see Berliner Klinisehe Wochenschrift, 1914, li. p. 509). Resistance, competition, the " struggle for life," and the "survival of the fittest" are necessary for " progress by evolution," and this consideration affords the most rational ground for taking an optimistic view of the " pitiable side " of life, namely, that it is necessary, if not for the individual, yet at least for the mass. Even pain has its use; it is, as A. R. Wallace (The World of Life, London, 1910) points out, an essential factor in evolution, probably more useful in the higher than in the lower organisms. By the laws of evolution it would hardly continue to exist if it were not needed. In Goethe's Faust, God is represented as saying— " Des Menschen Thatigkeit kann allzuleicht erschlaffen, Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh; Drum geb' ich gern ihm den Gesellen zu, Der reizt und wirkt, und muss, als Teufel, schaffen." According to Goethe Nature "attaches her curse on all inaction." Cf. Gustav Falke's modern prayer— " Herr! lass mich hungern dann und wann, Satt sein macht stumpf und trage, Und gib mir Feinde, Mann fur Mann, Kampf halt die Krafte rege." In a somewhat similar strain Robert Louis Stevenson (" The Celestial Surgeon ") prays, if his spirit be too obdurate and his heart too callous, that before his spirit dies God may take— " A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in." Moreover, though he gave up the profession of arms and wisely abstained from seeking political power, and though he was protected from excesses both in practical life and in his mental outlook by his sound common sense, was he really without personal ambition, and was there not something of the "fighting man" still left in him? How about his Non omnis moriar ? How about his Satires and Epodes ? xxiv ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. The " polarity" of pain and pleasure, and the probably beneficial action of pain, are apparently alluded to by Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897), in his poem commencing, The man that hath great griefs I pity not— " For thus it is God stings us into life, Provoking actual souls From bodily systems, giving us the poles That are His own, not merely balanced strife." The essence of James Hinton's (1822-1875) teaching in regard to the " Mystery of Pain" 13 was that, for human beings and animals alike, pain is the "guardian angel of the body," and that from the psychical point of view pain is likewise the '' guardian angel of the soul." Of the necessity for the existence of pain and "evil," and their actual utility, at least in many cases, for the healthy existence and progress of body and mind, there can be no doubt. Seneca, in his De Providentid Liber, endeavoured, like many other ancient philosophers, to answer the question, Quarc aligua incommoda bonis viris accidant cum sit Providentia, and in his explanation he endeavoured to make clear (he addressed his discussion on the subject to his friend, Lucilius Junior) that inconveniences, trials, pains, and apparent disasters were probably often beneficial to human beings. Of the usefulness of some so-called " evils " he appeared to be convinced. It 13 Cf. James Hinton, The Mystery of Pain, London, 1866; also Mrs. Havelock Ellis, Three Modern Seers, London, 1910, Chapter iii., on Hinton's teaching regarding the "Mystery of Pain." From the physical point of view, indeed, pain is almost as important for life as hunger is. Hunger, as the expression of an imperative need, serves to secure the adequate nutrition of the body. " A burnt child dreads the fire " (Chaucer included this cosmopolitan proverb in the Romaunt of the Rose). "Pain," says Mrs. Havelock Ellis (op. cit., p. 91), "is an imperative warning, and so an education. Life and growth would cease in the first stage of evolution but for pain. The child cuts its finger ; it is in pain, so it learns to avoid the dangerous plaything. The cat warms itself on the table by the lamp; it singes its fur, and, through pain, it avoids the lamp for the future. The boy over-eats; he gets pain, and so learns avoidance of that which causes pain." From the medical point of view, in regard to disease and wounds, the value of pain, as a danger-signal, and as an indication for physical and physiological rest, has often been pointed out, but notably and especially clearly by John Hilton (1808-1878), the London surgeon, in his-classical treatise on "Rest and Pain," first published in 1863! It is interesting to note that Charles Leadbetter, in his Mechanick Dialling (first edition, London, 1737), under mottoes for sun-dials (Chapter xxiii. No. 39), gives: Post Voluptatem Misericordia, the English equivalent for which (Pleasure is the Parent of Pain), he said, was, or might be, a sun-dial inscription on a "Lock Hospital" for venereal diseases. PREFACE. XXV is in the second chapter of this work of his that the above-mentioned sentence, Marcet sine adversario virtus, occurs. An interesting essay, to some extent dealing with the subject of the necessity of " evil," is that by Paul Carus, entitled, The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil, London, 1900. Havelock Ellis (Impressions and Comments, London, 1914, pp. 32, 33), commenting on Stanley Hall's plea for not eliminating the Devil, the inseparable companion of God, from Christian theology, or rather for rehabilitating him, writes : " Even the Puritan Milton ... made Satan the real hero of his theological epic, while the austere Carducci addressed a famous ode to Satan as the creator of human civilisation." On the other side of the world we find that "the great Hawaiian goddess Kapo had a double life—now an angel of grace and beauty, now a demon of darkness and lust. Every profound vision of the world must recognise these two equally essential aspects of Nature and of Man; every vital religion must embody both aspects in superb and ennobling symbols. A religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil than to degrade its God." Of course the subject also involves the whole question of the distinction between what under certain circumstances is right and what is wrong. At all events, it is probable that many a man, looking back on his own past life, has felt a justifiable satisfaction at having, on some occasion or other, been branded as an advocatus diaboli, whether the term were applied in friendly ridicule, in scorn, or in hate. In connexion with Seneca's Marcet sine adversario virtus, the following is a striking passage from one of the best-known novels (Chandos, 1866) by Ouida (Louise De la Ramee): "The bread of bitterness is the food on which men grow to their fullest stature ; the waters of bitterness are the debatable ford through which they reach the shores of wisdom...... The swimmer cannot tell his strength till he has gone through the wild force of opposing waves; the great man cannot tell the might of his hand and the power of his resistance till he has wrestled with the angel of adversity, and held it close till it has blessed him." Amongst many proverbial expressions relating to the dualistic idea of good and evil, such as " No roses without thorns," is " Nulla sine merore [maerore] voluptas" ("No pleasure without sadness"), which appears as the motto of Georg Gisze (a Basel merchant " of the Steelyard " in London) on his magnificent portrait, dated 1532, by Holbein, now in the Picture Gallery of the Old Museum at Berlin. Leonarda da Vinci (Note-books, rendered into English by E. McCurdy) wrote, "Pleasure and Pain are represented as twins, as though they were joined together, for there is never the one without the other. . . . They are made with their backs turned to each other, because they are contrary the one to the other. They are made growing out of the same trunk, because they have one and the same foundation." The pain of efforts is, however, often absorbed in the pleasure of success in efforts, and so indeed we have the motto, " Labor ipse voluptas." XXvi ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. Cf. William Blake— "Joy and woe are woven fine, A c'.othing for the soul divine: Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. It is right it should be so : Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Safely through the world wc go." An interesting subdivision in regard to evolution would be a short Analytical Morphology of Ornament—a section devoted to ancient British, Gallic, and other more or less barbarous coins, and the various ornamental designs and patterns employed on brooches, jewels, panel- ling and architecture in early Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and Teutonic Art, and on Pacific Island (Polynesian) paddles and the various other objects preserved in museums of Anthropology, Ethnology, and Comparative Archaeology, as far as they relate to the Evolution of Ornament and Ornamental Designs in Art, especially amongst primitive peoples. On this subject a good deal has been written—see, for instance, Sir John Evans on The Coins of the Ancient Britons (1864), &c.u; C. F. Keary's articles on "The Morphology of Coins," in the Numismatic Chronicle (London, 1885,1886); A. C. Haddon, Evolution in Art, as illustrated by the Life-histories of Designs, London, 1895 (with many references to older literature on the subject) ; Hjalmar Stolpe, " Utvecklingsforeteelser i Naturfolkens Ornamentik," in Ymer, Stockholm, 1890, x. pp. 193-250; Sir C. H. Read, "Origin of Certain Ornaments of the South-East Pacific," Journal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1892, xxi. p. 139; H. C. March, "Polynesian Ornament, a Symbolism of Origin and Descent," ibid. 1893, xxii. p. 307; the various writings of A. H. Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers, for instance, his paper "On the Evolution of Culture," Proc. Roy. Institution of Gt. Britain, 1875, vol. vii. pp. 496-520. An interesting series of gold earring pendants of the late Mycenaean class, obtained from excavations in Cyprus, are exhibited in the British Museum so as to show the gradual transition from the representation of a bull's head, through intermediate forms approximating to the bull's head shape, to a merely conventional decorative pattern (Guide to the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, fourth edition London, 1912, p. 130, Fig. 53). The various mental and other factors on which the evolutionary direction of ornamental work depends, would _» With the degradation of classical types observed on ancient British coins compare the gradual degradation shown by the ancient Himyante coins of Arabia Felix, as illustrated by Plate v of the Numismahsche Zeitschrift, 1880. On the whole subject of the morphology of coins, cf. also George Macdonald, Coin Types their Origin and Development, Glasgow, 1905; and William Rideewav The Origin of Metallic Currency, Cambridge, 1892. ' PREFACE. XXV11 have as far as possible to be investigated; and in this connexion it should be remembered that just as man, bodily and mentally, and in all his parts, varies according to the laws of evolution and involution which rule Nature and the universe—the macrocosm—so also ornamental designs created by, or through, the mind of man—the microcosm—are subject to similar variations in evolution or involution. A kindred subject to Evolution, namely, Eugenics, has not, as far as I know, been yet referred to on medals, but comparatively modern epigrams and caricatures exist relating to Eugenics and Heredity in human beings, and the social and racial aspects of the teaching have not been altogether ignored in poetry. In ancient literature (Plato, &c.) there is, of course, plenty about it. The term, Eugenics, was, as far as I know, introduced in its present sense by Sir Francis Galton, and a comparatively modern satirical design (I think it was in Punch, about 1888) depicted an idle-looking youth of well-to-do family, standing in front of a fire-place, with his hands in his pockets; he was supposed to be addressing his astonished parents (one on either side of him) in some such words as the following: " What can be expected of a fellow whose father and mother look like you! " But to return now to my present subject: I must admit that in searching for quotations from poems and classical literature to illustrate my theme, I have occa- sionally felt as if I were catching beautiful, and sometimes rare and exotic, butterflies and moths (a few of them are in truth winged, " winged words " in Buchmann's sense of the t^rm—'iirea irrepoevra of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey—ringing out clearly, as Athene's voice, like the " sound of an Etruscan bell"), heartlessly squeezing them between my hard fingers (in doing so, involuntarily damaging their colouring and the richness of their glossy bloom), and transfixing them with pins to arrange them for my collector's pleasure as ornamental specimens in the selected show-trays of my entomological-like cabinet. If, however, any readers take the trouble to examine the beauty of some and the quaint horror of others and the light they all throw on the subject under consideration, I can be satisfied. The book is constructed to furnish material for thought and also to be of use for purposes of literary (to some extent, bibliographical) reference. No vain hope is entertained that it can help to solve problems, which, in the nature of things, cannot be solved. XXViii ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGPAM. For one thing I am sorry, namely, that I could not illustrate more of the works of art (great and small) which I have mentioned or referred to. I wish, for instance, that from Greek pottery and Etruscan bronze I had been able to reproduce every known Psychostasia scene, every known representation of Thanatos and Hypnos lifting the dead body of Sarpedon, or of Memnon, &c. Had I been able to figure nearly all such works of art, I have no doubt that my book would have excited as much and as general interest as could be expected in regard to the subject in question; but at all events I have in a great many instances given references enabling any one to look up the object mentioned, or an illustration of it in some other work. I wish also that I was more familiar with what has been written on the whole subject and its branches by various modern writers, especially by those on the Continent of Europe, in France, Italy, Germany, Holland, ivc, I lately heard a somewhat malicious story about a northern scientific author, who was travelling in Central Europe, visiting many well-known universities. In speaking about his most recent book to some of the professors, he came to the conclusion that their first thought on the subject could be formulated by the query— " are we in it ?" If they heard that their work was referred to, their interest in the book immediately rose, but it always fell in proportion if they heard that their work had not been mentioned. Whether this story be true or not, it seems to me a not at all unnatural one, and I am afraid that some of the few who ever hear of the present book and take the trouble to look into it, mav be reasonably surprised to find work of their own " not alluded to. A short portion of Part II. (most of what is included under Headings ix. and x.) appeared separately in the Proceedings for 1914 of the Section for the History of Medicine, Eoyal Society of Medicine, London. PREFACE. XXIX I have abstained from allusions to the Great European War, excepting in regard to certain medals, cartoons, memorials, &c, which furnish obvious illustrations to the subjects discussed in this edition. The war has, however, affected the accuracy of various passages in the book. In the first place, certain works of art which I have men- tioned, and objects of archaeological interest (such as the Chateau of Coucy), may have been destroyed or removed during the war. In the second place, as in mediaeval times, the world has become again accustomed to great frequency of sudden death in the strong and healthy, and especially in youth and robust manhood. Of one aspect of the war, however, all may be glad. Had it not been for the great advances made during modern times in surgery and medicine, and especially in hygiene and preventive medicine, the death-roll would have been at least double or treble as great as it has been, and all the terrors connected with mediaeval epidemics,15 pestilence, and famine, would have been repeated in France and Flanders (cf. the relative mortality from disease in former wars, even as late as the Spanish-American War of 1898). F. P. W. May, 1918. 15 The mediaeval-like terrible pandemic of typhus fever (typhus exanthematicus), which raged in Serbia during 1915, will perhaps be the last epidemic of the kind in Europe, for it has been finally demonstrated that lice can be effectively opposed, and that typhus fever cannot spread without the agency of lice (" no lice, no spreading of typhus ! "), which play, in fact, the same role of "carrier" in the development of an epidemic of typhus that fleas do in an epidemic of bubonic (" Oriental ") plague—the dreadful " black death " of the fourteenth century in Europe, Asia, and Africa. CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE..........vii TABLE OF CONTENTS......xxxi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS......xxxiii Part I. INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL ACCOUNT 1 A. Philosophical Ideas amongst the Ancients—Con- solation—"Epicureanism" ..... 5 B. Orthodox Religious Teaching op Mediaeval Europe. The Morality Tales and Morality Plays. The Legend op the Three Living and the Three Dead. The Vado Mom Poems. The Dance op Death (Daxse Macabre). The Ars Moriexdi Designs 61 C. Sepulchral Monuments and Sepulchral Inscriptions op Admonitory Character. The Gtsaxt Type of Monument op the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. The Horror-inspiring Aspect of Memexto Mori Religious Art .... 101 D. Italian Renaissance Ideas, and Later. Influence of Petrarch's Trioxfi. The " Triumph of Death " Designs. The Memexi'> Mori Subject continued, ESPECIALLY IN REGARD TO THE SIXTEENTH AND Early Seventeenth Centuries .... 119 E. Modern Art relating to Death. Comparison op Modern and Mediaeval Ideas .... 137 Part II. ANALYSIS AND ARRANGEMENT.....167 I. The Simple Mejiexto Mori Idea . . • .167 II. Death as the Threshold of a Future Existence. Death prom the Standpoint op Religious Faith. Immortality op the Soul. Metempsychosis . 175 III. Survival after Death in the Minds of Others. Posthumous Fame. Necrology . IV. Death as a Friend and the End of Pain and Misery. Death compared to Rest, or to a Peaceful Sleep after the Fatigue and Turmoil of the Day. Death as the Awakening after the Fitful, Feverish Dream of Life . . 213 V. Death as a Means of Punishment, Vengeance, or Atonement. The Threat of Death as a Means of exciting Terror. Political Murders and Political Executions......23' VI. Death as an Emblem of Stubborn Purpose in War. Death, War, and Ambition..... VII. Death as an Emblem of Destruction and Ruin . 201 251 257 279 XXxii ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGIIAM. P.vr.E VIII. Death as Conqueror and Leveller of all Mankind 261 IX. Scientific Attitudes towards Death. The Investi- gation of its Causes, &c. Life-saving Scientific Discoveries . . . • • ■ X. Medical, Sanitary, and Social Attitudes towards Death. The Prevention of Unnecessary Death 283 XL Death for the Good op Others, or for the Sake of Ordinary Duty or Honour. Martyrdom for Religious, Patriotic, Political, or Social Opinions, or in the Interests of Scientific Discovery and Adventure. Duty, Honour and Martyrdom........331 XII. The "Epicurean" Attitude towards Death . . 345 XIII. Contemplative Attitudes. Mindfulness of Death, and a Cloistered Life of Contemplation, as a Preparation for Death ..... 349 XIV. Activity and Utility. Mindfulness of Death as an Incentive to Right Living, Charity, helping Others, and making the Best Active Use of Life 353 . XV. Death and Love, and the "Crown of Life." The Praise of Death ....... 365 XVI. Predestination and the Free Wtill in regard to Aspects of Death ....... 381 XVII. Pessimism. Aspects of Death from Standpoints op Pessimism in regard to Life. Thanatophilia . 387 XVIII. Grief for the Death op Others . . . . 421 XIX., XX. The Attributes and Pomp of Death. Funerals. Excessive Fear of Death (Thanatophobia). . 429 XXI. Grotesque Art. Skulls, Animated Skeletons, &c, in Grotesque Art ....... 465 Part III. COINS, MEDALS, AND MEDAL-LIKE TOKENS RELAT- ING TO DEATH AND TO THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS DEATH . . .469 Part IV. ENGRAVED GEMS, FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, ANCIENT POTTERY, AND SMALL OBJECTS OF ART, RELATING TO DEATH AND TO THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF OR ATTITUDES TOWARDS DEATH . . . .587 I. Antique Engraved Gems, Designs on Antique Vases, &c.........587 II. Finger-rings, Jewels, Ivories, &c.....691 ADDENDUM, on Antique Pictorial or Plastic Analogues to Lucian's " Dialogues of the Dead " . . . . 737 INDEX...........739 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FIG. PAGE Frontispiece.—A philosopher lecturing on life and death. From a Roman lamp in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum ......... iv 1. Allegorical representation of the "portal of death." From Bartholome's " Monument aux Morts " at Paris . . xl 2. Ancient Egyptian little wooden figure of a mummy, to be used as a memento Mori at banquets, and the box to contain it. (After F. W. von Bissing) .... 28 3. Larvae and skeleton-manikins of Roman times ... 30 4. Silver cup forming part of the so-called Boscoreale treasure in the Louvre Museum at Paris, supposed to date from the first century of the Christian era .... 35 5. The "Arms of Death," from Holbein's " Dance of Death" series ......... 63 (i. Ivory statuette, apparently from a " Dance of Death" group 64 7. " The Promenade "—an early engraving by Diirer . . 66 8. Diirer's so-called " Wappen des Todes." (Engraving in the British Museum).......69 9. The March of Death. Possibly an allegorical representation of the fatal spreading of an epidemic. (Engraving by the " Meister H.W.," 1482)......70 10. The Three Living and the Three Dead Kings, from an en- graving in the British Museum, by the " Meister des Amsterdamer Kabinets "(" Meister von 1480 ") . . 72 11. The Three Dead and the Three Living Kings, from a manu- script in the British Museum.....83 12. The Three Dead meeting the Pope and Ecclesiastics. Original drawing in the British Museum ... 87 13. The "Three Living" and the Three Fates, on a fourteenth- century picture at Pisa ...... 89 14. A " Dance of the Dead," from a woodcut of the Nuremberg Chronicle (copy in the British Museum), published in 1493 by Anthoni Koberger of Nuremberg ... 91 15. The " Ars Moriendi."—The temptation by vain-glory, from the British Museum block-book (about 1460) . . 96 C XXxiv ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. fig. paoe 16. The "Ars Moriendi."—The triumph over vain-glory, from the British Museum block-book (about 1460) . . 97 17. The "Ars Moriendi."—The temptation by impatience, by the Master E.S.........98 18. The " Ars Moriendi."—The final scene, by the Master E.S. . 100 19. The Tomb of Archbishop Chichele (died 1443) in Canterbury Cathedral.........103 20. Ivory panel from a casket (Italian, about 1480), with the " Triumph of Death," after Petrarch .... 122 21. French print of the sixteenth century, with the Triumph of Death (or the Three Fates) over Chastity, after Petrarch 125 22. Baby, with the four skulls. Engraving by Barthel Beham, in the British Museum . . . . . 120 23. Mother and child, with skull and hour-glass. Engraving by Barthel Beham, in the British Museum . . .127 24. Death and the physician, from Holbein's " Dance of Death " series .......... 129 25. Holbein's painting of Sir Brian Tuke, in the Munich Pinakothek........133 26. Bocklin's portrait of himself (1872), with Death as a fiddler behind him........139 27. Wooden statuette of Death, represented as a decaying corpse with bow and arrows ....... 152 28. Italian bronze statuette (fifteenth century ?), representing an allegory of life ........ 163 29. Fame overcoming Death, after Petrarch. French sixteenth- century miniature in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. 208 30. The Triumph of Fame, after Petrarch. French sixteenth- century miniature in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris..........209 31. " Death as a Friend," by A. Rethel ..... 223 32. G. Cruikshank's satirical pattern for a Bank of England note (1818).........240 33. Satirical anti-republican pattern for a Bank-note (1819) . 241 34. Bronze death's-head badge (actual size), worn on the shakos of the Prussian Black Hussars in 1815 . . 252 35. "Death or Glory" brass badge (actual size), worn on the head-dress of the English 17th Lancers . 252 36. " A Medical Allegory "...... 31(3 37. Diirer's " The Knight, Death and the Devil" (1513) 384 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XXXV FIG- PAGE 38. Diirer's " Melencolia" (1514)......415 39. " Sorrow," by W. Dadd, 1854......426 40. "Death in the Jaws of Hell." From a fifteenth-century German woodcut in the British Museum . . . 432 41. A Memento mori panel-picture, representing decay and putrefaction ....... 433 42. Tetradrachm of Selinus ...... 471 43. Didrachm of Selinus....... 472 44. Bronze coin of Eleusis ..... 473 45. Roman denarius, commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar ....... 474 46. Roman denarius struck during the interregnum following the overthrow of Nero ...... 475 47. Reverse of a medal by Giovanni Boldu, of Venice, 1458 . 477 48. Reverse of a medal by Giovanni Boldu, of Venice, 1466 . 478 49. Memento mori medal, with portrait of Virgil: obverse . . 483 50. Memento mori medal, with portrait of Virgil: reverse . . 483 51. Medal of Erasmus (1519). From a specimen formerly in the author's collection ....... 489 52. Engraving of Erasmus by Diirer. Reduced from an example in the British Museum ...... 490 53. Medal on the death of Dr. Wenzel Beyer, of Karlsbad, in 1526. (After Bergmann) ...... 493 54. Medal on the death of Dr. Wenzel Beyer, of Karlsbad, in 1526. (After Bergmann)......494 55. Medal of " Lorenzino " de' Medici ..... 497 56. Plaque by Lorenz Rosenbaum. From an original in the British Museum ....... 498 57. Reverse of medal of Johann Friess, 1540 .... 499 58. Memorial medal of Queen Dorothea of Denmark, 1560. . 500 59. Reverse design by Tobias Wolff, German, sixteenth century. 508 60. German sixteenth-century religious medal, representing Christ's triumph over Death ..... 510 61. Untimely Death. Medal in the British Museum. . . 512 62. Death and Virtue, on a sixteenth-century plaque . . 514 63. Danish memento mori medal, 1634 ..... 521 64. Danish memento mori medal, 1634 ..... 522 65. German memento mori medal by Christian Maler. . . 523 XXXvi ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. FIG. 66. Reverse of German memento mori medal by Christian Maler 67. German seventeenth-century memento mori medal 68. Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century 69. Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century 70. Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century 71. Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century 72. English memento mori medalet .... 73. English memento mori medalet .... 74. Memento mori design from Wither's Emblems, 1635 75. Halfpenny token of John Brearcliffe, of Halifax . 76. Swiss medal, 1725...... 77. Reverse of the Cheselden medal .... 78. Medal of the Company of Surgeons, London, 1767 79. Reverse of the Bristowe medal .... 80. German medal on the sinking of the Cunard Liner " Lusitania " (May, 1915) .... 81. German medal on the sinking of the " Lusitania," &c. 82. German satirical medal (1915) on the alleged abuse of the flags of neutral countries by England .... 83. German satirical medal on the naval supremacy of Great Britain, 1916........ 84. German satirical medal on the sinking of the Dutch ship, the " Tubantia," 1916...... 85. A genius of death. (After King) ..... 86. Charon in his boat, receiving the dead from Mercury (After King)........ 87. The skeleton and wine-jar type. (After King) 88. Two skeletons carrying a large amphora between them. From an antique intaglio. (After Furtwangler) . 89. Antique intaglio representing human skeleton with thyrsus, garland, &c. (After Furtwangler) .... 90. Antique intaglio representing human skeleton, amphora, festive garland, and sun-dial. (After Furtwangler) 91. Antique intaglio representing a death's-head, a wine-jug, a loaf of bread (?), a festive garland, and four astragali. (After Furtwangler.) This device is similar to that described by King Polemon of Pontus in an epigram in the Greek Anthology ....... PAGK 525 531 533 534 534 535 535 536 537 542 555 557 559 562 580 581 582 583 584 591 593 594 594 595 596 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XXXV11 FHi. PAGE 92. Antique intaglio representing human skeleton carrying on his left shoulder a pole to which vessels are attached. (After Furtwangler).......599 93. A stamped clay drinking-vessel ornamented with skeletons or " skin-and-bone figures." (After De Witte) . . 603 94. Green-glazed cup from Pella, in Macedonia . . . 605 95. Green-glazed cantharus, with relief of dancing skeletons. In the Louvre Museum at Paris. (After Pottier). . 607 9f>. Allegory of posthumous fame. (After King) . . . 610 97. Cupid and a skeleton. (After King) ..... 612 98. Cupid, skeleton, and butterfly ...... 613 99. So-called head of Plato. (After King) . . . .614 100. Philosopher reading from a scroll, with a skull and butterfly on a scrinium before him. (After Furtwangler) . . 615 101. Skull with butterfly above it. (After Furtwangler) . . 618 102. Intaglio engraved with skeleton and various emblems. (After Caetani Lovatelli) ...... 619 103. Bezel of an antique silver finger-ring, representing a skeleton, with wine-amphora, butterfly, &c. (After Le Blant and J. A. Hild).........621 104. Stone sarcophagus in the British Museum, with apparently early Christian representation of Cupid and Psyche . 623 105. From a Graeco-Scythian gold finger-ring .... 625 106. Hermes Psychopompos. (After Furtwangler) . . . 626 107. Hermes with butterfly on right shoulder. (After Furt- wangler) ......... 627 108. An Etruscan " parting scene," with the Etruscan " Charun " holding hammer, and a winged demon holding snakes. (After Dennis)........640 109. Winged figure holding urn. (After Furtwangler) . . 641 110. Ivory diptych in the British Museum, representing the Apotheosis of a Roman Emperor ..... 650 111. Two winged figures carrying dead body. From an Etruscan scarabaeus. (After Furtwangler) ..... 651 112. Two winged figures carrying dead body. From an Etruscan scarabaeus. (After Furtwangler) ..... 651 113. Two winged figures carrying dead body. (After an Etruscan scarabaeus in the British Museum) .... 651 114. Alcestis between Hermes and Thanatos. Relief on a drum (now in the British Museum) from the later temple of Artemis at Ephesus ....... 653 XXXViii ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. PAGK FIG. 115. Hermes summoning a soul from the lower world. (After Furtwangler)........661 116. Hermes calling up a soul. (After Furtwangler) 662 117. Hermes raising a soul. (After Furtwangler) . . .662 118. Hermes placing a human head on the body of a bird. (After Furtwangler) ....•••• 662 119. Hermes placing a human head on the body of a bird. (After Furtwangler) ........ 662 120. Skeleton in dancing attitude before a man seated piping. (Enlarged from an antique gem, after Gori) . . . 666 121. Skeleton in dancing attitude before a man seated piping. (Enlarged from an antique gem, after Kastner) . . 667 122. Roman intaglio, representing a man seated, reading from a scroll, with a threatening skeleton in front of him . 667 123. Dance of the Dead, the so-called " Cumaean Skeletons." (From a tomb at Cumae, after Olfers and J. A. Hild) . 670 124. Front and back of a marble sarcophagus at Candia, of the first century a.d., with a bas-relief on the front, repre- senting a skeleton or mummified figure by the side of a dining-table ........ 671 125. Prometheus modelling his man. (From an antique sard intaglio, after King) ....... 673 126. Prometheus modelling his man. The upper part of the skeleton is being covered with flesh .... 674 127. The upper surface of a Roman terra-cotta lamp, representing a philosopher lecturing on the mystery of life and death 676 128. The upper surface of a Roman terra-cotta lamp, representing a skeleton, apparently holding a skull in each hand . 677 129. Intaglio representing a draped man and a skeleton; by the man is a serin ium containing rolled-up manuscripts . 679 130. Mosaic pavement from a tomb on the Via Appia . . 682 131. Memento mori finger-ring of the sixteenth century, in the British Museum ........ 693 132. Seal of Erasmus with his " terminus " device. (After Jortin) 703 133. Finger-ring with an antique intaglio, from which apparently Erasmus derived the idea of his "terminus" device. (After Jortin) ....... 703 134. " Dance of Death " designed by Holbein for the sheath of a dagger.........707 1-35. Moorish dagger of the fifteenth century. (After J. F. Riano) 709 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxxix l"'IG. PAGE 136. Memento mori ivory in the British Museum . . .713 137. Memento mori ivory in the British Museum . . . 714 138. Large rosary-bead (or " boss") of memento mori design . 716 139. German shell-cameo of the sixteenth century . . . 720 140. Reverse of a medal by Giovanni Boldu of Venice. (After Heiss) ......... 721 141. A silver memento mori watch, shaped like a death's-head, said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and to have been given by her to Mary Seaton. (After C. J. Smith)........724 142. A rock-crystal death's-head watch. (After Guiart) . . 725 143. Medal of the physician, Adolph Occo III, of Augsburg. (After Picque) . . . . . . . .728 144. Anatomical woodcut by Jan von Calcar .... 729 Fig. 1.—Allegorical representation of the "portal of death." From Bartholome's "Monument aux Morts " at Paris. > O a w PAET I. INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL ACCOUNT. Death is no unworthy subject for human consideration. Since men began to think, this subject is one that has exercised their brains. Although ignorance may some- times, perhaps, be bliss,1 it can hardly be doubted that man's knowledge that every one must surely die has helped to set the race a-thinking, and thinking on this subject has helped to make their lives throughout historic times different to those of all other animals. One might, indeed, define civilised man as the animal who knows that animals must die; for man (i.e. civilised man) is probably (almost certainly) the only animal who does know it.2 1 Cf. the ending of Gray's " Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"; also Byron's Manfred (Act i., Scene 1)—"Sorrow is knowledge." According to Ecclesiastes (i. 18) "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," and Sir William D'Avenant (1606-1668) propounded the same idea in his play, The Just Italian (Act v., Scene 1) :— " Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know." It is scarcely necessary to point out that sayings of the kind are intimately connected with the confusion between the right thing for a man to do and what is really best for the community. Since man has tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, no ignorance can justify him—no matter whether he profess any religion, or none at all, unless he be an irresponsible moral imbecile—in escaping from the duty of doing what he thinks is right, that is to say, the best thing to do, under the circumstances of the case, for himself and others. But what is really the best may be something quite different—which he can only hope to learn by the trouble and pain of education, experience, and knowledge. 2 This is beautifully referred to by the French novelist, Pierre Loti, in his Vies des deux Chattes : " Et tandis qu'elle se laissait leurrer, la Moumoutte, par tous ces airs de joie, de jeunesse, de commencement, moi, au contraire, qui savais que cela passe, je sentais pour la premiere fois monter dans ma vie l'impression du soir, du grand soir inexorable et sans lendemain, du supreme automne qu'aucun printemps ne suivra plus." Much has been said about animals creeping into a hole or secluded spot on the approach of death, but such an act does not signify that animals have any instinctive realisation of what is going to happen to them. A man, when he feels weak and faint, is not likely R 2 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I. Few persons, nowadays, would contradict the propo- sition of Spinoza,3 that the proper study for a wise man is not death, but how to live, since a wise man is not guided by the fear of death,4 but by his direct desire of the good. Yet, however little a man's everyday active life5 may ordinarily be affected by knowledge of death and thoughts of what lies beyond the grave, I believe that to banish such thoughts altogether, if it were possible, would be to kick down one of the chief ladders by which the race has climbed to its present position. How much, indeed, do we owe to the knowledge of death! How many a good and usefully altruistic action would never have been performed but for this knowledge and the thoughts arising from it! The Death's heads and every lugubrious memento mori of the Middle Ages have, indeed, had their use. to remain in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare, but that does not signify that he thinks he is about to die, and, yet, the sensation of fainting is probably like some modes of dying and may, indeed, terminate in death before consciousness is regained. 3 Spinoza, Ethic, iv. 67. In fact, according to Spinoza, there is nothing that a wise man thinks of less than death. 4 I see, however, that Dr. E. L. Keyes, in a short interesting article on the "Fear of Death" (Harper's Monthly Magazine, July, 1909, p. 212), says that the following motto (used by Hermann Graf von Neuenaar, who died in 1530, and quoted by the Prussian General J. M. von Radowitz, who died in 1853) was chosen by John Fiske, the American writer (1842-1901), to adorn his library:— " Disce ut semper victurus; Vive ut eras moriturus." The same inscription is amongst the maxims painted in the Aula of the "Gymnasium" in Diiren (Germany, Rhineland). On modern bookplates (especially amongst the thoughtful and artistic classes) skulls and skeletons are not uncommon—serving as memento mori emblems, or as part of various allegorical devices. Cf. the paragraph on modern bookplates at the end of Part I. E. 5 Even nowadays one may occasionally meet with a memento mori device or inscription scrawled up by a visitor or passer-by in some forum or public place, for instance, the saying, "Live as you would die." R. Dagley mentions that, about 1818, some clever designs repre- senting skeleton-like figures, engaged in gambling, dancing, boxim', &c, were chalked up on a wall bordering the road from Turnham Green to Kew Bridge. PART I.] INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL ACCOUNT. 3 In his chapter on " What Life gains from Death," R. W. MacKenna (The Adventure of Death, London, 1916, p. 110) quotes Robert Browning :— " You never know what life means till you die. Even throughout life, 'tis death that makes life live, Gives it whatever the significance." It is from another point of view regarding the beneficial influence of the idea of death that Jelliffe (review of G. Stanley Hall's article on " Thanatophobia and Immor- tality," — American Journ. Psychology, 1915, vol. xxvi. p. 550,—in Journ. Nerv. and Mental Disease, 1917, vol. xlv. p. 274) writes: "The fear of death and the love of life, which are but manifestations of the same impulse, have driven man to all those achievements by which he has sought to realize the fulness of living. Hygiene and science as well as religion and art, with all else that mark man's achievement, owe their products to this desire and endeavour to avoid every degree of death and attain the maximum of life." The subject of the mere aspects of death may perhaps be likened to a time-worn skeleton, but when associated with their correlated effects on living beings, and with the attitudes of living beings towards death, the skeleton becomes clothed in flesh and blood, possesses heart and mind and passions, and above everything else, a little (though only a very little) of the priceless treasure of free will. In this work I shall not, of course, attempt to discuss the aspects of death such as actually present themselves to dying persons, though I intend, further on, to give a few references to show that the near approach of natural death is generally by no means so terrible to the dying individual himself as it is still popularly supposed to be (see Part II., xix., xx.). b 'I A. Philosophical Ideas amongst the Ancients—Consolation— " Epicureanism." Many philosophic ideas underlying the memento mori principle are expressed by ancient authors. Seneca, who tries to explain that death when it comes is not to be regarded as a calamity, though it may appear to be one ("Mors inter ilia est, quae mala quidem non sunt, tamen liabent mali speciem"), writes (Epist. Mor., lib. xi. Ep. 3 (82), 16): "Itaque etiamsi indifferens mors est, non tamen ea est, quae facile neglegi possit: magna exercitatione durandus est animus, ut conspectum ejus accessumque patiatur." He thus counsels one to become familiar with thoughts of death, so that one may not be frightened by its aspect or approach; in fact, he tells one, as Horace (Epist,, lib. i. 4, line 13) puts it, "i'Jmnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum," and, as Martial (Epitjramm,, iv. ,~i4) says :—■ " Si sapis, utaris totis, Coline, diebus ; Extremumque tibi semper adesse putes." Cf. William Congreve, in his Letter (1729) to Sir Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham :— " Defer not till to-morrow to be wise; To-morrow's sun to thee may never rise." Advice of this kind has not escaped the attention of Roman satirists (vide one of the fragments of Petronius); the seriousness, indeed, of Horace's words is much modified by the lines which end his epistle in question. 6 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I. A. Bishop Thomas Ken (1637-1711), in his "Morning Hymn," has the following :— " Each present day thy last esteem "; and in his " Evening Hymn ":— " Teach me to live that I may dread The grave as little as my bed." An inscription on a sun-dial tells us : " You have seen me (the sun) rise, but may not see me set." Then there is the motto (quoted in a previous footnote—see back) :—■ " Disce ut semper victurus ; Vive ut eras moriturus." St. Jerome wrote: " Sic quotidie vivamus quasi die illo judicandi simus." From the Latin epigrams of John Owen or " Johannes Audoenus" (died 1622), Prof. E. Bensly quotes the following epitaph on an atheist :— " Mortuus est quasi victurus post funera non sit; Sic vixit tamquam non moriturus erat." Any one following Horace's advice literally might almost say: " Quocunque aspicio, nihil est nisi mortis imago" (Ovid, Trist, i. 11, 23). W. E. H. Lecky,6 in regard to the Stoic philosophers, wrote as follows: " But while it is certain that no philosophers expatiated upon death with a grander eloquence, or met it with a more placid courage, it can hardly be denied that their constant disquisitions forced it into an unhealthy prominence, and somewhat discoloured their whole view of life." He also quoted from Erancis Bacon's Essays: "Of Death" (the second essay of the 1625 edition of the Essays): "The Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by their great preparations made it appear more fearful." 6 W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals, 1905 edition vol i p. 202. PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 7 The being ready for death was made the subject of a punning seventeenth-century epitaph on a gentleman named Ready:— " Bless'd is the man that Ready is for Death Whilst here he lives on ground. Then bless'd was he who here lies underneath, For Death him Ready found." [This epitaph may be compared to one in Peterborough Cathedral to the memory of Sir Richard Worme (died 1589), commencing : " Does Worm eat Worme ?" Amongst punning inscriptions relating to death is the one inscribed on the cornice of the chimney-piece in the drawing-room of Loseley Hall, near Guildford: " Morus tarde moriens [the verb monet must be supplied here] Morum cito moriturum." This is associated with the mulberry-tree device of the More family, who built Loseley Hall in the sixteenth century.] Again, Horace writes (Epist. Mor., lib. viii. Ep. i. (70), 18) : " On nothing is meditation so necessary (as on death)." 7 According to Socrates (as quoted by Cicero, Tusc. Disputat., i. 30, 74) the whole life of philosophers is a studying of death, and wise men (Plato's Phaedo, 64, A) " practise nothing else but to be ready to die " ; the preparation for death is the learning of truth, justice, and goodness (the " mysteries " of this life and the life to come). "Let all live as they would die" (George Herbert's Outlandish Proverbs, 1639). "Lebe, wie du, wenn du stirbst, Wunschen wirst gelebt zu haben" (Christian Furchtegott Gellert, 1715-1769). Compare an inscription on a sixteenth-century sepulchral monu- ment, attributed to the great French sculptor, Jean 7 A Danish memorial medal of George Hojer (1670) has the inscrip- tion " Mors omnibus aequa " on the obverse, and " Vita est meditatio " on the reverse. 8 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-A. Goujon, in the Church of St. Gervais and St. Trotais at Gisors:— " Fay maintenant ce que voudras Avoir fait quand tu te mourras." The main idea in Ecclesiasticus (ch. xxviii. 6) is of course the same: " Bemember thy end, and let enmity cease; remember corruption and death, and abide in the com- mandments." So also in the 90th Psalm (ver. 12, after Luther's translation) : " Teach us to remember that we must die, so that we may become wise." In regard to all this Montaigne, the essayist, wrote : " I never saw any peasant among my own neighbours set himself to cogitate with what countenance and assurance he should meet his last hour. Nature teaches him not to dream about death until he is dying ; and then he does it with a better grace than Aristotle, on whom death presses doubly hard, both because of itself and because of the long anticipation of it. . . . It is only your learned men who dine any the worse for the thought of it when they are in full health, and who shudder at the idea of death. Your common man has no need of remedy or consolation until the actual shock of the blow comes, and thinks no more about it than just what he suffers." In one of his writings Montaigne professes himself of Caesar's opinion, that the death most to be desired is that which is the least premeditated and the shortest. "If Caesar dared to say it, it is no cowardice in me to believe it." In regard to his own preparedness for death Montaigne declared : " I am at all times prepared as much as I am like to be, and the coming of death will teach me nothing new. We should always, as far as in us lies, be booted and spurred, and ready to set off.8 . . . Never was 8 Montaigne also observed that every day travels towards death, but only one's last day reaches it. On the other hand, death has been so often and popularly compared to a long journey or voyage that the idea of death may be personified by the figure of a traveller with his hand for ever raised in a gesture of bidding good-bye. In the same way, leaving loved persons and familiar scenes often acts as a memento mori and momentarily makes the traveller think of the " eternal farewell" ; in that sense, " to travel is to die continually." PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 9 man prepared to quit the world more absolutely and entirely, and detach myself from it more completely than I expect to do. The deadest deaths are the best. We are born for action : I would have a man act and go on with the duties of: life so long as he is able ; and then, let death find me planting my cabbages, but not concerned at his approach, and still less that I am leaving my garden unfinished." W. Lucas Collins, from whose excellent little book on Montaigne (1879, pp. 123, 121, 126, 131) I make these quotations, writes that Montaigne contends that " the highest blessing that virtue can confer upon us is the contempt of death. If philosophy teaches us to despise poverty, or pain, or sorrow, it is well. But some men's lives such accidents touch but little ; and at the worst, from all of them death will relieve us. It is death only which comes inevitably to all men. If we tremble at it, ' how can we advance a single step in life without an ague- fit ?' ' The remedy of the vulgar is not to think about it at all'; 'most people cross themselves at the very word, as though it were the name of the Devil.' . . . ' Let us disarm Death of his strangeness : let us converse with him, grow familiar with him ; let us have nothing so often in our thoughts as Death. ... In our feasts and revels let there evermore occur to us, as a refrain, the thought of our condition.' . . . For his own part, Montaigne declares that, but for thus accustoming himself to the thought, he should live in perpetual terror." The ancient writers console one for the " Charybdis " which awaits all alike by a variety of arguments. Cf. Simonides (Anthol. Grace. Palat,, x. 105): Qavdrw irdvres dcfreiXofieda, The ancients point out that death is a natural law, and as necessary as birth is : " Lex non poena mors";9 9 Better, " Lex est, non poena, mori." Cf. part of epitaph (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. vi. No. 11252): " Mors etenim hominum natura non poena est." Lucan (Pharsalia, vii. 470), however, speaks of death (mors), " quae cunctis poena paratur." A Zenonian syllogism was: " No evil is honourable : but death is honourable : therefore death is not evil." 10 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-A. "Xascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet" (Alanilius); "Constat aeterna positumque lege est, ut constet genitum nihil " (Boethius) ; " Principium moriendi natale est."10 Cicero and Seneca offer much philosophic consolation.11 Cicero, in his De Einibus Bonorum et Mcdorum, speaks of Socrates as having "first drawn wisdom down from heaven." In the first 10 In Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act i., Scene 2) similar ordinary philo- sophic arguments are used by the King and Queen in their endeavours to console Hamlet for the death of his father :— "Thou know'st 'tis common, all that live must die, Passing through nature to eternity." " But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his. . . ." This might have been suggested by the " Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius, where, in the eighth book (Meric Casaubon's translation), the following passage occurs, not as a consolation, but as a kind of memento mori:—" Lucilla buried Verus; then was Lucilla herself buried by others. So Secundus Maximus, then Secunda herself. So Epitynchanus, Diotimus; then Epitynchanus himself. So Antoninus Pius, Faustina his wife ; then Antoninus himself. This is the course of the world." William Seward translated some Latin lines written by Lady Jane Grey, as follows :— " To mortal's common fate thy mind resign, My lot to-day; to-morrow may be thine." In the account of " Old St. Paul's," by J. Saunders, in Charles Knight's London (H. G. Bohn, 1851, vol. iv. p. 268) the following epitaph is mentioned:— "Lo, Thomas Mind, esquire by birth, doth under turned lie, To show that men, by nature's law, are born to live and die!" On this Saunders makes the philosophical satirical comment: " The imagination starts back in awe as it asks, What would have been the consequences had this gentleman been unwilling to be made such an example of ? " 11 For much on the whole subject of philosophic consolation, see R. Burton's references to ancient authors in his Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621 (Part 2, Sect. 3, M. 5), and W. E. H. Lecky's History of European Morals (first edition, 1869; new edition, 1877). For similar philosophic consolation in modern times we may refer to Maurice Maeterlinck's little book on Death, English translation by A. Teixeira de Mattos London; 1911. PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 11 book of the Tv.sculanac Disputationcs he refers to the Pythagorean, Socratic, and Platonic doctrines of the survival of the soul after the death of the body. He asks whether, supposing death to be of the nature of a change or migration, rather than extinction, of life, anything better could be wished for, whereas if, on the other hand, death is complete annihilation, what could be better than thus, in the midst of life's labours, grow- ing weary, to sink softly into eternal sleep. "Nam si supremus ille dies non exstinctionem, sed commutationem adfert loci, quid optabilius ? Sin autem perimit ac delet omnino, quid melius quam in mediis vitae laboribus obdormiscere et ita conniventum somno consopiri sempi- terno ? " 12 This is almost the same as what, according to Plato's Apology, Socrates, after his condemnation to death, said to those of his judges who had voted for his acquittal. He did not regard death as an evil. Death must be one of two things: either it was complete annihilation, in which case it was like a dreamless sleep; or else it was a change and migration of the soul, in which case he would have the delight in the other world of meeting and conversing with the just judges and heroes of former times, who would not con- demn him to death for questioning them. To a good man nothing could come as an evil, and even death might be a blessing. Xenophon (who was himself a disciple of Socrates), in his didactic story, Cyropaedcia (a kind of historical romance), placed similar sentiments (regarding the survival of the soul) into the mouth of the dying Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. The Eoman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 121-180) also '-' Cicero, Tusc. Disput., lib. i. xlix. 117. 12 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN AKT AND EPIGRAM. [PAliT I. A. held the old philosophic view that death, being a necessary phenomenon of Nature, could not be an " evil." In the sixth book of his Meditations he wrote: "Death is a cessation from the impression of the senses, the tyranny of the passions, the errors of the mind, and the servitude of the body." Other portions of his Meditations show that, like Socrates and Plato—who perhaps might be called "the first professors of ethics "—Marcus Aurelius evidently believed that, in regard to philosophy, "the proper study of mankind is man," as Pope, Charron and Terence have put it. Epicurus, in a letter to Menoeceus (Diog. Laert.), wrote to the following effect: " Accustom yourself to the thought that death is indifferent; for all good and all evil consist in feeling, and what is death but the privation of feeling ? " (Cf. Seneca: " While we are, death is not; when death has come, we are not.") Similarly, Lucretius, who designated Epicurus as a god (cf. Manilius, Astronomicon, i. 104: "Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque tonandi"), and who in the Be Rerum Katurd profoundly studied death from the point of view of natural philosophy, repeatedly alluded to the uselessness of fearing and hoping to escape one's end— " Certa quidem finis vitae mortalibus adstat, Nee devitari letum pote quin obeamus ";13 but wrote such words of philosophic comfort as the following:— " Scire licet nobis nil esse in morte timendum, Nee miserum fieri qui non est posse, neque hilum Differre anne ullo fuerit jam tempore natus, Mortalem vitam mors cum immortalis ademit." u 13 Lucretius, De Rerum Naturd, lib. iii. 1091-1092. 14 Munro's translation of this passage (Lucretius, De Rerum Naturd, lib. iii. 866-869) is: "You maybe sure that we have nothing to fear PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 13 John Addington Symonds, in his essay on Lucretius,15, says that the De Rerum Xatura has been called by a great critic the " Poem of Death," and that, as a motto on the title-page, there might be written: " And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then." This is from Shakespeare's Sonnet, No. 146, which begins— " Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth," and ends— " So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then." The same idea of death being passed by, and therefore got rid of, by dying, is expressed in Ovid's Morte carent animae (Mrtamorph. xv. 158); so also, Mors mortem vincit. As ;t Christian motto, however, the latter is probably connected with the idea, Mors Christi, mors mortis mihi. C. W. King, in his essay on " Death, as depicted in Ancient Art," 16 writes : " To understand how so charming a type (he refers to the Cupid-like figure of the Eoman Genius of Death on sarcophagi, gems, &c.) came to be appropriated to such a signification, it is necessary to cast off modern associations, and to recollect that to the ancient mind, arguing merely from the analogy of Nature. death presented itself as merely the necessary converse of birth, and consequently carried no terror in the thought— —' nullique ea tristis imago,' as Statius happily words it. For it implied nothing worse than the return to the state after death, and that he who exists not, cannot become miserable, and that it matters not a whit whether (a man) has been born into life at any time, when immortal death has taken away his mortal life." Yet, the surviving friends, in the words of Lucretius, " Misero miscre," aiunt, "omnia ademit una dies infesta tibi totpn'acmia vitae." 15 J. A. Symonds, Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Third Series (edition of 1898), p. 166. 16 C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Remains, second edition, London,1887, p.179. 14 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX APT AND El'IOKAM. | PART I.-A. of unconsciousness, such as was before Being commenced; or, as Pliny clearly puts the case: ' Unto all the state of being after the last day is the same as it was before the first day of life; neither is there any more sensation in either body or soul after death than there was before life.' On this account the mere return, as Byron (Euthanasia, 1812) hath it— " ' To be the nothing that I was, Ere born to life and living woe,' inspired no fears beyond those springing from the natural instinct of self-preservation. Many carried this in- difference to the opposite extreme—exemplified in the trite story of the Thracians 17 lamenting on the occasion of a birth and rejoicing on that of a death in the family .... But after the ancient order of ideas had been totally revolutionized—when the death of the body came to be looked upon as the punishment of Original Sin, and as the infraction, not the fulfilment of a natural law—the notion necessarily assumed a more horrific aspect; which again was exaggerated to the utmost of their power by the new teachers, for it supplied them with the most potent of all engines for the subjugation of the human soul—' Aeternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum.' " From ideas like those mentioned in the preceding paragraphs and furnished in the verses of Lucretius, are derived the numerous Latin and Greek epitaphs, both non-Christian and Christian, more or less after the pattern—" non fueram, non sum." (Cf. Seneca : "Quum 17 According to Herodotus, &c. Cf. Robert Bland, the younger, after Archias, in the Greek Anthology :— " Thracians! who howl around an infant's birth, And give the funeral hour to songs and mirth." PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 15 nos sumus, mors non adest; cum vero mors adest, tum nos non sumus.") The first one, from a tomb on the Via Latina, is attributed to Ausonius18:— " Non nomen, non quo genitus, non unde, quid egi: Mutus in aeternum sum: cinis, ossa, nihil. Nee sum nee fueram genitus, tamen e nihilo sum ; Mitte nee exprobres singula: talis eris." "Olini non fuimus, nati sumus; unde quieti Nunc sumus, ut fuimus: cura relicta: vale." " Non fui, fui, memini, non sum, non euro." "Non fui, fui, non sum, non euro." "Non fueram, non sum, nescio, non ad me pertinet." (Corp. Inscr. Lat., vol. v. No. 1939.) " Nee scio quit nunc sim, nee scio quit fuerim." " Non fueras, nunc es, iterum nunc desines esse." " Quod fuimus estis, quod sumus vos eritis." "Quod tu es ego fui, quod ego sum tu eris." " Fui, non sum, estis, non eritis ; nemo immortalis." " Quod sumus hoc eritis, fuimus quandoque quod estis." (Cf. Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 22, Latin Vulgate version: " Hodie mihi, eras tibi.") Most of the above and several other Latin and Greek epitaph-inscriptions of the same kind are referred to by Contessa E. Caetani Lovatelli, from the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (published at Berlin) and the Corpus Inscriptionum Grxcarum (Boeckhii), in her monograph on " Thanatos" (Rome, 1888). I take this opportunity of again acknow- ledging my great indebtedness to that work, especially for references to the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, from which I shall further on give many quotations. Havelock Ellis (The Soul of Spain, London, 1908, p. 24) says that the • 18 Ausonius, Opuscula, Teubner edition, Leipzig, 1886, p. 419. 10 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-A. inscription, Hie jacct pulvis, etuis, nihil, in huge letters, alone serves to mark the grave of a great Archbishop on the pavement of Toledo Cathedral, and well expresses the Spaniard's haughty humility. Further on (in Part I. C.) I shall refer to many other sepulchral inscriptions similar in style to the preceding ones. Several of the above epitaphs (those with " talis eris " and " desines esse ") furnish a kind of memento mori to the passer-by who reads them—he is left to interpret the practical significance as an "Epicurean" suggestion, or otherwise, according to his personal views on life and death. Some of them are evidently meant to have a consolatory tinge (of a kind) about them, e.g. those with "non euro" and " nescio, non ad me pertinet." Another one (Corp. Inscr. Lat., vol. vi. No. 9258), commencing with "Non fui," has the consolatory words, "non mihi dolet." But I shall further on again refer to the " consolatory elements " to be found in antique epitaphs. This style of epitaph has to some extent been imitated in modern times ; for instance, the epitaph of a gentleman named Micah Hall (Castleton, Derbyshire), who died in 1804, con- tains the following : " Quid eram, nescitis ; quid sum, nescitis ; Ubi abii, nescitis; Valete." This reminds one of the epitaph or pseudo-epitaph on Abraham Newland (owing to whose signature, as chief cashier, Bank of England notes were lon<: known as " Abraham Newlands "—just as English war-notes for one pound and ten shillings issued during the Great European War have sometimes been called " Bradburvs,'; owing to the conspicuous signature on them of John Bradbury, Secretary to the Treasury) said to have been written by himself shortly before his death in 1807 :— " Beneath this stone old Abraham lies; Nobody laughs and nobody cries : Where he is gone, or how he fares, No one knows, and no one cares." PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 17 There is an almost exactly similar pseudo-epitaph, beginning:— " Here lies Sir John Guise. Nobody laughs, Nobody cries." The following is by William Cowper from an epitaph or pseudo-epitaph in the Greek Anthology :— "My name—my country—what are they to thee? What—whether base or proud, my pedigree? Perhaps I far surpassed all other men—■ Perhaps I fell below them all—what then? Suffice it, stranger ! that thou seest a tomb— Thou know'st its use—it hides—no matter whom." The epitaph which addresses the passer-by was popular in ancient and mediaeval times and to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cf. Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, Act iv., Scene 3, where the misanthrope, Timon, says:— " Make thine epitaph, That death in me at others' lives may laugh." Timon's epitaph in question is given at the end of the play, as follows :— " Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft; Seek not my name ! a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left! Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate; Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy gait." According to Plutarch (Life of Marcus Antonius) Timon was buried at a spot on the coast of Attica, where the water surrounded his tomb in such a manner as to make it inaccessible. His epitaph, said to have been written by himself (Langhorne's translation), was :— " At last, I've bid the knaves farewell; Ask not my name,—but go—to hell." C IS ASPECTS OF DEATH IN AKT AND EPIOKAM. [PART I.-A. There are many fanciful sepulchral epigrams on Timon the Misanthrope in the Greek Anthology (vii. Nos. 313-320). Part of one attributed to Hegesippus (No. 320) has been rendered into English as follows : — " My name is Timon : knaves, begone ! Curse me, but come not near my stone !" It does not seem that beliefs in a future existence amongst the Greeks and Eomans were ordinarily of a sufficiently definite or agreeable nature 19 to afford much consolation for the idea of death. For instance, one cannot regard the idea of the absorption of the soul into the air or into the universe (cf. further on) as being-a very satisfying doctrine to those who hope for personal immor- tality of the soul after the death of the body. Witness also the descriptions of Hades in the Greek and Latin epic poems, and the following verses, which, according to Spartianus (Hadr., 35), were composed by the Emperor Hadrian shortly before his own death :— " Animula, vagula, blandula, Hospes comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nudula, Nee ut soles, dabis jocos 1 " To this, in Roman times, the Parcae or Fates, as unfeeling as the Mediaeval personification (the skeleton or skin-and-bone figure) of Death, might have retorted in the words which Horace humorously reluctantly applied in regard to his own life (Epist., ii. 2. 214):— "Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti; Tempus abire tibi est." 19 In this connexion, however, one may remember Lucan (Pilars. lib. iv. 1. 519)— " Victurosque dei celant ut vivere durent, Felix esse mori . . ." " And the gods conceal from those who are to live how happy a thing it is to die, so that they may continue to live." PART l.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 19 See also Ferdinand Gregorovius, The Emperor Hadrian, English translation by Mary E. Robinson, London, 1898, p. 184. A whole book (privately printed at Bath, 1876), by 1 )avid Johnston, was devoted to a collection of the various translations and renderings of Hadrian's lines. Charles Merivale's translation (History of the Romans under the Empire, London, 1865, vol. viii. p. 255) is as follows :— :' Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one, Guest and partner of my clay, Whither wilt thou hie away— Pallid one, rigid one, naked one— Never to play again, never to play ?" [Spartianus wrote somewhat slightingly'that Hadrian also composed many such verses in the Greek language, " and not much better." Hadrian was the author of a puzzling epigram of medical interest in the Greek Anthology (Tauchnitz edition, 1829, ix. 137). In regard to the writing of Greek verses by Roman authors (a fashion which has added much to the Greek Anthology) see what Horace (Satir., i. 10) thought (translation by Sir Theodore Martin) :— " To think of adding to the mighty throng Of the great paragons of Grecian song, Were no less mad an act than his who should Into a forest carry logs of wood."] With Hadrian's playful address to his soul (as given above) the following verses by Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) mav in some respects with advantage be compared:— " Life ! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met I own to me's a secret yet. Life ! We've been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear— Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ;— Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time ; Say not Good Night,—But in some brighter clime, Bid me Good Morning." 20 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PART I.-A. In regard to ancient Greek and Roman ideas on the immortality of the soul, see, however, Mrs. Arthur Strong, Apotheosis and After Life, London, 1915; and Erwin Rohde, Psyche, SeelencuJt und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griecheti, Tubingen, 1903, third edition. There is an epigram by Agathias in the Greek Anthology on a Sophist who was questioned as to the nature of the soul. The Sophist s conclusion is thus given by Lord Neaves (Greek Anthology, Edinburgh, 1874, p. 208) :— " If more you wish to learn, to Hades go, And there as much as Plato soon you'll know. Or if you choose, ascend the rampart's height, Mimic Cleombrotus, and plunge to-night: The soul, thus without body left alone, May have the truth it seeks for clearly shown,— If there's indeed a soul, to know, or to be known." The story, referred to, of Cleombrotus, a youth of Ambracia, is recorded in another celebrated epigram in the Greek Anthology (Anthol. Graec, Tauchnitz edition, 1829, vii. No. 471)—by Callimachus. Cleombrotus committed suicide by throwing himself down from a high wall after having read Plato's Phaedo, on the immortality of the human soul. The epigram of Callimachus was referred to and translated by Cicero, and the quality of the act was discussed among the Fathers of the Christian Church, and different opinions were expressed (Lord Neaves). Admitting as a fact that a certain Cleombrotus did commit suicide after reading Plato's Phaedo, one cannot conclude that the reading of Plato's Phaedo was the cause of his act. In fact, it is extremely improbable. Cato "Uticensis" (b.c. 95-46) killed himself after reading Plato's Phaedo (as the story goes), doubtless not because of what he read there, but because he found himself obliged to surrender the town of Utica to Julius Caesar. He probably chose to read the Phaedo because he was meditating suicide. In Part II., Heading ii., I shall return to the subject of ancient beliefs regarding the immortality of the soul, and in Part IV. I shall describe several Greek, Etruscan and PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 21 Roman engraved gems, vase paintings, etc., on which ideas relating to a future existence are depicted. On a few Roman objects a reference is apparently intended to the voyage after death to the Fortunate Isles (the "islands of the blessed" with the "Elysian Fields"). On an epitaph in the Greek Anthology (vii. 370, by Diodorus) the reader is told that the dust of Menander is in the tomb, but that Menander himself is in the abode of Zeus or of the Blessed (Atos rj /xaKapwv). ()n the Latin epitaph of a lady who died before her husband we read of her hope to be reunited with him in the future life: " Virum expecto meum"—an inscription presumably placed on her tomb by her surviving husband (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. xii. No. 5193). At the end of another epitaph on a lady (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 11252) the deceased addresses her husband thus : " Igitur, domine Oppi, marite, ne doleas mei; quod praecessi, sustineo in aeterno toro adventum tuum." Another departed one waits for all to join him: " Plures me antecesserunt, omnes expecto" (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 142). In various languages the euphemistic expression is : abiit ad plures. Here one has the popular modern description of death as the divide, separating the living minority from the dead majority. Thus, Edward Young (The Revenge, Act iv., Scene 1) puts it: " Death joins us to the great majority." So also W. C. Bryant (Thanatopsis) expresses a similar idea :— ". . . . All that tread The Globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom." The shadowy idea of the " Manes " possibly afforded some consolation— " Sunt aliquid Manes ; letum non omnia finit. Luridaque extinctos effugit umbra rogos." (Propert., iv. 7.) Tacitus (Julii Agricolae Vita, 46) writes : " Si quis piorum manibus locus ; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnae animae . . . " ; but Persius (Sat, v. 152) appears to ridicule the idea of the transformation into 22 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I. A. " Manes " : " Cinis et Manes et fabula fies." -" Some epitaphs refer to the idea of the separation of the anima from the perishable body after death and its solution into the air or aether— " Invida Parcarum series livorque malignus Bis septena meae (?) ruperunt stamina lucis. Parcite jam lachrimis, miseri solique parentes ; Sat fletus vestros prima Favilla bibit. Corpus habet cineres; animam sacer abstulit aer." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. iii. No. 6384.) " Terra tenet corpus, nomen lapis, atque animam aer." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. iii. No. 3247.) The epitaph (British Museum) in elegiac verse on the Athenians who fell in battle before Potidaea (431-429 B.C.) contains a similar idea : AlOep /xe/x cfro-vxas vTreSixo-aro, crofxara Se x^ov ("Air received, their souls, and earth their bodies"). Such lines make one think of Sir Oliver Lodge's Presidential Address before the British Association on September 10th, 1913. Many analogous Greek passages are quoted by Caetani Lovatelli (Thanatos, Rome, 1888, pp. 20-22). Pro- bably many philosophers of the Ancient World thought that the soul was destined, after the death of the body, to be absorbed in the " universe "•—which latter word is practically an equivalent of aWrjp, as employed in the above inscription. After all, there is really not much difference between such ideas and the following :— " So bald uns der Tod vom Leben befreit, Empfangt uns wieder Allmutter Ewigkeit." 20 Cf. Horace, Od., i. 4, 16 :— " Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque Manes, Et domus exilis Plutonia." In regard to man being transformed into "Ashes, Manes and fable" (Persius), the following passage from the eighth book of the " Meditations " of Marcus Aurelius may be compared (Meric Casaubon's translation): "They were all but for one day; all dead and gone long since.- Some of them no sooner dead than forgotten. Others soon turned into fables. Of others, even that which was fabulous, is now- long since forgotten." PART I.-A.] • PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 23 Considerable variety in the expression of philosophic con- solation is shown by ancient epitaphs. Many remind the survivors of the necessity of death, the common lot of all, and the uselessness of weeping21 and the impossibility of bringing back the departed by prayers :— 6YTYXI ■ TGKNON • OYAIC • AGANATOC, that is to say, " Take courage (or, farewell), my child, nobody is immortal" (Corpus Inscriptionum G caeca rum, Boeckhii, first edition, Berlin, 1877, vol. iv. No. 9803. Caetani Lova- telli, in the monograph on Thanatos, Rome, 1888, p. 20, refers to several similar Greek epitaph-inscriptions from the Corpus Inscriptionum Graced in m : Nos. 9589, 9666, 9780. 9820, 9917, &c, together with many Latin epitaphs of the same class). "Plures me antecesserunt, omnes expecto" (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 142—an epitaph which I have already referred to—see back). " Dolere noli matrem ; faciundum fuit." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 19989.) " (A)mici nolite tristari (?), quia (o)mnes morituri sumus." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. x. No. 7149.) " Desine jam, mater, lacrimis renovare querellas, Namque dolor talis non tibi contigit uni" (sic). (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 10105.) 21 One of the most "human" sources of consolation to man in regard to the idea of his own approaching death is to think that he thereby would be spared all the grief and vain but uncontrollable mourning for the death of others before him—his friends and dear ones —who help to make life sweet to him. Thus we have an epigram amongst the " Sinngedichte " (seventeenth century) of Friedrich von Logau:— " Ich fiirchte nicht den Tod, der mich zu nehmen kimimt; Ich fiirchte mehr den Tod, der mir die meinen nimmt." And Walter Savage Landor (To Southey, 183H) expresses the idea well :— "We hurry to the river we must cross, And swifter downward every footstep wends ; Happy, who reach it ere they count the loss Of half their faculties and half their friends ! " 24 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PAPT I.-A. With this last epitaph compare Propertius (book 4, 11, first two lines)— " Desine, Paula, meum lacrymis urgere sepulcrum; Panditur ad nullas janua nigra preces." ' Nunc pater et mater nato fecere sepulchrum, Ossaque funestis fletibus adluerant. Sed quoniam multi talem sensere dolorem, Nee quisquam leti vincere vim potuit, Desinite extinctum dulces me flere parentes, Desinite et fati tristia jura queri. Mors etenim hominum natura non poena est. Cui contigit nasci instat et mori." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 11252. The latter portion of this epitaph has already been quoted further back in this book.) " Quomodo mala in arbore pendunt, sic corpora nostra Aut matura cadunt, aut cito acerva (acerba) ruunt." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 7574. For similes and metaphors of this class in the writings of Cicero, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, Milton, C. F. Meyer, Arc, and in Homer's Iliad, cf. Part 1. D.) Other epitaphs allude to the deceased's escape from the illnesses, pains, misfortunes, and toils of life 22— " Quod superest homini, requiescunt dulciter ossa, Nee sum sollicitus ne subito escuriam, Et podagram (sic) careo, nee sum pensionibus aria. Et gravis aeterno perfruor hospitio." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 7193«.) Compare Agathias (Anthol. Graec. Palat., x. 69) and the following lines to Death (Anthol. Graec. Appendix, Tauchnitz edition, Leipzig, 1829, No. 196) :— *HA0cs ifxrjpainoy O [sic] ZHG XPONON ("Be happy as long as you live"). In regard to the analogy between these scenes and the scenes in Lucian's " Dialogues of the Dead " see addendum. PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 37 What the popular conception of so-called followers of Epicurus was in Horace's time, and how in the mind of the people Epicurus came to be associated with a pig, is plain from the lines— " Me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises, Cum ridere voles, Epicuri de grege porcum." (Hor., Epist., lib. i. 4, lines 15, 16.) It seems that in reality Epicurus and the personal friends and disciples who shared the life in his "garden" (the Krjiroi 'Emxovpov at Athens, were temperate and contented with the simplest and plainest diet (compare A. E. Taylor's Epicurus, London, 1911, p. 13). It has even been suggested, I believe, that Epicurus was something of a dyspeptic. Cicero (Tusc. Disput., lib. iii., xx. 49) wrote: " Negat Epicurus, jucunde posse vivi, nisi cum virtute vivatur." Epicurus in short advised man, since he was human, to enjoy the pleasures of human life and to bear its evils cheerfully—what cannot be prevented must be endured—he should not waste his short life in vain regrets and expectations. Menander (b.c 342-291) the Athenian poet of comedies, who was a friend and admirer of Epicurus, wrote, in an epigram on the latter, that " as Themistocles rescued Greece from slavery so Epicurus rescued Greece from unreason." It was on the same grounds that Lucretius designated Epicurus as a god, and this also reminds one of the hexameter line from Manilius already quoted (Astronomicon, i. 104), referring to Epicurus:— " Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque tonandi." .One of the fragments of Menander (as quoted by W. Lucas Collins from 203 in Meineke's Fragmenta, Berlin, 1841) tells us:— " Being a mortal, ask not of the gods Escape from suffering; ask but to endure ; For if thou seekest to be ever free From pain and evil, then thou seekest this,— To be a god, or die." Lecky refers to The Life of Epicurus, by Diogenes Laertius, in proof of his fine character and of the purity of the 38 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. philosophy which he taught and of its misrepresentation by Roman so-called followers. Lecky admits, however, that Epicureanism, though logically compatible with a very high degree of virtue, tended practically towards vice. Dante (Inferno, canto x.), from his religious point of view, naturally assigned Epicurus and all his followers (" who with the body make the spirit die") to hell. The devices on the two cups were doubtless in- tended to signify the temporary nature of all kinds of philosophic learning and sensual pleasure alike. The meaning would then be as follows: No matter whose philosophy you follow, you will have to die like the philosophers themselves, though whilst you live you can choose between seriousness and merely sensual pleasure. But a more decidedly "Epicurean" hint was also pro- bably intended, such as : " You may be learned and wise like these philosophers, and able to discourse on every subject under the sun; but what does it all amount to ? what practical lesson do you teach ? Only the lesson that these skeletons tell us, namely, Edite! bibite I post mortem nulla voluptas ! " Doubtless, no more seriousness was suggested than the English poet, John Gay (died 1732), probably intended by the lines (written during a temporary poetical " mood" ?) forming his own epitaph at Westminster Abbey— " Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it." On the cup on which Epicurus is represented is an inscription confirming this interpretation. The inscrip- tion in question is [a] KHNH o bioc ("Life is a stage"), probably a proverbial saying of the time, which likewise forms part of the following (later) epigram (by Palladas) in the Greek Anthology : UKrjvrj 7ra? 6 /3to? ko\ iral^vLov PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 39 >] /Made irai^etv rr]v airovhrjv /j,eTa6ei<; rj paive cravrov, 7rive, tov KaO' r/fxepav Bt'ov XoyiCov aov, -raS' aAAa t»/s Tiry^s ("Enjoy yourself, drink, reckon your daily life your own, everything else is fortune's.") St. Paul refers to this view of life in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 32, Revised Version of 1881) : " If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Isaiah (xxii. 13) also alluded to it. Amongst Latin authors Horace may be especially quoted in this respect. See, for instance, his Ode, ii. 3 :— " Hue vina et unguenta et nimium brevis Flores amoenae ferre jube rosae, Dum res et aetas et sororum Fila trium patiuntur atra." " Cedes coemptis saltibus et domo Villaque, flavus quam Tiberis lavit, Cedes et exstructis in altum Divitiis potietur heres." Amongst other Latin passages having a memento mori PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 43 •dgnificance of the "Epicurean" type-the Roman idea of "Dum vivimus, vivamus " 33—the following are note- worthy :— ■' Frange toros, pete vina, rosas cape, tinguere nardo: Ipse jubet mortis te meminisse deus." (Martial, Epigram, lib. ii. No. 59.) •' Deus" refers to the deified Roman Emperor. In another place (lib. v. Xo. 64) Martial draws an argument in favour of enjoying wine from the existence of the mausoleum of Augustus, showing, as it does, that all, even deified Emperors, must die. " Pone merum et talos, pereat qui crastina curat! Mors auram vellens; ' Vivite,' ait, 'venio.'" (Copa Syrisca, attributed to Virgil.) " Indulge genio: carpamus dulcia ; nostrum est Quod vivis : cinis et manes et fabula fies.'' (Persius, Sat., v. 151.) "Dum fata sinunt, vivite laeti!" (Seneca, Hercules Furens, 177.) ■'Dum licet, in rebus jucundis vive beatus: Vive memor quam sis aevi brevis." (Horace, Sat. II., vi. 96.) " Sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi Spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur fugerit invida Aetas : carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero." 34 (Horace, Od., i. 11. 6.) " See the collection of quotations on this subject given by Caetani Lovatelli, Thanatos, Rome, 1888, pp. 11 et seq. Many passages of the same class are referred to by the learned Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in his work on Holy Dying (1651). This reminds me that a certain antivivi- sectionist publication gave a kind of directory of vivisectionists (with lists of their investigations), which was really of use to other workers engaged in the same field of scientific experimental research. 31 Part of this passage might serve as a sun-dial inscription. Compare : " Dum loquor hora fugit " (Ovid); " Fugit hora, hoc quod loquor, inde est" (Persius); " Le moment ou je.parle est deja loin de moi" (Boileau). 44 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PART I.-A. ". . . Ille potens sui Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem Dixisse: Vixi ! " (Horace, Od., iii. 29. 41.) [The expression, Yi.rit, as a kind of euphemism, came, like Fuit (the French word feu, i.e. defunct, may be perhaps derived from the Latin fui), to signify that a person had died, and Cicero, in the year of his consulship (b.c. 63), when he had had the Catiline conspirators strangled in the Tullianum dungeon, announced their execution to the Roman crowd by the single word Vixerunt. The Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, used of course not the word Vixi, but its Creek equivalent, when, in the eleventh book of his Meditations, he refers to a soul at the end of life being able to say: " I have lived; neither want I anything of that which properly did belong unto me." To collections of epitaphs belong most sayings of the Vixi class, for instance: " Vixi et amavi," "Vixi, peccavi, . . .," "Vixi dum vixi bene. . .Vivite ut vixi bene." Cf. Terence, Hecyra, iii. 5. 9 :—" Sane hercle homo voluptati obsequens fuit, dum vixit: et qui sic sunt, haud multum heredem juvant, sibi vero hanc relinquunt laudem— ' Vixit, dum vixit, bene.'" In regard to the Bene vixit, cf. the saying, " Bene vixit, qui bene latuit," or as Ovid (Tristia, iii. 4. 25) put it, "Bene qui latuit bene vixit." Horace (Epist., i. 17. 10) has the same idea ("Nee vixit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit"), which is said to be derived from advice given (according to Plutarch) by Epicurus: Aafle fliwaas. Surely this maxim might lead to " hiding a light under a bushel," and is very different from the teaching in St. Matthew v. 15 and 16. In Charles Leadbetter's Mechanick Dialling (first edition, London, 1737, chapter xxiii. No. 25) a sun-dial motto in Lincoln's Inn, London, is mentioned, after St. Matthew v. 16: "Let your Light so shine that men may see your good Works." In regard to dying opportunely cf. Publius Syrus : " Bene vixit is qui potuit cum voluit mori." "Vixi, et quern dederat cursum fortuna, peregi: Et nunc magna mei sub terras currit imago." (Virgil, Aeneid, iv. 653.) William Camden recorded the following epitaph without a name : " Vixi, peccavi, pcenitui, naturae cessi." It was in the cloister on the north side of old St. Paul's Cathedral in I'ART I. A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 45 London (Thomas Hearne's Discourses, vol. i. p. 338; quoted by T. J. Pettigrew, Chronicles of the Tombs, London, 1857, p. 69). The epitaph in Westminster Abbey on John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (died 1721): "Dubius sed non improbus vixi," itc.—may be contrasted with older ones : " Vixi dubius, anxius morior, nescio quo vado" ; " Foedus intra vi, anxius vixi, perturbatus egredior"; " Invitus ingredior, perturbatus egredior," &c. It is said to have suggested the following verses written by Lawrence Shirley, fourth Earl of Ferrers (the so-called "wicked Lord Ferrers"), before his execution in 1760 (vide John Timbs, Ancestral Stories, London, 1869, p. 128):- " In doubt. I lived, in doubt I die, Yet stand prepared the vast abyss to try, And, undismayed, expect eternity." On the saying, Vixi et amaci, are founded the lines of Schiller (in his Piccolomini) :— " Ich habe genossen das irdische Cluck; Ich habe gelebt und geliebet." A remarkable little poem (by " L. S.," in the Sydney Bulletin), founded on the same saying, ends thus— " And all these things—but two things— Were emptiness and pain; And Love—it was the best of them ; And Sleep—worth all the rest of them." An ephemeral May-My kind of life suggests itself when one reads S. T. Coleridge's rendering of the above-quoted passage from Schiller's Piccolomini:— "I've lived and loved, and that was to-day; Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow." But cf. Dryden (after Horace):— "To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day." Here, by the way, we may mention that the Hon. Mrs. C. E. S. Xorton (Lady Maxwell) attributed the supposed 46 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART ANI> EPIGRAM. [I'ART I.-A. "one-day life" of the May-flies to the gnats also, in her well- known lines :— "The thin-winged gnats their transient time employ, Reeling through sunbeams in a dance of joy." As to this, A. E. Shipley (British Medical Journal, February 13th, 1915, p. 284) remarks : " In the old days we used to collect gnats, keep them in a receptacle unprovided with food, and when they died of starvation after a couple of days, we wrote poems or essays on the ' Transitoriness of Life' and the 'Evanescence of Time.' Nowadays we feed them .... and they live in captivity for weeks." The original idea of the saying, Vixi et amaci, seems to me to have been probably derived from the Greek elegiac poems of Mimnermus of Colophon (second half of the seventh century B.C.), which complained of the fate of man : the vicissitudes of human circumstances, the instability of happi- ness, the miseries of sickness and old age, and the certain approach of death ; love was practically the only consolation, and was all that made life worth living. In one of his letters Horace (Epist., i. 6. 65) referred to the opinions of Mimner- mus, as follows :— " Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque." In regard to the idea of love, notably love of one's fellow human beings (i.e. love and friendship, in the largest sense), being one (or the) great redeeming feature in the life of man, compare James Beattie's beautiful epitaph :— " Like thee I once have stemm'd the sea of life, Like thee have languish'd after empty joys, Like thee have labour'd in the stormy strife, Been grieved for trifles, and amused with toys. Forget my frailties ; thou art also frail: Forgive my lapses; for thyself may'st fall: Xor read unmoved my artless tender tale__ I was a friend, O man, to thee, to all." PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 47 The contrast between love and the transitoriness of human life are well expressed by Meleager's epitaph on the bride who died on her wedding-day (Greek Anthology, vii. No. 182, Tauchnitz edition, Leipzig, vol. i. p. 263). Cf. also Capulet's account of Juliet's death, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet ; also Robert Herrick's lines, commencing :— " That morne which saw me made a bride, The ev'ning witnest that I dy'd." With respect to the employment of euphemisms for the words death and dead, Isaac Disraeli (Curiosities of Literature) mentions that the Romans used the euphemistic expressions, Discessit e ritd, and Vixit. " We are told," he writes, " that when the Emperor of Morocco inquires after anyone who has recently died, it is against etiquette to mention the word death ; the answer is, His destiny is closed. But this tender- ness is only reserved for ' the elect' of the Moslems. A Jew's death is at once plainly expressed, ' He is dead. Sir, asking your pardon for mentioning such a contemptible wretch.' A Christian's death is described by, 'The infidel is dead,' or, 'The cuckold is dead.'" A burial-ground was called by the Greeks a cemetery, that is to say, KoifxrjTrjpiov (a sleeping-chamber). We still employ a Roman euphemism when we speak of "the deceased" or "the departed one."] "... Sine amore jocisque "Nil est jucundum; vivas in amore, jocisque."3"' (Horace, Epist., i. 6. 65,) " Non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere ' Vivam ': Sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie." (Martial, Epigram, lib. i. No. 15.) " Cras te victurum, eras dicis, Postume, semper. Die mihi, cras istud, Postume, quando venit?..... Cras vives ? hodie jam vivere, Postume, serum est: Ule sapit quisquis, Postume, vixit heri." (Martial, Epigram, lib. v. No. 5S.) ib This passage gives " Epicurean " advice for life, but is of course not really of the memento mori kind. Neither is the following :— "Nunc vino pellite curas; Cras ingens iterabimus aequor." (Horace, Od., i. 7. 31.) 48 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-A. " Amici, dum vivimus, vivamus." (From an epitaph, Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. xii. No. 4548.) " Vita dum vives, vive, et cura post obitum necessaria." (From an epitaph, Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. vi. No. 15233.) " Tu qui legis bona vita vive sodalis, quare post obitum nee risus nee lusus nee ulla voluptas erit." (Epitaph in Corp. Inser. Lat, vol. ix. No. 3473.) This last resembles a Latin "devil's maxim," quoted in Eustachius Schildo's Spilteufel (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1557): "Ede, bibe, lude, post mortem nulla voluptas" (see Max Osborn, Die Teufellitteratur des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1893, p. 81, and Max Friedlaender, Das deutsche Lied im XVIII Jahrhundert, Stuttgart, 1902, vol. 2, p. 325). With this may be compared the Latin portion of the following German students' song :—• " Ca 9a geschmauset, Lasst uns nicht rappelkopfig sein ! Wer nicht mit brauset, Der bleib daheim ! Edite, bibite, collegiales, Post multa saecula pocula nulla." This version occurs, I gather, in Christian Wilhelm Kindleben's collection of students' songs (1781), but Max Friedlaender (loc. cit.) gives the following earlier eighteenth- century words:— " Bibite, bibite, collegiales, Per secula plurima pocula nulla." According to the chorus of the popular German drinking song by Carl Miichler, first published in 1797 (see Biichmann's Gefliigelte Worte), Martin Luther is credited with the follow- ing saying:— " Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib und Gesang, Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang." Cf. the English version by W. M. Thackeray :— " Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sans: ' Who loves not wine, woman, and song, He is a fool his whole life loner.' " O PART I.-A.] PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS. 49 The same attribution is given likewise in Herder's Volks- licder of 1778, and in some verses published in the Wands- becker Bothen, 1775, No. 75 :— " Dir Wiinsch' ich Wein und Miidchenkuss, Und deinem Klepper Pegasus Die Krippe stets voll Futter ! Wer nicht liebt Wein, AVeib und Gesang, Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebenlang, Sagt Doktor Martin Luther." Biichmann's Gefliigelte Worte (22nd edition, Berlin, 1905, pp. 128-130) discusses the question at length, and quotes a passage from Epist. Obseuroruni Virorum, in which Ulrich von Hutten writes, " Quamvis Salomon dicat: Musica, mulier et vinum laetificant cor hominis ..." (This is apparently the result of the jumbling together of the following passages : Ecclesiasticus xl. 20; Proverbs xii. 4; and Psalm civ. 15.) Cf. the modern version of the whole idea by Richard Garnett (1835-1906):— " Thou art in danger, Cincius, on my word, To die ere thou hast lived, which were absurd. Open thy ears to song, thy throat to wine, Thy arms unto that pretty wife of thine. Philosophy, I have nowise forgot, Is deathless, but philosophers are not." To Walter Map or Mapes (fl. 1200), a native of Herefordshire in England, has been attributed (probably wrongly—see article on his life in the Dictionary of National Biography, Smith, Elder & Co., London) the famous Mediaeval Latin so-called " drinking song "— " Meum est propositum in taberna mori, Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori, Deus sit propitius huic potatori," EPIGRAM. [PART l.-B. it was necessary not to exist in the one in which God had placed them. The dominion of mankind fell into the usurping hands of those imperious monks whose artifices trafficked with the terrors of ignorant and hypochondriac ' Kaisers and kings.' The scene was darkened by penances and by pilgrimages, by midnight vigils, by miraculous shrines, and bloody flagellations. . . . The people were frightened, as they viewed everywhere hung before their eyes, in the twilight of their cathedrals, and their ' pale cloisters,' the most revolting emblems of death. They startled the traveller on the bridge; they stared on the sinner in the carvings of his table or his chair; the spectre moved in the hangings of the apartment; it stood in the niche, and was the picture of their sitting- room ; it was worn in their rings, while the illuminator shaded the bony phantom in the margins of their horae, their primers, and their breviaries." Gerard Legh, the writer on heraldry (died 1563), told how the German Emperor, Maximilian I (1493-1519), on one occasion had the skeleton-like figure of Death on a monastery painted over and the figure of a Fool substituted in its place, notwith- standing the protests of the monks of the monastery in question. In that connexion DTsraeli (loc. cit.) refers to an old woodcut representing a Fool sitting between the bony legs of Death. Artists of late Mediaeval and later periods have delighted in contrasting death and the emblems of death with the strenuous ambitions, careless indulgences, vices and follies of everyday life. They have delighted in repre- senting the universal power of death, how it carries off rich and poor alike, kings and peasants, wise men and fools, good and bad, old and young, beautiful and ugly. As examples we may refer to the many series of the "Dance of Death" ("Danse Macabre") made by various artists during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The best-known designs, i.e. the series attributed to Holbein (the Lyons woodcuts of 1538), end with the "Arms of Death" (see PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 63 Fig. 5), representing a man and woman (i.e. life) support- ing a shield with a Death's-head as armorial bearing (death is fed by life and love). In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a German sixteenth-century ivory statuette, 9^ inches in height (Fig. 6), apparently from a " Dance of Death " group. It represents a skeleton-like figure, in a spirited attitude, with the hands, holding Fig. 5.—The "Arms of Death," from Holbein's "Dance of Death" series. drumsticks, raised excitedly above the head, on which is a broad hat with three large feathers. In this statuette the grotesque contrast of the " skin and bone figure" (German Hautskclctt), representing Death, with the animated action of the drummer and the broad gallant's hat of the period, could not be brought out more strongly.43 '-1 See account in A Description of the Ivories, Ancient and Modern, in the South Kensington Museum, by W. Maskell, London, 1872, p. 10. 64 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [ I'ART I.-B. In the Museum of Basel there is a, probably slightly earlier, wooden statuette of Death (the Fig. 6.—Ivory statuette, apparently from a "Dance pf Death" group. Hautskelett type) holding up an hour-glass in his right hand. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 65 Albrecht Diirer's well-known copper-plate engraving (1513), which he himself called "Der Eeuter" (i.e. soldier on horseback), representing a knight on horseback with Death (on a pale and emaciated steed) by his side and the devil behind him,44 is typical of this great artist's work. Lionel Cust (The Engravings of Albrecht Diirer, London, 1894, p. 62) says that this engraving " shows the Christian, clad in the armour of faith and courage, riding to his goal, conscious of, but undisturbed by, the menace of death or the horrible suggestions of the devil." " Across my path though Hell should stride, Through Death and Devil I will ride." Further on (in Part II., Heading xvi.) I shall refer to the German original of these lines. Amongst the celebrated designs, relating more or less to death, those from Diirer's Apocalypse series illustrating the sixth and ninth chapters of Eevelation should be mentioned, especially the large woodcut (published in 1498) representing " the riders on the four horses " (Eeve- lation vi.), the emaciated " pale horse" of Death being the one nearest to the spectator. Diirer's unsigned early (before 1495) engraving of " Death as a Eavisher"45 is as hideous and forcible as can be imagined, and represents Death in the primitive guise of the uncouth " Wilder Mann," with shaggy hair. His early engraving, " The 44 Cf. Revelation vi. 8 : " And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed." This engraving by Diirer inspired the story, Sintram und seine Gefdhrten, by the German writer, De la Motte-Fouque, 1777-1843. Vj In poetry and epigrams death has often been represented as a ravisher, or as coming as, or in the guise of, or in place of, a bridegroom. Cf. some sepulchral epigrams in the Greek Anthology, vii. Nos. 182, 183, 1S5, 186, 188. F 66 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. % A ^V^" -ii-< (1rl ^5 bv r A~JI\ *^f iUsc g» w hUl<^^9| w} «!,_ \. ^ ' Fig. 7.—" The Promenade "—an early engraving by Diirer. From behind the tree a small figure of Death, holding an hour-glass on his head, is watching, or spying on, the gallant couple. PART I.-B.j MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 67 Promenade" (Fig. 7), represents a fine couple of young lovers quite unaware that a malignant little figure of Death is watching them from his lurking-place behind a tree. [In regard to the lurking figure of Death, the following verses from The Odes of Confucius (rendered by L. Cranmer- Byng, London, 1904, p. 21) may be compared, though they perhaps referred to some special tragedy that had happened :— " Two youths into their boats descend, Two lives go drifting far from me; Between the willow glooms I see Death lurking at the river's bend." The contrast between the thoughtless gaiety of youth and the apparently cruel severity of " fate " has often served as a theme for artists and poets. Cf. Thomas Cray :— " Cay hope is theirs by fancy fed .... Alas ! regardless of their doom, The little victims play; No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day " ; and, also from Gray (The Bard, II., ii., line 9) :— " Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows; While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ; Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That hush'd in grim repose expects his evening prey." It is only to the few that there comes early in life a pang of sadness in regard to "beauty that must die and joy, whose hand is ever at his lips bidding adieu."] A woodcut of 1491, representing three armed knights attacked by skeletons (emblematic perhaps of the powers of darkness), is supposed by some to be an early work of Diirer. A well-known woodcut of " Death and a Fool" f 2 68 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. is one of the illustrations to Sebastian Brant's St nit if era Navis (" Narrenschiff," or " Ship of Fools ") that have been ascribed by some critics to the youthful Diirer. The first edition of Brant's satirical poem was printed at Basel in 1494, by J. Bergmann von Olpe. Fresh illustrations were added in later editions (up to 1497). By Diirer also are the following: A woodcut (1510) of Death and a soldier; a rough drawing (in the British Museum) of Death holding a scythe, riding on a lean horse (perhaps emblematic of a spreading pestilence), with the inscription, ME(M)ENTO MEl and the date 1505 ; an early drawing of Death swooping down upon a rider, who is being thrown from his horse (emblematic of sudden and unexpected death). In Diirer's " Wappen des Todes " (Fig. 8), a copper- plate engraving dated 1503, a shield bearing the device of a skull as the emblem of death is surmounted by a helmet and the wings of the " angel of death." Death himself, who supports these arms, is represented as a hairy satyr- like " man of the woods" (like a " savage man " in heraldry) in the act of kissing a lady, who appears to be pregnant. Thus the lady may be taken as representing Life, helping through Love to feed Death by giving birth to children. She does indeed support death, for without life there could be no death, and her unborn child is already, by the pledge of that kiss, predestined, like every living being, to yield to the universal conqueror. Cf. Edward Bulwer Lytton (1805-1873), the novelist, in his poem on Love and Death :— " From Love, if the infant Receiveth his breath, The love that gave life Yields a subject to Death." PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 69 A biological paradox is thus expressed by Anatole France : " All union of the sexes is a sign of [coming] death ; and we could not know love were we to live indefinitely." Fig. 8.—Diirer's so-called "Wappen des Todes." (Engraving in the British Museum.) In an engraving4,; by the " Meister H.W.," dated ie Illustrated by Hermann Peters, in his work, Der Arzt und die Hcilkunst in der deidschen Vergangenheit, Leipzig, 1900, p. 130. 70 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AXD EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. 1482 (Fig. 9), Death, a hideous shrivelled figure of skin and bones (the German Hautskelett), is seen striding through the country, and as he goes he hurls his poisoned darts at all lie meets. In the background is one of those picturesque Mediaeval fortified towns with many spires and turrets, cramped up within its narrow walls, and Fig. 9.—The March of Death. Possibly an allegorical representation of the fatal spreading of an epidemic. (Engraving by the " Meister H.W.," 1482.) Note the youth climbing a tree to escape. likely to be visited by one of those fatal epidemics, spreading through the land from one town to another, like that of which, perhaps, the engraving in question is an allegorical representation. A copperplate engraving of the end of the fifteenth century shows death (a skele- ton just covered with skin, the usual Hautskelett type) playing chess with a king or prince. A pope, a bishop, PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 71 and other ecclesiastics and noblemen are grouped around the table, at the head of which stands an angel, holding an hour-glass.47 An engraving by the "Meister des Amsterdamer Kabinets " (" Meister von 1480 ") represents Death (in the form of the emaciated Hautskelett, with toad and snake) warning a fashionably dressed youth. The subject of another engraving by the same master is the story of the three living kings coming upon three dead ones (see Fig. 10). Of the thirteenth-century tale or legend (" morality " story) of three living men meeting three dead men (" les trois morts et les trois vifs"), various versions exist. One in Latin rhyming verse narrates— " Cum apertam sepulturam Viri tres aspicerent Ac orribilem figuram Intus ibi cernerent," &c. It formed a favourite subject for artists, and at one time it was supposed to have inspired the preliminary versions of the "Dance of Death" ("Danse Macabre," or, in Latin, " Chorea Machabaeorum," " Chorea Leti," " Chorea Mortis"), a subject which became so popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. " Le dit des trois morts et des trois vifs," and the doleful talk of the dead to the living, may well be contrasted with a story of the Chinese mystic, Chuang TzQ,48 to which my attention was kindly drawn by Mr. John Allan: One day the Chinese philosopher came upon a bleached human skull and (Hamlet-wise) mused as to what kind of a man it had once formed part of. In the night he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and told him that after death there were no troubles, 47 Illustrated by F. X. Kraus, Geschichte der Christlichen Kunst, 1S97, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 449, fig. 270. )S Musings of a Chinese Mystic, London, 1906, p. 84. 72 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. that existence was bounded only by eternity, and that the happiness of a king among men did not exceed that enjoyed by the dead. One ot Gabr. Symeoni's emblematic devices is a human skull crowned with a wreath and the inscription, " Victoria limes." Symeoni adds4t>: l'J The Heroicall Devices of M. C. Paradin, &c, English translation by P. S., London, 1591, p. 319. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. " Epictetus the Philosopher being asked upon a time of Adrianus the Emperor wherefore the deade were crowned with garlands, answered, that they might declare, how that by death they had overcome the labors, sorrows and imminent heape of the cares of this life. Plinie also speaketh of the same crowning of the dead." But the following story, narrated by Pausanias in regard to Delphi,50 quite rivals the horrible superstition of Mediaeval times : " Scarcely, it is said, had he (Phaylus) entered on the command when he saw a vision in a dream, and it was this: Amongst Apollo's votive offerings (at Delphi) was a bronze effigy of a mouldering corpse, the flesh all wasted away, nothing left but the bones. It was said by the Delphians to be an offering of Hippocrates, the physician. Now in his dream Phaylus thought that he resembled this effigy; and immediately he was attacked by a wasting sickness that fulfilled the augury of the dream." Mediaeval " morality plays," as well as modern ones of the revival movement, still attract attention. If the Doppelganger tales of German folk-lore are in any way connected with the Mediaeval legend of " Les trois morts et les trois vifs," then it is possible (as suggested to me by Dr. C. F. L. Leipoldt) that the design of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sketch entitled " How They met Themselves," was to some extent inspired by the Mediaeval legend in question.51 Cf. Oliver Wendell Holmes : " We not rarely find our personality doubled in our dreams and do battle with ourselves, unconscious that we are our own antagonists." During "dreamy states" in disease a similar modified doubled personality is met with. Thus, Seymour Taylor52 has well described how he himself, during an attack of influenza, experienced a kind of dual personality, a symptom which he had already heard described by patients. He imagined himself in good health coming' to visit a patient, whom he recognised to be himself ; at one time his two selves seemed to be on a high Balkan mountain, at another time at Didcot Junction, on the Great Western Railway, in England. Dr. AY. F. Storck, whose very careful writings I shall refer to farther on in this book, has collected strong literary and other evidence to show that the " Dance of Death " subject originated independently of " the Tale of the Three Dead and the Three Living." The two series of ideas seem to have separately grown out of the common '•" Pausanias, Description of Greece, bk. x.—on Phocis—ch. ii. 4; J. G. Frazer's translation, London, 1898, vol. i. p. 501. 51 Cf. Dante Bossctti and the Pre-Baphaelite Movement, by Esther Wood, London, 1894, pp. 224, 225. :>- Seymour Taylor, Clinical Journal, London, 1917, vol. 46, p. 126. 74 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. soil of Mediaeval orthodox religious teaching, the evolu- tion of the one growth overlapping and to some extent running parallel to the evolution of the other growth. The essence of the " Dance of Death " and the feature in which it chiefly differs from the idea of " the Three Dead and the Three Living" (who are generally pictured as kings, princes, noblemen, or gallants, with the attributes of wealth and worldly power—the " great" of this world), seems to consist in the variation in the aspect of Death according to the age, sex, habits, occupation, and social position of the individual who is to die. Obviously, therefore, the " Dance of Death" had a special signifi- cance, which the " Tale of the Three Dead and the Three Living " had not, during periods of fatal epidemics, when poor and rich and all classes were being carried off by the deadly visitant. On the literary side, moreover, the "Dance of Death" designs are more or less represented by the series of " Vado mori" poems which had their origin in the thirteenth century. In such poems or "carmina de morte" a distich is put into the mouth of each type of individual, young and old, poor and rich, learned and unlearned, layman and cleric, of low or high social grade. Each distich begins and ends with the words " A^ado mori." As specimens, I will quote two distichs given in a paper by Dr. Storck.53 The physician and the logician say respectively— " Vado mori medicus, medicamine non redimendus, Quidquid agat medici pocio. Vado mori." " Vado mori logicus; aliis concludere novi. Conclusit breviter mors michi: vado mori." In a curious variety of the sixteenth century, men- 53 Storck, Zeitschrift fur Deutsche Philologie, Stuttgart, vol. 42, p. 427. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 75 tioned by Dr. Storck,54 each " A^ado mori" distich is followed by a couple of similarly constructed lines, commencing with the words " ATive deo." Cf. the partly poetical epistle written by Paulinus, Bishop of Xola (who lived about a.d. 354-431, and was educated by the poet Ausonius), to Licentius.55 The letter ends with the exhortation:— " Vive, precor, sed vive Deo: nam vivere mundo Alortis opus ; vera est vivere vita Deo." Echoes and developmental extensions of the feeling of such verses occur in later admonitory epitaphs, &c., such as the inscription on a sepulchral monument (1628) in Cuckfield Church, Sussex :— " Yive diu, sed vive Deo : nam vivere mundo Alortis opus; viva est vivere vita Deo." A mortuary medal (1670) of William VII, Landgraf of Hesse, has the inscription, "Vixit diu, quia bene vixit." A " Vado mori" poem has been attributed to the Englishman AValter Map or Mapes (fl. 1200), and a Spanish poem, " Danza de la Muerte," to Rabbi Santo, a Jew, who lived about 1360; but these attributions are doubtful. The Spanish poem has been said by some to be the earliest actual " Dance of Death" poem in existence. In regard to the dancing attitude given to the horrid harlequin-like figure in the " Dance of Death " designs, it must not be forgotten that formerly (in Mediaeval and later times) festive dancing in the open air was more 54 Ibid., p. 424. :,:' Migne's Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, vol. lxi. columns 181-184. 70 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. frequent among the common people (and more a feature of everyday life, to "strike the eye" of the traveller) than it now is. This may likewise help to explain, 1 believe, why hysterical seizures in past times, more frequently than at present, took the form of dancing, as evidenced by the old " epidemics" of " Dancing Mania" (fourteenth century and later),56 of which such curious descriptions and illustrations have been preserved. Probably the "Dance of Death" originated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as a kind of " morality" representation or " play," consisting of dia- logues between Death and living characters typical of various stations in life, various occupations, &c. By such means the religious authorities in France, Germany, and (later) England, &c, hoped to impress the sense of the power of death on the minds of the poor and uneducated peasantry, as well as the richer, educated, and scholarly classes, for whom other warnings (including " the Tale of the Three Dead and the Three Living") would have suited equally well. Such "morality" representations were probably at first acted in or near churches by the religious orders and persons instructed by them, some- times accompanied by music. Afterwards the subject became a favourite one—or, at least, a not infrequent 56 Epidemic chorea, Chorea magna, Chorea major, Choromania, Chorea-daemonomania. The term St. Vitus's dance or Chorea Sancti Viti was originally applied to Epidemic dancing mania, because it was supposed to be cured by the help of St. Vitus, but now the term is used as a synonym of ordinary chorea (Chorea minor, Chorea Anglorum, or Sydenham's chorea). A dancing mania in the sixteenth century in Italy was called Tarentism or Tarantulism, because it was supposed to be produced by the bite of the Tarantula spider. The name of the whirling South Italian dance, "Tarantella," may have been connected with this. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 77 one—for frescoes on the walls of religious buildings, paintings, tapestries,57 prints, &c. About the end of the fourteenth century some of the fanatic "Flagellants" had skeletons depicted on their clothing, which added superstitious fear to the excitement caused by their mad doings. Similarly, some of the "fakirs " of Southern India have a white skeleton painted on their dark skin, as a recognised sign or device of their religious calling. E. L. Arnold, in a magazine article, entitled, " In the Shade »i the Fig Tree," has told a true story of his unexpectedly coming upon one of these "skeleton-fakirs" in a dark and lonely spot in Southern India. On the literary side also, the pathetic and burlesque aspects of the subject were somewhat cleverly combined by the French poet, Jacques Jacques, Canon of Embrun, in his (1657) Le Faut-Mourir et les Excuses Inutiles qu'on apporte a cette Necessite—Le tout en vers burlesques. The writer said he wanted to tell some of the most important truths in laughing, for he had nothing double about him excepting his name.' Isaac DTsraeli (Curiosities of Literature) wrote : " This veil of gaiety in the old Canon of Ambrun covers deeper and more philosophical thoughts than the singular mode of treating so solemn a theme. He has introduced many scenes of human life which still interest." Isaac DTsraeli (he. cit.), speaking of the typical " dance of death" designs, observes : " 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. . . . 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 67 There was some tapestry with a " Macaber Dance" in the Tower of London. See F. Douce, Holbein's Dance of Death, &c, London (Bohn's Illustrated Library), 1858, pp. 46, 47. Douce refers on this subject to the History of English Poetry, by Thomas Warton the Younger. 78 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PART I.-B. result is hard to describe; for we are at once amused and disgusted with so much genius founded on so much barbarism. 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." On the whole it seems by no means unlikely that in morality plays of the " Dance of Death " type a serio-comic (boisterous and farcical) element was soon introduced when the minds of the superstitious and ignorant people became accustomed to the horrible and ghastly representations exhibited to them, that is to say, by the ecclesiastical authorities, in their efforts to work on the popular imagination (partly, perhaps, for objects of their own—namely, to increase the worldly power of the Church). Figures were doubtless sometimes introduced in "morality" scenes (to represent Death or the dead) clothed in a tight-fitting black dress with a white skeleton painted on it, like the "jockeys of death" in modern circus-performances (cf. Part II. Headings v. and xxi.). In tournaments also similar skeleton disguises may have been occasionally employed to produce spectacular effects, resembling that at " Castle Perilous," in Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette. Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure (Act iii., Scene 1), seems to refer to a farcical morality play of the Mediaeval " Dance of Death" kind, when he makes Duke Vincentio say :— " Merely, thou art Death's fool; For him thou labourest, by thy flight, to shun, And yet runn'st toward him still." A commentary on this passage58 explains the allusion to " Death and his fool " very clearly :—" 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 [or Time or the Devil] ; 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." Cf. Shakespeare's Pericles, Act iii., Scene 2 :__ "Or tie my treasure up in silken bags To please the fool and death." 3S Quoted by Richard Dagley. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 79 Cf. also Shakespeare's King Henry IV, First Part, Act v., Scene 4:—"Life, Time's fool." As mentioned already, the various editions, in German, Latin, English, and other languages, of Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (Stulfifera Navis, German, Narrenschiff), which was first printed, in 1494, at Basel, contain a woodcut representing Death and a Fool; which, however, was intended to illustrate a special form of human folly referred to in the text of this famous satirical poem. Isaac DTsraeli (Curiosities of Literature) mentions an old woodcut representing a Fool seated between the legs of a skeleton-like figure of Death. As R. Dagley 59 points out, the pathetic and burlesque aspects of the "dance of death" and allied subjects (literary and pictorial) are concentrated in the following passage, taken from Shakespeare's King Richard II (Act iii., Scene 2); it gives us the very spirit of the late Mediaeval " Imagines mortis " :— " For within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps Death his court: and there the antick sits, Mocking his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit,— As if this flesh, which walls about his life, Were brass impregnable: and, humoured thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through his castle-wall, and—farewell king !" In regard to Mediaeval representations of Death being in Shake- speare's mind one may quote his King Henry VI, First Part, Act iv., Scene 7:— "Thou antick, death, which laugh'st us here to scorn"; and his Venus and Adonis :— "'Hard-favoured tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean, Hateful divorce of love,' thus chides she death, ' Grim-grinning ghost, earth's worm.' " R. Dagley, Death's Doings, second edition, London, 1827, p. 6. SO ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. The best-known series of "Dance of Death" designs, sometimes termed "Imagines mortis" or " Icones mortis," is the "Holbein series," i.e. that of the Lyons woodcuts of 1.138, and of the numerous later copies and variations, including those by Wenceslaus Hollar (middle of the seventeenth century), Christian von Mechel (1780), and the Bewicks (1789). Amongst earlier series are that (probably of the fifteenth century) which formerly existed in the Dominican cemetery of Gross-Basel, in Switzerland (which was at one time absurdly supposed to be the work of Holbein), and that (dating from the fourteenth cen- tury) on the cloister wall of the Klingenthal Convent in Klein-Basel, on the other side of the Ehine. The originals of the latter series were destroyed about 1806. A famous French " Danse Macabre," accompanied by verses in French, was painted about 1425 on the wall of the churchyard of the Monastery of the Innocents at Paris, where the Dance of Death drama was probably acted. About 1430 similar pictures, with a translation (which has been preserved60) by John Lydgate (who at that time was residing at Bury Monastery) of the French poem, were introduced into the great cloister on the north side of Old St. Paul's Cathedral at London. Afterwards " Dances of Death " existed at other places in England—certainly in Salisbury Cathedral, at Wortley Hall (Gloucestershire), at Hexham (Northumberland), and in the Archiepiscopal Palace at Croydon. For detailed information in regard to the origin and various series of the " Dance of Death," and in regard to the ti0 Lydgate's verses were printed at the end of Tottell's edition (folio, 1554) of his translation of the Fall of Princes from Boccaccio. and they were again, about a century later, printed in Sir William Dugdale's History of St. Paul's Cathedral. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 81 iconography61 of death in Mediaeval and later art, I would refer the reader to the .various monographs on the subject, especially the following: E. H. Langlois, Essai historique, philosophiqne, et pittoresque sur les Danses des Marts, Rouen, 1851 ; J. Georges Kastner, Les Danses des Marts, Paris, 1852 : V. Douce, Holbein's Dance of Death, dr., London (Bohn's Illustrated Library), 1858 : the facsimile reproductions pub- lished by the Holbein Society, Manchester ; Dr. Theodor Frimmel's series of articles in Mittheilungen d. k. k. Central- Commission . . . der Denkmale, Neue Folge, Vienna, 1884 to 1890, vols, x.-xvi. ; G. E. Sears, A Collect ion of Works illustrative of the Dance of Death, privately printed, New- York, 18*9; W. Seelmann, Pie Totentanze des Mittelalters, published by the Yerein f. Niederdeut. Sprachforschung of Hamburg (Bremen, 1892) ; Alexander Goette, Holbeins Tatentanz und seine Vorbilder, Strassburg, 1897 ; Emile Male, LArt religieu.c de la Fin du Moyen Age en France, Paris, 1908, pp. 375 et seq. ; Carl Kuenstle, Die Legende der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten, und der Totentanz, Freiburg i. Br., 1908; and, above all, the recent writings by AY. F. Storck, "Aspects of Death in English Art and Poetry," Burlington Magazine, London, 1912, vol. xxi. pp. 249, 314; his "Inaugural- Dissertation," Tubingen, 1910 ; and his complete work, which he tells me will soon be published, entitled, Die Legende von den drei Lebenden und den drei Toten und das Problem des Totentanzes. A'arious woodcuts of Death, of the Three Dead, and of the Dance of Death, were included in early printed Books of Hours and in Almanacks, such as Le compost et kalcndrier des bergiers (printed by Guiot Marchant,62 at Paris, in 1493)__ "The Shepherds' Calendar "—just as miniatures of similar subjects were included in illuminated manuscript Books of Hours, breviaries, missals, &c. Alany books and broadsides of different kinds contained illustrations more or less relating to the subject. Thus, in the various editions, in German, Latin, 61 In regard to the iconography of death, the various works on Sepulchral Monuments should also be consulted. 62 A copy of the Danse Macabre des Homines, printed by Guiot Marchant, at Paris, in 1492, is in the British Museum (Huth Bequest). G 82 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PART I. P.. English, and other languages, of Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), which was first printed in 1494 at Basel, there is, as I have stated, a woodcut of Death and a Fool. The figure of Death appears, of course, amongst the illustrations of Aesopic fable literature. A book of the kind, Diatogus ereaturarum moralisatus joeundis fabulis pi en as, printed at Gouda (Holland) in 1482, contains, on page 102, a woodcut of " Death and the Youth." A rough woodcut of Death shooting an arrow at human beings occurs at the head of a Liedt von dem Todt, printed at Niirnberg by Jobst Gutknecht, in 1516; the hymn in question commences: "Ich stund an einem morgen." The great influence which the idea of the " Dance of Death" exerted on literature and artistic designs up to comparatively recent times is perhaps best illustrated by sepulchral memorials. Thus, a seventeenth-century tomb in the choir of the Gothic church of Handschuchsheim (near Heidelberg) records that a certain young lady, the last of her line, became the bride of Death. This suggestion of Death coming in the form of a bridegroom to carry off a beautiful maiden and wed her (cf. Part II., ii., in regard to Death coming as a ravisher or as, or in place of, a bridegroom) in the dark damp tomb, is probably an echo of the spirit underlying the Dance of Death designs and poems. In the pictures of " Le dit des trois morts et des trois vifs," three men (rarely women and rarely ecclesiastics), generally wearing crowns or the rich apparel of princes, noblemen, and "gallants," generally on horseback, and generally engaged in the pastime of hunting or hawking, are represented as being suddenly reminded of death by coming upon three decaying corpses (being " eaten by worms"63), or dried up " skin and bone" figures (the German Hautskelett type), or skeletons. 63 Concerning the idea of representing the decaying body as being occupied by long worms, snakes, toads, &c. (i.e. as being " eaten by worms," according to a phrase still in use in some countries), see later Part II., Heading xix. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 83 An early fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript of the Arundel Collection in the British Museum (No. 83, fol. 127) has a miniature of three kings, one of whom carries a falcon, and three skeleton-like corpses (see Fig. 11, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. AY. F. Storck). Over the kings are the following inscriptions: "Ich am afert" ; "Lo whet ich se " ; "Me g 2 84 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. thinketh hit beth develes thre." Over the three corpses are: " Ich wes wel fair" ; " Such scheltou be " ; " For Godes love, be wer by me." The manuscript belonged in the fifteenth century to the famous Priory of St. Bartholomew (Smithfield, London), and Dr. Storck has pointed out that the miniature in question resembles in almost every detail the representation of the same subject in a French manuscript of the thirteenth century (Paris, Arsenal MS. 3142, f. 311). The same story evidently suggested an early fourteenth-century mural painting (with the inscription, "Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat") which formerly existed at Battle Church, in Sussex,64 and also a mural painting in the church of Ditchingham, Norfolk.65 The same story forms part of the " Triumph of Death " (fourteenth century), in the Campo Santo of Pisa, a fresco doubtfully attributed to Orcagna or Lorenzetti; it is the subject of a sketch by Jacopo Bellini (about 1450),6C preserved in the Louvre at Paris; and occurs in A. Verard's " Dance of Death" series published in 1492.67 In the Pisan fresco, a party of men engaged in hunting, three of whom wear crowns, are represented as coming suddenly upon three open coffins, in each of which is a corpse or skeleton, one with a crown on its head. The "Macaber Dance" ("Danse Macabre"), 64 See Journ. Archaeol. Assoc, London, 1847, vol. 2, p. 151. 65 See Archaeological Journal, London, 1848, vol. 5, p. 69. On the representations of " Le dit des trois morts et des trois vifs" in England, see especially W. F. Storck, Burlington Magazine, London, 1912, vol. xxi. pp. 249, 314. 66 It has been also attributed to Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497). See W. F. Storck, Die Legende von den drei Lebenden und von den drei Toten, Inaugural-Dissertation, Tubingen, 1910, p. 40, No. 88. 67 See Paul Richer's L'Art et la Medecine, Paris, 1902, pp. 525-531. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 85 i.e. the "Dance of Death," has been supposed (but on incorrect grounds—see back) to derive its name from St. Macarius, the Egyptian anchorite of the fourth century (Macarius Aegyptius), who is represented on the Pisan fresco pointing out the open coffins to the hunting party. This fresco of the Pisan Campo Santo is of about the date 1350 and, though ascribed by Vasari to Andrea Orcagna, was by others thought to be the work of Pietro Lorenzetti—or Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti —of Siena. Very much has been written on the subject and various other attributions have been suggested. The whole device has rightly been regarded as representing not merely or chiefly the triumph of death, but still more so the triumph of the Mediaeval Christian idea of religious asceticism. Macarius (Greek, Mandptos) means happy, blessed. I believe that the most likely derivation of the term, " Macaber Dance," or " Danse Macabre," is from the Greek word Maxapts = the blessed (the dead), meaning that it is the dance of the dead, x°Pfia (chorea in Latin) ixaKapaiv. At first sight the Latin term, chorea Machabaeorum, seems to negative this view, but I think that Macabre and Machabaeorum are both corruptions, due to mistaken Mediaeval etymology. In regard to " Dance of Death " poems it is surprising to find the following state- ment still given in Charles Knight's London™: " Machabree, the author of the original verses, was a German physician, who is supposed to have written them from the sight of the picture, which was found in many of the Continental edifices about the latter part of the fourteenth century. On the lower portion of one of the miniatures in Les tres riches heures de Jean de France, due de Berry, three live men on horseback are represented fleeing from three dead men on foot; and another miniature pictures a large company of armed soldiers in a cemetery put to flight by the apparition of a band of dead men armed with scythes, &c.69 ,;s Published by H. G. Bohn, London, 1851, vol. iv. p. 261. Ii;> See the reproduction of Les tris riches heures de Jean de France, due de Berry, published at Paris by Plon-Nourrit & Cie., 1904, folio, Plates xlv., xlvi. Death often constituted the subject of some of the miniatures in illuminated Books of Hours. It served an admonitory (memento mori) purpose in such manuscript books, as it did also in old printed calendars and other works intended for frequent reference. 86 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. ( PART I.-P>. In the famous " Sagro Speco" at Subiaco, in Italy, is a fourteenth century wall-painting, representing three richly-dressed young noblemen on horseback, with hawk on wrist, passing a cemetery. An aged hermit directs their attention towards three half-open tombs, in two of which are respectively the decomposing corpses of a king and a princess, and in the third is a skeleton. The gay hawking party is warned by the hermit in characteristic Mediaeval orthodox style :— " Vide quid eris quomodo gaudia quaeris ; Per nullam sortem poteris evadere mortem, Nee modo laeteris, quia forsan cras morieris." In another portion of the fresco Death is pictured riding on a white horse, as in the Apocalypse (Revelation, vi. 8). In the Contcmplacyon of Synners, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, at Westminster, in 1499, a woodcut (the third contemplation) shows three shrivelled corpses frightening three gallants and their horses. A hermit, quietly seated on the ground, points to a crucifix between the group of the living and the group of the dead. " Les trois morts " are again met with in an original drawing (British Museum) of the school of Augsburg (early sixteenth century), which pictures the Pope and a group of ecclesiastical dignitaries being interrupted in some procession or ceremony by three skeleton-like figures (with decomposing viscera and remains of skin and flesh), one of whom wears a crown (Fig. 12). I have already stated that in the representations of " Les trois morts et les trois vifs " both the live men and the dead men generally bear the attributes of worldly power and wealth; the moral which it was intended by the ecclesiastics to bring home to all (that is to say, to PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 87 all that kind of which Edward Young, in his Night Thoughts, afterwards said: "All men think all men mortal, but themselves"), and especially to the rich, by introducing such pictures into churches all over the country, in small villages and large towns and cities alike, may be summed up in the following jingling Mediaeval Latin (" Leonine ") hexameters :— " O dominus dives, non omni tempore vives; Fac bona dum vivis, post mortem vivere si vis." Fig. 12.—The Three Dead meeting the Pope and Ecclesiastics. Original drawing in the British Museum. The same idea is summed up by William Dunbar (about 1465 to 1530), in one of the stanzas of his magnificent " Lament for the Makaris ;'10 (with the refrain, Timor mortis conturbat me), which breathes the spirit of the earlier " Dance of Death " and similar admonitory poems and paintings :— " Our pleasance here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory, The flesh is bruckle, the fiend is slee [sly]. Timor mortis conturbat me." 70 Written about 1508. "Makaris" is an old Scotch form of " makers," i.e. poets. (Cf. Greek iroinr-fis = a maker or a poet.) 88 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AMD EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. With this may be compared the later famous dirge like poem by James Shirley (1596-16Gt>), commencing :— " The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate ; Death lays his icy hand on kings." In the Mediaeval " morality play," entitled The Summoning of Everyman?1 recently revived in London, Fellowship and Kindred, Worldly Possessions (Goods), Strength, Beauty, Knowledge, Discretion, can none of them accompany Everyman on his last journey. " Good Deeds" alone stands by him and promises to speak for him. According to the sentiment of the play in ques- tion, knowledge and discretion should furnish every man with good deeds in this life, and these, rather than mere faith, are to obtain happiness for him in the life to come. " Hie weislich, dort gliicklich " (" Here — on earth — prudently, there—after death—happily ") was a Mediaeval motto of the Bernstorff family. I must now again refer to Albrecht Diirer's famous engraving (1513) of "The Knight, Death and the Devil." In lonely scenery Death explains the significance of an unpleasant emblem of mortality (an exposed human skull) to a knightly horse- man in splendid armour. Death is on a pale horse, and the Devil is behind him as in the Apocalypse (Revelation, vi. 8). But the " true knight " (who carries a fox's skin on his lance—possibly either as an emblem of sagacity or as having overcome the cunning of the fox) will proceed to the end and do his duty, not dismayed by threats of 71 A copy printed by John Scot, in London, about the year 1530, has on the title-page the device of "Everyman" being summoned by a skeleton-like figure rising from a tomb. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 89 death, nor disturbed by the unclean suggestions of the swinish devil (see further on, Fig. 37):— " Wer dem Tod nicht in's Auge schauen kann, Der ist fiirwahr kein reenter mann." 72 A variety in the representation of the legend of the three dead and three living is furnished by a most interesting Italian picture of the fourteenth-century Fig. 13.—The "Three Living" and the Three Fates, on a fourteenth- century picture at Pisa. (Fig. 13), preserved in the Museo (Jivico at Pisa. On this picture the three living men in the course of their ride come upon three seated females instead of the usual " skin and skeleton " dead men. Dr. W. F. Storck,73 to '•'■ Cf. as Schiller (Wallensteins Lager, Elfter Auftritt) expresses it:— " Der dem Tod ins Angesicht schauen kann, Der Soldat allein, ist der freie Mann." :3 Storck, Bepertorium filr Ktmstivissenschaft, vol. xxxiii. p. 493. 90 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. | PART I.-B. whom I am indebted for permission to reproduce his illustration, points out that the allegorical figures of the three women who replace the " three dead," are derived by the early Italian Eenaissance artist from the old heathen idea of the three Fates (Parcae or Moirae): Olotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Dr. Storck also refers to analogous symbolical representations of the three Fates. The Eenaissance artists of the " Triumph of Death " and the "Triumph of Fame over Death," after Petrarch's Trionfi, frequently introduced the three Fates into their designs to replace the Mediaeval figure of death; but to this subject I shall return further on.74 We now come to the question: What was the origin of the Mediaeval and later representation of death as a skeleton or a "skin-and-bone figure," the German Hautskelett ? It is, of course, in the first place, quite obvious that this Christian demon-like, or gruesome harlequin-like, personification of death, or " King Death," is merely taken from the animated skeleton-like or shrivelled corpse-like figures representing the dead themselves (or their ghosts), as in the pictures of the Mediaeval tale of "the Three Dead and the Three Living." In either case, both when the skeleton, or Hautskelett, was used in such pictures to represent a personification of death, and when it represented merely a dead person (or his ghost), the Mediaeval significance ■* In regard to female figures of the "skin and skeleton type" representing a kind of mixture of the Mediaeval representation of Death and the Eenaissance idea of Atropos, see Dr. Theodor Frimmel Mittheilungen d. k. k. Central-Commission der Denkmale Vienna New Series, 1885, vol. xi. p. lxxxviii. Death is represented by 'an old woman with scythe and coffin in a miniature in one of the manuscripts of the AH. Huth Bequest in the British Museum (see the official descriptive catalogue of the Huth Bequest issued by the British Museum). PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 91 of the representation was intended to be a memento mori one. The " Dance of the Dead" (see Fig. 14), in the m&tu mbtl melius, w'ta nil pans imqua 0 pma moss boim .r«Jcs etcrna labtwo 1» fowle iiicum Domino tolcnte relajri8 ©metozuqj guties acinus cornice catbcnas £pliumq5leua8.Tcarcert8boftt3fran<5i8 £npi8 tndtgnia.ujftibona gnbits cquans a«8immoBimanc8.nullacjcojabili8art£ d pamo ptcftjca t>te.tu cumta quicro •ferre inbee am'mo.pjonriflb fine Ubo:um £efine fuppltoum. vita eft area perenms Fig. 14.—A "Dance of the Dead," from a woodcut of the Nuremberg Chronicle (copy in the British Museum), published in 1493 by Anthoni Koberger of Nuremberg, with the help of a physician, Hartmann Schedel, and two artists, Michael Wolgemut (the master of A. Diirer) and Wilhelm Pleydenwurf. The design is very spirited, though the anatomy is not quite correct. The Latin verses below the woodcut seem to show that the design was an enlightened outcome, perhaps suggested by the physician Hartmann Schedel, of the ordinary Mediaeval teaching of the " Dance of Death." 92 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. Nuremberg Chronicle, published by A. Koberger in 1493, seems to me to be an enlightened outcome, perbaps suggested by the physician Hartmann Schedel, of the ordinary Mediaeval teaching of the "Dance of Death," but is not to be confused with a true " Dance of Death." Now, it is quite certain that the ancients, in later Roman and Graeco-Roman art (witness the Boscoreale wine-cups already described, and the cups, gems, and other objects which will be described in Part IV.), represented their ghosts or " larvae" in the form of skeletons or shrivelled mummy-like " animated corpses " (the German Hautskelett), though they never personified death itself in this way (nor fate—doom—either, unless the minute figure of Clotho on one of the Boscoreale cups is taken to be a Hautskelett of this kind). Moreover, the ancient significance of such larva-figures, as is sufficiently manifest (see back, and further on, in Part IV.), was generally likewise a memento mori one, though the Roman memento mori meant something very different from the Mediaeval Christian memento mori; it usually meant a so-called " Epicurean " suggestion to " enjoy life," and to make the play in .life's theatre pleasant before death closes the scene and puts an end to all corporeal enjoy- ment. In late Roman and Graeco-Roman art we have the skeleton-like " larvae" figuring from this memento mori point of view. They occur, singly, as on various gems described in Part IV. (in one case at least the skeleton holds a knife or dagger, and is assuming a threatening attitude), or two or three of them together, or many together—a regular "danse des morts" scene—as on the Boscoreale wine-cups (already described), &c. It seems to me almost certain that Mediaeval Christian art, as C. W. King suggests, derived its idea of representing PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 93 death in the above-mentioned way from the late Roman and Graeco-Roman method of representing "larvae" (especially malevolent larvae) as skeletons or skin-and-bone figures. The "Ars Moriendi" Designs. Like the "Tale of the Three Dead and the Three Living," and the " Dance of Death" poems, and the " morality" plays of these types, the Mediaeval treatise termed the Ars Moriendi formed an important subject for woodcuts and engravings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Lionel (Just writes75: "The Ars Moriendi, or Speculum Artis bene Moriendi, the ' Art of Good or Evil Dying,' was a religious treatise, used with con- spicuous force and authority by the Church during its long ascendancy in the Middle Ages. At this date the keys of knowledge, as of salvation, were entirely in the hands of the Church, and the lay public, both high and low were, generally speaking, ignorant and illiterate. One of the secrets of the great power exercised by the Church lay in its ability to represent the life of man as environed from the outset by legions of horrible and insidious demons, who beset his path throughout life at every stage up to his very last breath, and are eminently active and often triumphant when man's fortitude is undermined by sickness, suffering, and the prospect of dissolution. From such attacks and pitfalls only the continuous presence and protection of the Church could protect the hapless pilgrim through life. In aid of such a mission certain doctrines were adopted by the leaders of 75 Lionel Oust, The Master E.S. and the Ars Moriendi : A Chapter in the History of Engraving during the XVth Century, Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1898, p. 9. I am indebted to Mr. Oust for his kind permission to quote this passage and to the Oxford University Press for kind permission to copy the four illustrations which I have figured here. 94 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PAKT I.-B. the Church, and inculcated in treatises drawn up by the most eminent divines of the clay, such as the famous Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris. In this teaching the Ars Moriendi, linked as it was with the doctrine of eternal punishment, played a most important part. It was on his death-bed that a man was most amenable to advice, and in need of consolation to give him hope at the moment when his soul was about to depart into the unknown. When pictorial art began to lend its aid to the minister of religion, it was of great service, for often, when the mind was too illiterate to understand or the ear too feeble to comprehend the good doctrine which was being expounded at the bedside, the eye could follow in the print or illuminated page the subject to which the patient's thoughts were to be directed." The illustrations of the Ars Moriendi amply justify these views. To convince ourselves we need only examine those of the famous block-book of the middle of the fifteenth century (printed in the Netherlands about 1460) now in the British Museum, a reproduction of which was published in 1881 by the Holbein Society in London, edited by W. H. Rylands, with an introduction by George BuUen.76 The illustrations of this block- book served as prototypes for the woodcuts illustrating many printed editions of the Ars Moriendi issued in 76 The Ars Moriendi (Editio Princeps, circa 1450)—A Beproduction of the Copy in the British Museum, edited by W. H. Rylands, F.S.A. with an introduction by George BuUen, F.S.A. Printed for the Holbein Society by Wyman & Sons, London, 1881. In his introduc- tion Mr. Bullen gives also a good deal of information concerning the probable origin of the text of the Ars Moriendi. There are various Latin versions and various English versions of the literary matter. Cf. The Book of The Craft of Dying and other Early English Tracts concerning Death, edited by F. M. M. Comper, with preface by Rev. G. Congreve, London, 1917. PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 95 various countries of Europe, but Lionel Cust thinks that the designs in the block-book were themselves only modified versions of a series of copper-plate prints by the 'Master E.S.," also known as the "Master of 1466," a German engraver of the middle of the fifteenth century. A complete series of these engravings by the " Master E.S.,"'illustrating the Ars Moriendi, forms part of the Francis Douce Collection in the University Galleries at Oxford. The illustrations in the British Museum block-book of the temptation by pride or vain- glory, the fourth temptation to which the dying man is exposed (see Fig. 15) gives a fair idea of the significance and scope of the Ars Moriendi treatise and of how greatly its teaching was strengthened by the addition of such forcible illustrations. The dying man, lying in his bed, is assailed by five hideous demons, three of whom offer him crowns. One of them, as we learn from the attached scroll, tells him that he has deserved a crown: " Coronam meruisti." Another exhorts him to boast: " Gloriare " ; and another to exalt himself: " Exaltate ipsum." The remaining two also flatter him with the words: " In paciencia perseverasti " (" You have persevered in patience "), and " Tu es firmus in fida " (" You are firm in faith "). On the far side of the bed are figures of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary; also three little children, emblematic of simplicity. In the next illustration (see Fig. 16), representing the triumph over vain-glory, three angels stand around the bed with advice and comfort for the dying man. One tells him to humble himself: "Sis humilis" ; another is in an attitude of prayer; whilst the third points to three human figures (one with the tonsure of a monk) engulfed in the wide-open flaming mouth of a monster (emblematic 96 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-P.. of the "jaws of hell "), above which is a scroll with the inscription: "Superbos punio" ("I punish the proud'). m0tmm Fig. 15.—The " Ars Moriendi."—The temptation by vain-glory, from the British Museum block-book (about 1460). In the front of the picture a demon is represented prostrate on the ground, with the inscription: " Victus sum " (" I am conquered ") ; another demon takes refuse PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 97 by hiding himself under the bedstead. In the back- ground of the picture are figures of God the Father, Fig. 16.—The " Ars Moriendi."—The triumph over vain-glory, from the British Museum block-book (about 1460). Jesus Christ, a dove (representing the Holy Ghost), and St. Anthony the Hermit (as a type of humility). The block-book illustration of the third temptation, the H 98 ASPECTS OF DEATH TN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. temptation by impatience, represents the dying man discontented with his attendants and his doctor. He has already upset the table with the food and medicine on it, and is unceremoniously pushing the doctor away with his foot, whilst a lady (his wife?) expostulates or Fig. 17.—The " Ars Moriendi."—The temptation by impatience, by the Master E.S. (according to the words of the label) excuses him on account of his suffering. A demon with bat's wings, by the bed, is (as the attached label tells us) rejoicing at having successfully deceived the sufferer (see Fig. 17, from the similar Master E.S. series). The last scene of the series represents the final triumph over all temptations PART I.-B.] MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 99 at the hour of death. The-dying man, lying in bed, holds a lighted taper, which is placed in his hand by a monk." His soul, issuing from his mouth in the form of a naked child, is being received by a company of angels above his head. On one side of the bed are the discomfited demons with scrolls attached to them, bearing such inscriptions as: " Spes nobis nulla." On the other side are the crucified Christ, the Virgin Mary, St. John the Evangelist, and other saints (see Fig. 18, from the similar Master E.S. series). This last scene may be compared to that of the " Sinner's death," from the Hortus Deliciarum, by the Abbess Herrade von Landsberg, a twelfth-century manuscript destroyed during the siege of Strassburg in 1870 (fol. 123, PI. xxxiii. of the reproductions by the Society for the Preservation of the Historical Monuments of Alsace). By the death-bed stand two hideous devils, one of whom grasps the soul as it escapes, in the form of a little naked human figure, from the mouth of the dying man. Another representation of death from the Christian religious point of view, from a fourteenth-century manuscript in the British Museum,78 shows a bony figure of Death spearing a man on his death- bed. An angel stands at the head of the bed ready to receive the dying man's soul, which is escaping from his mouth in the form of a minute nude human figure (in the attitude of an wans). At the foot of the bed a devil likewise waits to seize the soul. With the admonitory significance of the illustrations of the Ars ^[oriendi may be compared the memento mori purpose of the designs 77 The original significance of lighted tapers, candles, torches, and candelabra in connexion with death-scenes, laying out of the body, tombs and sepulchral monuments, both in Christian (cf. the lighted tapers used in connexion with the Viaticum of the Roman Catholic Church) and pre-Christian times, was doubtless in part the idea of keeping away evil spirits and the powers of darkness, that were supposed to be afraid of light. But cf. the paper on the subject, by G. McN. Rushforth, " Funeral Lights in Roman Sepulchral Monuments," Journal of Boman Studies, London, 1915, vol. 5, p. 149. Mrs. Arthur Strong and others contributed to the discussion on Rushforth's paper. In regard to the uses of torches and lights at funerals in Great Britain, see Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, revised by Sir Henry Ellis, edition of 1849, vol. ii. pp. 276-279. 78 See L. Twining, Symbols and Emblems of Early and Mediaeval Christian Art, London, new edition, 1885, PL 68, Fig. 3. H 2 100 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-B. (skeletons, admonitory verses, &c.) frequently introduced in illuminated Books of Hours, and in old printed calendars (cf. the original of the " Shepherds' Calendar," Le compost et kalendrier des bcrgiers, printed by Guiot Marchant, at Paris, in 1493) and other works intended for frequent reference. In some respects the Ars Moriendi, as a kind of handbook or guide to holy dying, reminds one of the Ancient Egyptian guide-books to the other world. In an account of the Egyptian collections in the British Museum we read : " An important section of the Religious Literature of Egypt is formed by works which were intended to be used as Guides to the Other World. "The oldest of these is a work in which pictures are given of portions of Restau, in the kingdom of the god Seker, and of several parts of the Sekhethetep, or Elysian Fields, and their positions in respect of the celestial Nile are shown." c. Sepulchral Monuments and Sepulchral Inscriptions of Admonitory Character. The " Gisant" Type of Monu- ment of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. The Horror-inspiring Aspect of " Memento Mori" Religious Art. It is quite natural that advantage should have been taken of the opportunities afforded (more frequented formerly than now), by tombs and monuments and other works of art in cloisters, burial-places, churches, and cathedrals, for purposes of religious teaching, especially of the admonitory and memento mori kind. In the so-called gisant type of sepulchral monument of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the deceased is usually sculptured with all the attributes of worldly wealth and power and high social standing, and on a lower slab or compartment a skeleton or corpse or emaciated or decaying body (the so-called gisant) is represented—often being "eaten by worms"—to warn the rich and great, and comfort the poor and unfortunate, of this world, by reminding them of the vanity of wealth and earthly titles in the presence of Death, the leveller of all distinctions of social rank, personal beauty, and bodily strength. J. Guiart quotes a poet of the epoch— "Et dans ces grands tombeaux, oil leurs ames hautaines Font encore les vaines lis sont manges des vers." (In regard to these lines compare also the poem by Peter Patrix, entitled, "A Dream," which is quoted further on, in Part II., viii. Patrix satirically represents the corpse of a rich man as resenting the burial of a beggar by his side.) 102 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AXD EPIGRAM. [ PART I.-O. The gisant monuments, like many other tomb-devices and innumerable sepulchral inscriptions, were intended to have an admonitory effect on the living, similar to that exerted at an earlier period by Le Dit des Trois Morts et des Trois Vifs, &c. In Part III. I shall describe certain analogous admonitory medals, such as those having the portrait of a beautiful woman on the obverse and a skeleton on the reverse ; and in Part IV. I shall refer to various carved ivory beads, wooden or wax statuettes, &c, intended in the same way and with the same object to contrast life, vigour, and beauty with death, powerlessness, and putrefaction. Of sepulchral monuments of the gisant type—designed to serve as a memento mori to the living as well as a memorial of the dead—we may instance, as a good and early example in England, the fine one in Canterbury Cathedral of Henry Chichele (died 1443), Archbishop of Canterbury, and founder of All Souls' College, Oxford. On a table, under an elaborate canopy, is a recumbent figure, representing the Archbishop during life in full canonicals. On a slab below the table an emaciated dead body (wrongly described as a skeleton)79 is represented (see Fig. 19). Eound the verge at the bottom of the monument is the jingling memento mori inscription— " Quisquis eris qui transieris rogo memoreris, Tu quod eris mihi consimilis qui post morieris, Omnibus horribilis, pulvis, vermis, caro vilis." The gisant tomb of Cardinal Lagrange (who died in 1402), in the museum at Avignon, is probably one of the earliest sepulchre-monuments on which the deceased is represented as an emaciated corpse.80 Of the fifteenth 79 See R. Gough's Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain vol ii (1796), p. 129. 8° See Emile Male's well-known work, L'Art Beligieux de la fin du Moyen Age en France, Paris, 1908, p. 377, Fig. 181. PART I.-C.] SEPULCHRAL MOXUMEXTS, &C. 103 century is also the design (mentioned elsewhere) for a tomb by Jacopo Bellini in the Louvre Museum at L'aris, representing a sarcophagus on which is stretched a decaying corpse. Above the corpse are the following Latin lines, with the date 1557 :— " Olim formoso fueram qui corpore putri Nunc sum. Tu simili corpore lector eris." In regard to inscriptions one may compare that for- Fig. 19.—The Tomb of Archbishop Chichele (died 1443) in Canterbury Cathedral. A good and early example of the so-called gisant type of sepulchral monument in England. nierly legible on the cadaver monument (possibly only a memento mori imitation of a tomb) near the tombs of Bishop Stapeldon and his brother in Exeter Cathedral— " Ista figura docet nos omnes meditari Chialiter ipsa nocet mors quando venit dominari"; also the traditional " Leonine" and grimly punning epitaph on "Fair Rosamund," the mistress of King Henry II of England (said to have originally referred 104 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AX1> EPIGRAM. [l'ART I.-C. to another Rosamunda, a beautifnl but wicked Lombard queen of the sixth century, who is supposed to have assisted in the murder of her husband, Alboin, a.d. 573) :— " Hie jacet in tumba Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda ; Non redolet, sed olet, quae redolere solet." These lines have a Mediaeval jingle, like the " Leonine " hexameter on the tomb of Bede (died 735 a.d.) in Durham Cathedral— " Hac sunt in fossa, Baedae venerabilis ossa "; that on the tombstone of Bishop Peter de Quivil (died 1291) in Exeter Cathedral— " Petra tegit Petrum, nihil officiat sibi tetrum " ; that on the beautiful Chapter-house of York Minster— "Ut rosa flos riorum, sic est domus ista domorum " ; and the proverb (" Leonine " with " false quantities ")— " Audi, vide, tace, si tu vis vivere pace." On a sepulchral monument in the Church of the Celestines at Herverle, near Louvain, is the inscription, " Nunc putredo terrae et cibus verminorum." One of the woodcuts in an early French Calendrier des Bergers (" Shepherds' Calendar") represents a skeleton, with some flesh and hair still attached to the bones, standing upright on a tomb, holding a huge dart in the right hand, and in the left a mirror, on which a death's-head is reflected. At the sides are Latin " Leonine " verses :— " Qui speculum cernis, cur non mortalia spernis 1 Tali nanque domo clauditur omnis homo. Cum fex, cum limus, cum res vilissima sinius, Unde superbimus? Ad terrain terra redimus." Below are French verses of the ordinary sepulchral admonitory kind:— " Regarde moy, souspire et pleure : Qui mort attens, et ne scais l'heure : Prie pour moy qui suis en cendre : Pense que la te faut descendre." PART I.-C.] SEPULCHKAL MONUMENTS, ccC. 105 On the sepulchral monument of the gisant type, in Rouen Cathedral, of Louis Breze (died 1530), Grand Seneschal of Normandy, the husband of Diane de Poitiers, above is a statue of De Breze on horseback and in full armour; below is a sarcophagus of black marble, on which lies a representation of his shrivelled corpse. The same idea is evidenced in Germain Pilon's gisant monument of Valentin a Balbiani, wife of the Chancellor De Birague in the Louvre Museum at Paris. In the old church of St. James at Clerkenwell (London) there was an elaborate monument, with a " skin-and-bones " recumbent figure, of Sir William Weston, who died in 1540, the last prior but one of the Knights of St. John in England (cf. J. Weever's Ancient Funeral Monuments, 1631, p. 430). In old St. Paul's Cathedral, London, there was a sepulchral monument of John Colet (1467-1519), Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral and founder of St. Paul's School (London), representing a skeleton reclining on a mat under a canopy; in a niche at the top was a bust of the Dean. Many sepulchral monuments of the kind 81 are referred to in Richard Gough's Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, London, 1786-1796, vol. i. pp. cx.-cxii., and vol. ii. pp. cxviii-cxx. For illustrations of French sepulchral monuments by French and Italian sculptors, more or less bearing on this subject, see Paul Richer's B Art et la Medecine, Paris, " With sepulchral monuments of this kind, those of Greek times, with their simple (and in the best examples, very beautiful) so-called " parting scenes " may be contrasted. But on the mural paintings of Etruscan tombs, the representation of the brutal-looking Etruscan " Charun " (as the messenger of death), and sometimes other horrible Gorgon-like "demons," holding snakes, &c, invest death and the parting scenes depicted with horrors equal to those suggested by Mediaeval art and legends. 106 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-C. 1902, pp. 511-519; and Jules Guiart's series of articles on "Le Macabre dans i'Art," in Aescnlapc, Paris, 1912- 1913. Compare also T. J. Pettigrew's Chronicles of the Tombs, London, 1857, pp. 40-43, for French "admonitory' epitaphs on Edward, the "Black Prince," who died in 1376, and John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, who died in 1304. That on Edward, the Black Prince, is obviously on the model of what the dead kings say in the various versions of the Bit des Trois Morts et des Trois Vifs; it commences as follows :— " Tu qi passez oue bouche close : Par la ou ce corps repose: Entent ce qe te dirai: Sicome le dire le say : Tiel come tu es je au tie! fu : Tu serras tiel come je su : De la mort ne pensai je mye : Tant come jauoi la vie." That on John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, is somewhat similar— " Vous que passez ou bouche close Pries pur cely ke cy repose : En vie come vous estis jadis fu, Et vous tiel serietz come je su : Sire Johan count de Gareyn gyst icy : Dieu da sa alme est mercy. Ky pur sa alme priera Troiz mill jours de pardon avera." 82 The English admonitory epitaph of William Chichele (brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury, above men- tioned), and Beatrice his wife, on a brass dated 1425 (Higham Ferrers Church, Northamptonshire), commences— " Such as ye be, such wer we; Such as we be, such shal ye be." 1,2 Cf. also Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 45 and pp. 62-68. PART I.-C.] SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS, &C. 107 Amongst the numerous admonitory sepulchral in- scriptions of this class (not really Christian in origin— see further on) are the following (some of which have been already mentioned) :— " Quod es fui, quod sum eris." " Quod tu es, ego fui, quod ego sum, tu eris." " Quod sumus hoc eritis, fuimus quandoque quod estis."s3 " Quod fuimus, estis, quod sumus, vos eritis." " Mox eris quod ego nunc." (Cf. the Latin Vulgate version of Ecclesiasticus, xxxviii. 22 : " Hodie mihi, cras tibi.") " Sum quod eris, modicum cineris." " Olim formoso fueram qui corpore, putri Nunc sum. Tu similis corpore, lector, eris." This last inscription occurs on a tomb dated 1557 in the Cathedral of Moulins, bearing the representation of a decaying corpse being " eaten by worms."84 In the Church of the Cappuccini at Rome, founded by Cardinal Fr. Barberini (brother of Pope Urban VIII), in 1624, is the inscription on the tomb of the founder: " Hie jacet pulvis, cinis et nihil." Similar epitaphs are recorded on an Arch- hishop at Toledo and other prelates, for instance, on Cardinal Onuphrio at Rome : " Hie jacet umbra, cinis, nihil." In the Church of Gisors, in Normandy, there is a sepulchral monument, formerly wrongly supposed to be i he work of Jean Goujon. On this monument a peculiar representation of a corpse in a coffin is accompanied by the following inscriptions :— " Quisquis ades, tu morte cades, sta, respice, plora. Sum quod eris, modicum cineris, pro me, precor, ora." " Fay maintenant ce que tu voudras Avoir fait quand tu mourras." " Je fus mis en ce lieu l'an 1526." R3 This hexameter line occurs as the legend on the reverse of the memento mori medal with the portrait of Virgil, described in Part III. M See Emile Male, op. cit. 108 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-' The following variation is given by ('•. B. de Rossi, Inseeipt. Christ. Urbis Romar (Rome, l**s, vol. ii. p. 223):— " Quisquis ades, qui morte cades, sta, peile^e, plora. Sum quod eris, quod es ante fui, pro me, precor. ora.' With this may be compared the last two lines of the following epitaph on Eadulph, Bishop of Devon, who died 932 a.d.*5 :- " Sis testis Cbriste, quod non jacet hie lapis iste, Corpus ut ornetur, sed spiritus ut memoretur. Quisquis eris qui transiris, sta, perle^e, plora; Sum quod eris, fueramque quod es ; pro me, precor, ora." Words almost the same as those of the last line occur on Prior Sylke s tomb (about 1500) in Exeter Cathedral. The next epitaph is quoted by G. B. de Rossi *6— " Vos qui transitis, nostri memores, rogo, sitis. Quod sum hie eritis; fuimus quandoque quod estis." With this may be compared the modern epitaph at Houff on M. W. and W. F. and H. D. Ferguson, quoted by T. J. Pettigrew ,:— "Vos qui transitis, memores nostri, rogo, sitis; Estis, quod fuimus; quod sumus, hoc eritis; Omnia transibunt; nos ivimus, ibitis, ibunt Ignari, gnari, conditione pari. Hoc scio, quod vivit, qui me moriendo redemit, Spes manet hoc membris indubitata meis." In the Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum/* the relief from a Greek cippus, probably of the third century a.d., representing a skeleton lying at full length, i> 83 It is given by T. J. Pettigrew, Chronicles of the Tombs, London, 1857, p. 65. ss Rossi, loc. cit, p. 223. An English version of this kind of epitaph was formerly inscribed over one of the entrances to the Greyfriars burying-ground at Edinburgh:— " Remember, man as thou goes by : As thou art now, so once was I. As I am now, so shalt thou be; Remember, man, that thou must die "dee"r ": Pettigrew, Chronicles of the Tombs, London, 1857, p. 66. - By A. H. Smith, London, 1901, vol. 3, p. 363, No. 2391. PART I.-C.] SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS, &C. 109 described and figured. Above the skeleton the following- distich is inscribed, asking the passer-by if he can tell from the bare skeleton whether the living person had been a Hylas or a Thersites (the proverbial types of beauty and ugliness) :— " Ei7reiV tis SiWtcu (TKrjvos XnrocrapKov aOprjcras eiVep "YAas r) ©epo-cmyi; rjv, w 7rajOoSen-a." The monument in question is interesting in regard to the present subject, though its significance is different from the Christian memento mori devices and admonitory epitaphs of Mediaeval and later times. The following epitaphs are printed in D. 31. Ausonii Burdigalonsis Opuscula, the Teubner edition, Leipzig, 1886, p. 419. The first (from a tomb on the Via Latino) is attributed to Ausonius :— "Non nomen, non quo genitus, non unde, quid egi: Mutus in aeternum sum : cinis, ossa, nihil. Nee sum nee fueram genitus, tamen e nihilo sum; Mitte nee exprobres singula : talis eris." " Oliin non fuimus, nati sumus ; unde quieti Nunc sumus, ut fuimus: cura relicta: vale." Numerous epitaphs of the non fueram—non sum style, after the ideas of Pliny, Lucretius, &c, on the meaning of death, are to be found in collections of Latin and Greek inscriptions (cf. Part I. A.). It is obvious that many of the Mediaeval and later Christian memento mori epitaphs have been modelled on old Roman non-Christian epitaphs of this non fueram—non sum class. The stone sepulchral slab of Eobert Touse (1422), formerly in the old cloister of the Cathedral of Kouen, represented the deceased as a decaying corpse, being eaten by worms. The words (on a scroll), proceeding from his mouth, tell the passer-by that he (Touse) awaits 110 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-C, the resurrection of the dead: " Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum." Compare Job xix. 25 and 26: "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." This monument is figured by E. H. Langlois, in bis famous Kxsai sur les Danses des Morts (Rouen, 1852, p. 137, PI. xxxvii.) and by Jules Guiart, in his article on " Le Macabre dans l'Art" (Aesculape, Paris, 1912-1913), from the latter of which works I have obtained much information about the following tombs and inscriptions. A gisant sepulchral monument89 of a certain Canon Etienne Yver, of Paris and Eouen, who died in 1467, had on the upper part a representation of the last judgment; on the lower part the soul of the Canon is represented, in human form, rising from his tomb, whilst his dead body, " eaten by worms," is lying prostrate on the ground. Two sepulchral figures of the gisant type for the tomb of Queen Catharine de' Medici exist, both executed before her death, one by Girolamo della Eobbia, unfinished owing to the artist's death, and the other, by Germain Pilon, still to be seen at the side of that of her husband, Henri II (likewise by Germain Pilon), at Saint-Denis, the burial church of the sovereigns of France. The same church likewise contains nude sepulchral figures of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany by Jean Juste, and of Francis I and his wife Claude de France, by Pierre Bontemps.90 Guiart91 refers to an interesting painting, destroyed Figured by Guiart, op. cit., after Witkowski. See Paul Richer, L'Art et la Midecine, Paris, 1902, figs. 320-323. Guiart, op. cit. PART I.-C.J SEPULCHRAL MONI'MENTS, &(J. Ill during the great French Eevolution, but formerly in the Celestine Convent at Avignon, of which Eene of Anjou (titular King of Naples), who died in 1480, was the founder. Charles Debrosses described it in the eighteenth century as representing an upright skeleton-like shrouded figure, eaten with worms. The coffin from which the figure had risen was represented open, resting against the cross of the cemetery, and full of spiders' webs. According to De Quatrefages, the artist of the picture was an Italian named Francois, who painted it by order of King Eene. On the middle of the picture were some verses attributed to King Eene himself— " Une fois (fut) sur toute femme belle, Mais par la mort suis devenue telle ; Ma chaire estoit tres belle, fraische et tendre, Or, est-elle toute tournee encendre," &c. "The good" King Rene d'Anjou (1409-1480), of whose artistic and literary productions some still remain, was the pupil in painting of the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck (notably the latter), and was doubtless greatly influenced by the famous Italian painters of the time ; probably he was assisted in some of his miniatures, &c, by Jean Poucquet, of Tours, and Nicolas Froment, of Avignon. Of his writings the subject of one has some connexion with that of the present book. I refer to the manuscript of a "morality," the Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance (Tracte cntre VAmc devote et le Coeur), in which he was aided by a priest of Varronsgues, Jehan Coppre. Its frontispiece, by King Rene himself, representing the king painting in his studio, is repro- duced in Edgcumbe Staley's volume, King Bene d'Anjou (London, 1912, facing page 280). With Rene's verses may be compared the following epitaph from the tomb of a lady in Picardy 92 :— " Ce qu'or es je la f ue Et vous serez ce qu'or je sui ; Priez pour nous. Celle qui dit ces vers Est mangie des vers, Et serez-vous." 1,2 Quoted by Guiart, op. cit. 112 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-C. Compare also the following from the denude Danse Macabre des Hommes et des Femmes (first published in the latter part of the fifteenth century by Guiot Marchand at Paris) :— " Quoi sont vos corps, je vous demande, Femmes jolies, tant bien parees, lis sont, pour certains la viande Q.u' un jour sera aux vers donnee. Des vers sera done devoree Vostre char, qui est fresche et tendre ; Ja, il n'en demourra goullee, Vos vers apres deviendront cendre." Cf. such sayings as :—" Forma bonum fragile est" (Ovid, Ars Amat., ii. 113); " Forma flos, fama flatus " ; " Forma perit, virus remanet." It is not surprising that in the land of chivalry and the troubadours the poetry which adored and idealized lovely woman, should have frequently referred to the painful idea of feminine beauty being trans- formed by death into a loathsome mass of corruption. Pierre de Ronsard is one of the many French poets of various periods (cf. C. P. Baudelaire amongst moderns) who have pictured this idea in their verses— " Ton test n'aura plus de peau Et ton visage si beau N'aura veines ni arteres ; Tu n'auras plus que des dents Telle qu'on les voit dedans Les tetes des cimetieres." Compare the vignette of the engraved title-page of Richard Dagley's Death's Doings (London, 1826), representing three (female) skeletons, standing on a tomb in a traditional attitude of the Three Graces in classical sculpture. Above are the words : " The Last of the Graces." In crowded graveyards of olden times a visitor or pa6ser-by had, like Hamlet and the poet Francois Villon (1431-1484?), frequent opportunities of seeing human skulls and human bones, as the grave- digger often turned out the contents of old graves into pits or charnel- houses to make room for the fresh arrivals. Villon (whom R. L. Stevenson considered " certainly the sorriest figure on the rolls of fame "), in his Grand Testament, referred to seeing skulls heaped up in charnel-houses. A charnel-house figures in certain memento mori designs of the fifteenth century " dance of death " style. In one also of the Holbein woodcuts, skeletons before a charnel-house play on noisy musical instruments to attract the attention of the living. Cf. also L. Larmand, Les Po'etes de la Mort, preface and p. 20. On PART I.-C.] SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS, &C. 113 p. 1 Larmand prints the anonymous fifteenth-century Complainte de la Demoiselle, commencing— " Une fois fut sur toute autres belle, Mais par mort suis ores devenue telle. Ma chair etait tres douce, fraiche et tendre, Ores elle est toute tournee en cendre. Mon corps etait tres plaisant et tres gent, Or est hideux a voir a toutes gens." 03 In his Ballade des dames du temps jadis (included in his Grand Testament), well-known for its refrain, Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan ?Si Villon asks where all the beautiful and famous women of past times (including Joan of Arc " qu' Anglois bruslerent a Rouen") now are—just as Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, in his famous Latin hymn, Bythmus de Contemptu Mundi, asked where all the famous men of Biblical and Classical antiquity had gone to :__ "Die, ubi Salomon, olim tarn nobilis? Vel ubi Samson est, dux invincibilis ? Vel pulcher Absalon, vultu mirabilis? Vel dulcis Jonatbas, multum amabilis ? " &c. Another picture described and figured by Guiart (op. cit.), is one painted in 1461 by Nicolas Froment, of Avignon, and now preserved at Florence. It represents the resurrection of Lazarus. The decomposition of the body is shown very realistically, and some of the spectators in the scene are imagined holding linen to their noses on account of the smell. Lucien Nass95 :'3 How much modern taste prefers to dwell on the living beauty and virtue of the deceased, as Ben Jonson (1573-1637) did (with poetical exaggeration) :— "Underneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as could die; Which in life did harbour give To more virtue than doth live." 'M Rabelais quoted Villon's question (Where are last year's snows ?), in regard to the answer given by Panurge (when Epistemon asked him where the money and jewels were) : " By St. John! they are far enough off now if they keep on travelling." 95 Lucien Nass, Curiositis M6dico-Artistigues, Paris, first series, pp. 284-291. I 114 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ I'ART I.-C. refers to a representation of the same resurrection by a miniature-painter in Bes tres riches heures de Jean de France, due de Berry, and also to another one (a painting at Padua), by Giotto, the " Dante of Painting." This reminds me of the "Finis Gloriae Mundi" picture (I shall refer to it again further on) by the Spanish artist, Juan de Araldes Leal (1630-1691), which I have seen at the Caridad Hospital at Seville, and which represents the decaying corpses of a bishop and a Calatrava knight with horrible realism. Murillo is said to have remarked of it that it was so forcibly painted that one had to hold one's nose when looking at it. In the Bargello Museum at Florence are two reliefs in coloured wax by Gaetano Giulio Zumbo (1656-1701), which are figured by Paul Eicher.96 They represent decomposing bodies amidst ruined buildings and tombs. In one of them a figure of Time points to the hideous spectacle of putre- faction. In the other a figure of Grief or Melancholy is seated on a high tomb, dominating the scene. A similar relief by the same artist refers to a plague-epidemic, and, indeed, the rats on those just mentioned remind one of descriptions of such epidemics. To the same class belong coloured wax models of skeletons and decomposing human bodies in tombs, charnel-vaults, or other desolate surroundings, possibly made in various countries at various periods, and doubtless valued as specimens of clever work of a dismal kind of realistic art, quite as much as for true memento mori reasons. In the "curio-room" in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, is a wax model, supposed to be of Italian workmanship of the seventeenth century, representing the inside of a tomb, with a human skeleton and living sepulchral fauna. According to a label attached to the back of the model it is the work of Zumbo himself. It was presented to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1859, by Daniel Barker M.R.C.S. D6 Paul Richer, L'Art et la Medecine, Paris, 1902, pp. 534, 535, figs. 337, 338. PART I.-C.] SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS, &C. 115 Richer also mentions a picture of the same kind by Houasse, a pupil of Le Brun. Disagreeable realism of a somewhat similar style was likewise carried to an extreme by the seventeenth-century sculptor Agrate, in his statue of the flayed St. Bartholomew at Milan, which he proudly signed with the following hexameter: " Non me Praxiteles sed Marcus finxit Agrates." I have alluded elsewhere in this book to such figures (like anatomical "muscle-men" or ecorche manikins) and to certain wooden statuettes of skeleton-like corpses covered with ragged skin (see Part I. E., and Fig. 27 further on). In regard to realistic .representations of the horrors and melancholic ideas connected with death, Mr. W. Wale has kindly drawn my attention to a story, given in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Painters (English translation, Bohn's Standard Library, 1851, vol. 2, p. 305), of an Italian painter, Fivizzano, who represented the tearfulness of death so realistically on canvas that he died from the effect of the contempla- tion of his own production. The following Latin epigram is said by Vasari to have been inscribed below the picture :— " Me veram pictor divinus mente recepit, Admota est operi deinde perita manus. Dumque opere in facto defigit lumina pictor. Intentus nimium, palluit et moritur. Viva igitur sum mors, non mortua mortis imago, Si fungor, quo mors fungitur, officio." Somewhat similar in character to the above-mentioned picture by Valdes Leal is a sixteenth-century stained- glass window in the Church of St. Vincent at Eouen, apparently representing the putrefying body of the donor, being " eaten by worms." 97 Many of the best artists of the sixteenth century have left behind them representations of corpses or skeleton-like figures. Even of Michael Angelo there exists in the St. Petersburg Museum a very realistic study in wax of mummified skeleton-like Figured by Guiart, op. cit. I 2 116 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-C. figures. Guiart98 likewise figures the extraordinary sepulchral statue (in the Louvre Museum at Paris) of Jeanne de Bourbon, Countess of Burgundy and Auvergne, who died in 1511 (the decaying corpse of a woman, partially draped, being' " eaten by worms"), and the sixteenth-century statue of Death (of the Mediaeval " skin and bones " type, like the German Hautskelett) by Germain Pilon (likewise now in the Louvre Museum), which formerly stood in the Cimetiere des Saints- Innocents at Paris. There are many queer stories as to the reason why such ghastly memorials were made. To one of these stories Jeremy Taylor refers in his famous work, The Bute and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651, Section ii.) : " I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire, by giving way, that, after a few days' burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff and backbone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors." The sixteenth-century masterpiece of this nature was apparently the sepulchral statue of Eene de Chalon, Prince of Orange, who was killed in 1544 at the siege of Saint-Dizier. Before his death he is said to have expressed a wish that a likeness should be made of him, not as he appeared when alive, but as his body would appear a considerable time after his death. His widow, Anne de Lorraine, employed the Lorraine sculptor, Ligier Eichier, who made a remarkable statue of a decaying corpse, erect, in a noble attitude, with the left arm stretched up to heaven, as if confident of the resur- rection of the dead (cf. Job xix. 25-27). According to Marcel Lallemand, the raised-up hand originally held an Guiart, op. cit. PARTI.-C.] SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS, &C 117 hour-glass, as if the deceased were addressing God in the words of the Psalmist (Psalm xxxix. 5, Latin Vulgate version): " Ecce mensurabiles posuisti dies meos et sub- stantia mea tanquam nihilum ante te." 99 The statue is still to be seen in the Church of Saint-Pierre, at Bar- le-Duc.100 In the sepulchral monument (which formerly existed at Joinville, Haute Marne), erected in 1552, in memory of Claude de Lorraine, first Duke of Guise,'his corpse and that of his wife, Antoinette de Bourbon, were represented by Ligier Eichier, on a sarcophagus, as they would have appeared after embalming Henry Maudsley (Beligion and Bealities, London, 1918, p. 8) quotes the following tale from an apocryphal collection of supposed sayings of Jesus Christ:—" As He and His disciples went along the road they came on the stinking body of a putrefying dog. His disciples turned away their faces in disgust, but Jesus, looking steadily at the rotten carcase, bade them observe the beauty of the white and pearly teeth and learn the moral." I suppose that this memento mori story is of Mediaeval origin, and due to the orthodox Christian religious teaching of the Mediaeval monasteries. 99 Cf. Paul Richer, L'Art et la M&decine, Paris, 1902, p. 52l. 10°- See Paul Denis, Ligier Bichier, Paris, 1911, PI. 29 and PL 30, and Jules Guiart, op. cit. D. Italian Renaissance Ideas, and Later. Influence of Petrarch's " Trionfi." The " Triumph of Heath " Designs. The "Memento Mori " Subject continued, especially in regard to the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. We now come to the very different subject of the Eenaissance designs of the " Triumph of Death " and of " Fame triumphing over Death," after Petrarch's Trionfi. The poems of Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), who helped greatly in the revival of classical learning (the Italian Eenaissance), had a great influence on art, notably his Trionfi101 (first printed in 1470). According to Petrarch's arrangement in his Trionfi— " Amor vincit mundum Pudicitia vincit amorem Mors vincit pudicitiam Fama vincit mortem Tempus vincit famam Divinitas seu Eternitas omnia vincit." One cannot be astonished at Italian and other artists and craftsmen of the Eenaissance period eagerly seizing on this theme to obtain subjects for their designs in preference to always keeping to the narrow limits of orthodox Mediaeval Church subjects, such as, " The Tale of the Three Dead and the Three Living," and 101 See Pitrarque, ses Etudes d'Art, son influence sur les Artistes, VIllustration de ses Ecrits, by Prince d'Essling and Eugene Miintz, Paris, 1902. See also The Triumphs of Francesco Petrarch, translated by H. Boyd, with notes upon the illustrations (which are from original Renaissance designs) by Sir Sidney Colvin, London, 1906; also the Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings in the British Museum, by A. M. Hind and Sir Sidney Colvin, London, 1910, pp. 10-16 and pp. 115-121. 120 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-D. the Ars Moriendi. The authors of the Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings in the British Museum10'2 write— " No theme outside the Stories of Scripture gave more frequent employment to artists and craftsmen of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than Petrarch's famous series of poems, the Trionfi. It is found treated alike in illumination, in tapestry, in the painted decoration of marriage-chests and birth-trays, in pottery and enamel, in relief-sculptures of bronze, marble, or ivory, in engravings whether on metal or on wood. About the second quarter of the fifteenth century the scheme and character of such designs became curiously fixed and uniform, within certain narrow limits of variation. In telling of the successive Triumphs of Love, of Chastitv, of Death, of Fame, of Time, and of Eternity, Petrarch himself only in one instance, that of Lovq, brings before us one of the powers personified and riding on a chariot accompanied by attendant figures. But artists almost unanimously, without regard to the text, personify all six powers, mount each on a chariot, and escort its march with various figures or groups i of figures, some of which may, in particular instances, be suggested by passages in the poem itself, but others are quite freely invented." This is not the place to discuss the influence of Petrarch's Trionfi on the poetry and literature of the world, but we may here point out that to some extent two English epitaphs, of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries respectively, illustrate the long and wide-reaching influence in the literary world of the idea of the succession of triumphs (Fame over Death, Time over Fame, Eternity over all things), expressed by Petrarch. The first is the famous epitaph, probably by William Browne (1591-1643)—though often ascribed to Ben Jonson—on Sir Philip Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke ("Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother "—who died in 1621):— "Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse,— Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. Death, ere thou hast slain another Fair and learn'd and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee." 10- Op. cit, 1910, p. 10. PART I.-D.] ITALIAN RENAISSANCE, &C. 121 The other is the epitaph by Aaron Hill (1685-1750) on his wife (who died in 1731), with the lines:— " But ere mankind a wife more perfect see, Eternity, O Time 1 shall bury thee." The triumphal car of Death was generally represented as a heavy oxen-drawn vehicle, beneath the wheels of which human beings of both sexes, of all ages, and of all ranks are being crushed to death—in fact, a kind of "Juggernaut car," according to the popular use of that term. Far too many paintings, tapestries, miniatures from manuscripts, drawings, prints, &c, of the "Triumph of Death," after Petrarch's Trionfi-, exist to be described in this connexion. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is the facsimile 103 of an ivory plaque (Fig. 20), probably the panel of a casket, of North Italian work, about 1480, representing a "Triumphal Car of Death," after Petrarch's idea. A car, in the shape of a large oblong box on wheels, with four skeletons hand-in-hand carved on its side, is drawn along by two bullocks with rings in their noses. On the ground a number of bodies are lying, over which the wheels are rolling, including a king, a pope, a priest, and many others, male and female, young and old. A Florentine fifteenth-century marriage-coffer in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) has representations in relief of the Triumphs of Love, Chastity, and Death, after Petrarch. At the Eoyal Palace of Madrid, in Hampton Court, and in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), ;ire splendid early sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries with 103 See A Descriptive Catalogue of the Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum, by J. 0. Westwood, London, 1876, p. 324. See also Prince d'Essling and E. Miintz, op. cit., p. 179. An original of this kind is in the Cathedral of Gratz in Stvria. 122 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-D. designs inspired by Petrarch's Trionfi, notably the Triumph of Death. Amongst many other designs in- 1=1 PM c8 -w spired by Petrarch are a "Triumph of Death"104 by 104 Prince d'Essling and E. Miintz, op. cit, p. 151. PART I.-D.] ITALIAN RENAISSANCE, &C. 123 Lorenzo Costa (died 1583), in the Church of St. James Major at Bologna, and a painting105 of the same subject by Bonifazio Veneziano (died 1553). On a design of the " Triumph of Death," by Marten van Heemskerk (1498- 1574), Death holding his scythe is mounted on an oxen- drawn chariot.106 In the designs after Petrarch's Trionfi the three Fates (Parcae or Moirae), namely, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, the three dreaded sisters of the ancient classical world, frequently appear, generally all together, replacing the Mediaeval "skin and skeleton" figure of Death with the scythe, hour-glass, p. 522, fig. 327; and also as a supplement to Aesculape, Paris, January, 1913. In respect of painful realism the picture of the Crucified Christ by Matthias Gruenewald at Karlsruhe (Zeitschrift filr bildende Kunst, Neue Folge, 1904, xv. page 153) may be also noted, but the muscles are exaggerated like those of an anatomical "muscle-man." To Valdes Leal's ghastly realism we may contrast the hidden allusion to Death (a distorted skull) in Holbein's picture (painted in 1533), known as "The Ambassadors," in the London National Gallery. In the latter picture the presence (on the floor in the foreground) of a curious memento mori, namely, a human skull elongated almost beyond recognition, as it would appear if reflected from a cylindrical concave mirror,133 is accounted for by what is known about Jean de Dinteville, Lord of Polisy, one of the two men represented. He wears in his black bonnet a jewel formed of a silver (or white enamel) skull set in gold, and there are reasons for supposing 133 A mirror of the kind which has been sometimes amusingly employed at eating-houses, to make intending diners see themselves looking long and thin, as if they required a dinner. The perspective distortion of an image here alluded to is technically known as anamorphosis. 152 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-E. that at that time of his life (he was twenty-nine years of age when the picture was painted) he thought much of Fig. 27.—Wooden statuette of Death, represented as a decaying corpse with bow and arrows. Incorrect anatomy. death, and he had doubtless seen the so-called Holbein's " Dance of Death " designs, or similar designs in other PART I.-E.] MODERN ART COMPARED. 153 series.134 This picture by Holbein, and Holbein's portrait of Sir Brian Tuke, to which I have already alluded, throw much light on the use of memento mori devices in the sixteenth century. I shall later on refer to the favourite device of Erasmus, a terminal head with the legend " Cedo nulli," or " Concedo nulli," a device chosen for his medals and for the seal with which, in the house of Jerome Frobenius at Basel, he signed his last will, dated 12th February, 1536. With the hidden allusion to Death on Holbein's " Ambassadors" may be compared the hidden allusion to Death on a portrait in the Villa Borghese, at Piome, by the famous sixteenth-century Venetian painter, Lorenzo Lotto. Lotto's picture represents a bearded man in the prime of life, standing in a room by the side of a window; his right hand rests on some flowers on a table, and amongst the flowers is a minute death's-head, doubtless carved in ivory; his left hand is pressed to his side, as if he might be in pain.135 A similar but more obvious allusion of the memento mori kind is that in a picture by Frans van Mieris at the Amsterdam Museum, representing a beautiful lady with some roses which she has just gathered, pointing to a human skull on an open book. Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) wrote :— " Je vous envoie un bouquet .... Cela vous soit un exemple certain Que vos beautez, bien qu' elles soient fleuries, En peu de temps cherront toutes fletries, Et, comme fleurs, periront tout soudain." 134 See Holbein's Ambassadors, the Picture and the Men, by Mary S. Hervey, London, 1900. 135 See B. Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto, London, 1901, p. 190. This picture is illustrated facing p. 190. 154 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.- E. Edmund Waller (1606-1687) commenced his poem on the sending of a rose to a coy beauty:— " Go, lovely rose ! Tell her, that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be "; and ended thus :— " Then die ! that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee : How small a part of time they share That are so wondrous sweet and fair! " In regard to poetical comparisons of human youth and beauty with the rose and perishable flowers, see also the epigrams, &c, referred to in Part I. A. H. P. Dodd (Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 52) gives the following English version (by C.) of an epigram by Rufinus in the Greek Anthology:— " Take, take this flowering wreath from me, Twined by these hands, and twined for thee. Here blends the daffodil's soft hue, With lilies, and the violets blue; Here the moist wind-flower darkly blows, Entwining with the opening rose; And whilst it binds thy pensive brow, Let pride to gentler feelings bow, At thought of that no distant day, When thou, as these, must fade away." As an example of a memento mori skull accompanying a female portrait, one may instance the picture (in the Guildhall at Exeter) of Mrs. Elizabeth Flay, aet. 86 (1673), the widow of Thomas Flay, a former Mayor of Exeter and founder of " Flay's almshouses." Cf. also the figure of a girl holding a skull on the somewhat remarkable carved sepulchral monument of Rebecca Atkins, aged nine years (who died in 1661), in St. Paul's Church, Clapham. It is almost needless to point out that the aspect of, or mental attitude towards, death must vary much with the age, sex, temporary or permanent occupation (or want of occupation), past experiences, future prospects, education, moral and religious surroundings, personal PART I.-E.] MODERN ART COMPARED. 155 principles and religious beliefs, aspirations, ambition, persona], hereditary or racial temperament, and the temporary state of health and enjoyment in life. It must, to some extent, vary from time to time according to the condition of the mind and body and the changing moods of the individual. Moreover, supposed proximity is likely often to modify as well as to intensify the aspect in which the idea of death presents itself. Undoubtedly the representation of Death is generally much less repulsive in modern art than it was in typical fifteenth and sixteenth century designs—a dry skeleton has mostly superseded the worm-eaten, decaying corpse —and a comic element is frequently more or less obvious. The old memento mori motive in macabre designs has in modern art partially given place to one of merely amusing grotesqueness. (Cf. Part II. Heading xxi.) The gradually increasing unpopularity of the old " death's head and skeleton class" of memento mori devices and inscriptions is nowhere better illustrated than in regard to sun-dial mottoes. Formerly it was: ul tell the hour, think of your last hour"; "This is the last hour for many, and may be your last hour"; "Death draws nigh, perhaps only a moment separates you from eternity"; " Your death is certain, but uncertain is the time of your death," and so on. Compare the following lines from an English fifteenth-century didactic poem, printed in The Babees Book (Early English Text Society), London, 1868, p. 52 :— " And deeth is euere, as y trowe, The moost certeyn thing that is, And no thing is so uncerteyn to knowe, As is the tyme of deeth y-wis." This style of sun-dial inscription remained popular into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The physician and poet, 156 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-E. Nathaniel Cotton (1705-1788), wrote the following lines for a sun-dial in the churchyard at Thornby (Northamptonshire):— " Mark well my shade and seriously attend The silent lesson of a common friend.— Since time and life speed hastily away, And neither can recall the former day, Improve each fleeting hour before 'tis past, And know, each fleeting hour may be thy last." An ivory portable compass-dial by Hans Ducher (or Tucher) of Nurnberg, dated 1560,136 is inscribed— " Mors venit, hora fugit, metuas mortem venientem. Quaelibet est index funeris hora tui." A sun-dial, mentioned by Miss S. F. A. Caulfeild,137 at Corby Hall (not far from Carlisle), dated 1658, and known as Sir Francis Howard's dial, bears the inscription: "Deathe, Judgment, Heaven, Hell—Upon this moment depens Eternitie. 0 Eternitie ! 0 Eternitie ! 0 Eternitie! 1658." Another sun-dial inscription (dated 1697) reads— " My change is sure, it may be soon, Each hastening minute leads me on; The awful summons draweth nigh, And every day I live to die." Nowadays the most popular sun-dial inscriptions are of the style of: " Horas non numero nisi serenas"; " Horas nullas nisi aureas "; " Ich zeige nur die heitern Stunden "; " Let others tell of storms and showers, I'll only count your sunny hours"; or " Serene I stand among the flowers, And only count life's sunny hours." 136 See The Book of Sun-Dials, by Mrs. Alfred Gatty, &c, edition of 1900. 137 Caulfeild, House Mottoes and Inscriptions, new edition 1908, p. 125. PART I.-E.] MODERN ART COMPARED. 157 These last mottoes would suit best of all for a modern sunshine- recorder, such as is used at modern meteorological stations. For interesting English sun-dial verses by the Rev. G. F. Chester, with somewhat similar commencement, see The Book of Sun-Dials by Mrs. Alfred Gatty, &c, edition of 1900. In regard to older sun-dial inscriptions of the kind, cf. Part II., xvii. footnote 387. Or, when a didactic text, of the "copy-book style," is preferred, as it has been on some buildings for municipal offices, &c, no gloomy reference is usually made nowadays to death, but only a cheerful enough one to doino- one's daily work: "Do to-day's work to-day," and so forth. I!. W. Emerson from this point of view wrote:__ "On bravely through the sunshine and the showers, Time hath his work to do, and we have ours." In an article on "The Dying of Death"138 Joseph Jacobs (born 1854) writes: "Death as a motive is moribund. Perhaps the most distinctive note of the modern spirit is the practical disappearance of the thought of death as an influence directly bearing upon practical life. We insure our lives, it is true, but having done so, think no more of the matter, except in the spirit of William Micawber," when that immortal creation of the brain of Charles Dickens signed a promissory note. "There are no skeletons at our feasts nowadays, or at least they are living ones. Death has lost its terrors." So unusual now in everyday life is much preoccupation with the thought of death that at a recent debate on "Fear" at the Medical Society of London (March, 1917) one of the speakers suggested that when an apparently healthy man in ordinary life is much troubled by fear of (his own) death, the man in question is probably suffering from a psychical disorder of the "phobia" class, allied to agoraphobia, claustrophobia, &c. Very modern was Madame de Sevigne's daughter (Francoise Marguerite, afterwards Madame de Grignan) in her answer to the Abb<§ La Mousse^ when, on account of her supposed vanity, he told her: " Remember that all your beauty will turn to dust and ashes." " Yes," she replied, " but I am not yet dust and ashes." 139 According to Havelock Ellis,uo however, the mediaeval conception 138 Joseph Jacobs, Fortnightly Beview, London, 1899, pp. 264-269. 139 Cf. Lady Ritchie (Anne Isabella Thackerav), Madame de Sivigne, Edinburgh, 1881, p. 58. 140 Havelock Ellis, The Soul of Spain, London, 1908, pp. 21-26. Havelock Ellis also refers to Emile Verhaeren's Espana Negra (trans- lated from the French of the distinguished Belgian author) in support of the same views. 158 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I. E. of dying still finds a congenial home in Spain, though it has practically passed out of the lives of other European peoples. In Spam death is still made part of the lesson of daily life. " A certain indifference to pain, even a positive delight in it, was long ago observed by Strabo to mark the Iberian. And the deliberate insistence on the thought of death, so congenial to the ethical temper of this people that, it has been said, the Spaniard has a natural passion for suicide, has always been a note of the romantic mood----The Spaniard broods over and emphasizes the naked majesty of death----In Barcelona Cathedral, the most solemnly impressive model of Catalan architecture, the broad and stately entrance to the crypt, the gloomy house of death, is placed in the centre of the church. . . . Every Spanish sacristan seems to possess a well-polished skull and a couple of thigh bones, with which to crown the catafalque it is his duty to erect----In a church in the heart of the city of Zamora I have found, prominently placed on a pedestal, a skeleton of fine proportions holding an hour-glass in one hand and a scythe in the other, while high on the interior wall of Salamanca Cathedral one discerns a skeleton of lesser proportions with what seems to be the skin still clinging to the bones." The significance of memento mori designs, which reminded people of every man's liability to sudden death, was increased by the terrible and devastating pestilences of former times, and the meaning of representations of death and decay was doubtless intensified by the frequency of public executions and violent deaths of all kinds. Joseph Jacobs141 thinks that one of the main causes of the modern change of sentiment is the improvement in sanitation and hygiene and the increased average duration of life. "In the Middle Ages," he writes, " nothing was so uncertain as life. Duels and private wars, feuds and bandits, plagues and pestilences, made men uncertain of their lives from hour to hour." Mediaeval chivalry also helped to keep death in the minds of its followers. According to the rite of admission to knighthood the candidate, after his ceremonial bath, was clothed in a white tunic, as a symbol of his purity; then in a red robe, suggestive of the blood he was ready to Joseph Jacobs, loc. cit. PART I.-E.] MODERN ART COMPARED. 159 shed; and in a black cloak, to remind him of his death that might be near at hand. T. A. Cook, in The Story of Rouen,li2 writes: "Amid all this life and colour, death and the taint of death are ever present, for every church is little better than a charnel-house, and in the crowded city nearly eighty cemeteries are packed with dead. . Even on ordinary days there is horror enough only too visible. You need not go so far as the gibbets just above the town, where corpses are clattering in chains beneath the wind; on the Place du Vieux Marche a sacrilegious priest is being slowly strangled; in the Parvis Notre Dame a blasphemer's throat is cut; close by the churchyard, a murderer's hand is chopped off, and he is hurried away to execution on the scaffold by the Halles." With this word-picture may be compared the views of Tudor London showing the heads of executed persons stuck up on stacks of spikes at London Bridge, Temple Bar, &c. A horrible idea it is that in the olden days a sovereign used to derive profit by the execution of his wealthy subjects. Riches undoubtedly excited the cupidity of those in power, and many of the attacks on the Jews in the Middle Ages were due to an underlying motive of this kind. The wealth of the famous Military Order of Knights Templars in France had probably a share in their undoing. The Knights were accused of heresy and immorality by King Philip IV of France, in 1307 ; many of them were burned alive or hanged, and the Order was finally suppressed by the Council of Vienne (under Pope Clement V), in 1312. The Grand Master Molay was burned alive at Paris in 1314. In England, under King Edward II, the Order was likewise suppressed, and the head of the Order in this country died in the Tower of London. Might not the extraordinary number of executions of great noblemen in Europe during the time of the English Tudor sovereigns (notably Henry VIII) have had something to do with an amusing conversation, as narrated by Lord Suffield (My Memories, London, 1913), between the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) and Nassr-ed-Deen, Shah of Persia, in 1873 ? When entertained at Stafford House by the Duke of 142 T. A. Cook, The Story of Bouen, London, 1899, p. 303. 160 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-E. Sutherland, and hearing from the Prince of Wales what a great land- owner the duke was, the Shah replied that he must be very rich. " Of course, when you come to the throne you will ---■" and the Shah made an expressive gesture with his finger across his neck. This story was usually taken as illustrating barbarous despotism in Persia. But may not the Shah, during his visit, have been hearing about Shake- speare's English historical plays and about European history in the time of Henry VIII ? The same or a similar story about the Shah has been told in regard to one or more of his visits to other European sovereigns. Probably the old-time memehto mori objects owed much also of their significance and powerful influence to what may be termed the "gambling spirit" in much of the Christianity of the time, that is to say, an un- questioning belief in the religion itself, combined with the natural tendency to put off the difficult and almost impracticable obedience to its literal teaching as long as possible (at all events until the most active period of life has been passed)—even at the risk of eternal punishment. Amongst the ordinary people there was a childish faith in the literal tenets of religion, tenets which were more or less opposed to actual and practical every-day life and to ordinary worldly ambitions and competitions. Thus, according to the Mediaeval faith in, and interpretation of, Christianity, the only logical course for the salvation of the soul was to live the life of a religious recluse, or to hope for time for repentance (even a death-bed one143) at the end. The religious 143 Cf. The proverbs in various languages signifying that " the devil, when he is old (or ill or afflicted), becomes a hermit (or a saint)." I will only quote the following Mediaeval Latin couplet and its popular English paraphrase:— " Aegrotat Daemon; monachus tunc esse volebat. Daemon convaluit; Daemon ut ante fuit." " The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be; The devil was well, the devil a monk was he." So, from the medical point of view, a man often becomes ill owin<* to PART I.-E.] MODERN ART COMPARED. 161 dogmata of the time were incompatible with ordinary active life in the world—which was a constant gambling with the devil for the soul, with hope of time for an improper mode of life or diet; then he follows good advice, is more careful, and recovers; and, when well again, he relapses into his former pernicious habits. This change in mentality on the part of the sick man when he recovers from his illness, reminds one also of the series of four engravings (1587) by the Dutch painter and engraver Henry Goltzius (possibly after paintings now lost), showing how the patient, when he is very ill, and " when Death with his black wings is hovering near him" ("Dum nigris aegrum prope Mors circumvolat alis"), pictures the physician as a Christ-like figure, almost as God; when somewhat better, the patient regards his physician as an angel ("the hand of God "); when the patient is convalescent, his physician sinks to the level of a mortal man, but is nevertheless ttoWwv avrd^ios &K\wv (Homer, Iliad, xi. 514); but, finally, when the patient has quite recovered, the physician who claims his fees is satirically pictured as an ugly devil, saying to himself: " Hie Deus pridem mox cacodaemon ero." These engravings by Goltzius are of special interest inasmuch as the engraver himself (a travelled man) had suffered much from illness (pulmonary tuberculosis ?) and had had much to do with doctors. There are similar series of engravings by Johannes Gelle (1609, from designs by Egbert van Paenderen, of Harlem, who followed the general idea and setting of the engravings by Goltzius), Hugo Allard or Allardt (end of the seventeenth century), and Jan van Vianen (about 1700); and similar series of paintings exist by an unknown Dutch artist (of about 1620) and by Jan Horemans (1752). An earlier Latin satirical epigram represents the physician as having only three instead of four aspects for his patient. It is included amongst some epigrams by Euricius Gordus (pseudonym for the German physician, Heinrich Solde) about 1525 :— " Tres medicus facies habet: unam quando rogatur Angelicam. Mox est cum juvat ipse Deus. Post, ubi curato poscit sua praemia morbo, Horridus apparet terribilisque Satan." A German translation of these verses is to be seen below the portrait of a Nurnberg surgeon, Jacob Baumann, on a copper-plate engraving by the Nurnberg painter and engraver, Virgil Solis, dated 1556. On the whole subject of satirical epigrams of this kind, and corresponding pictorial designs, see C. E. Daniels, "Docteurs et malades," Janus, Harlem, 1900, vol. v. pp. 20, 80, 105; H. Peters, Der Arzt tmd die Heilkunst in der dcutschen Vergangenheit, Leipzig, 1900, p. 73; and Eugen Hollander, Die Karikatur und Satire in der Medizin, Stuttgart, 1905, pp. 189-196. M 162 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-E. repentance at the end (a period of peaceful reparation and preparation for the next world), at all events a death-bed repentance, a repentance just in time to cheat the devil. It is not to be wondered at that there existed in the Middle Ages a kind of "hand-book" on " the ait to die well," the "Ars Moriendi," of the interesting (serious, yet humorous) pictorial illustrations to which I have given some examples in a preceding portion of this book. This attitude furnished a favourable soil for the memento mori to flourish on, and always gave a dread fasci- nation to its message : " Think of death, are you prepared for it ? Your last hour will certainly come, perhaps it is this very hour that separates you from eternity "—" Ab una (hora) peudet aeternitas." The memento mori element still plays a great part in The Rule and Exercises of Holy Bying (1651), by Jeremy Taylor, the eloquent writer who might almost be called the " Chrysostom of the English Protestant Church," if one could judge of his speaking from his flowing and sparkling style of writing. But that great work is not merely an Ars Moriendi. The true way to die well is to live well, and Jeremy Taylor's above- mentioned book was as much a "guide" to "holy living" as was his equally famous The Bute and Exercises of Holy Living (1650). According to G. S. Merriam (The Chief End of Man), nowadays "for holy living and dying we put simply holy living" ; and that is obviously, according to modern ideas, sufficient. We do not judge of a performance by how the performer makes his exit from the stage, nor by his final bow to the audience. In regard to the old orthodox idea of an Ars Moriendi Doctor Samuel Johnson once answered a question of his future biographer, Boswell, as follows : " No, Sir, let it alone. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The art [or act] of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time." (Bosweli's Life of Johnson, under the year 1769, when Johnson was sixty years of age.) On another occasion Johnson and Boswell (Bosweli's Tour to the Hebrides) talked about a sane but severe man acting on the verge of death in PART I.-E.] MODERN ART COMPARED. 163 the way he had usually acted during life. Johnson said : " You would not think a judge died ill who should be carried off by an apoplectic fit while pronouncing sentence of death. Consider a class of men whose business it is to distribute death—soldiers, who die scattering bullets. Nobody thinks they die ill on that account." This brings one to the numerous anecdotes illustrating how, if the mind is not affected, Fig. 28.—Italian bronze statuette (fifteenth century?), representing an allegory of life. "personal character predominates even in death." Isaac Disraeli (Curiosities of Literature) quotes the great surgeon, John Abernethy, as observing, in his Physiological Lectures, that "Shakespeare has represented Mercutio continuing to jest, though conscious that he was mortally wounded ; the expiring Hotspur thinking of nothing but honour ; and the dying Falstaff still cracking his jests upon Bardolph's nose." Lord Chesterfield's "good breeding only quits him with his. M 2 164 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-E. life," said his physician. His last words were, " Give Dayroles a chair," when that gentleman's visit was announced to him on his death-bed. Disraeli (loc. cit.) writes : " The characteristic pleasantry of Sir Thomas More exhilarated his last moments, when, observing the weakness of the scaffold, he said, in mounting it, ' I pray you see me up safe, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.' Sir AValter Raleigh passed a similar jest when going to the scaffold." Similarly, a story told of Solon, if true, shows that the great Athenian legislator wished to increase his knowledge up to the very end of his conscious life. Socrates died as philo- sophically as be had lived, and so did the Roman Emperor Julian (a.d. 363), according to the most reliable accounts, quoted by Edward Gibbon, the historian. There are stories, I believe, of various tyrannical despots, distinguished for the harshness and cruelty of their rule, insisting, even when dying, on the immediate execution of those unfortunate persons who had incurred their displeasure. In illustration of the "gambling spirit of Mediaeval Christianity," to which I have alluded, I may further, perhaps, refer to the uncertain inscription from the base of a little Italian bronze statuette (fifteenth century ?) repre- senting an allegory of life. This bronze statuette (Fig. 28), for permission to illustrate which I am indebted to Mr. Henry Oppenheimer, in whose collection it is, is 5*5 x o X 2*15 inches in size. It represents a naked boy seated on the ground in a meditative attitude, leaning with his left elbow on an hour-glass, and with his right hand supporting a skull on his right knee; a snake issuing from the skull is coiled round the boy's arm. The base of the statuette is inscribed— IL • TEMPO • PASSA • E • LA ■ MORTO(wc) • V(I)EN • PERITO (?) LVI (?) • CHI (for CHE) • NON • FA • BEN • FAC(C)IAMO • MAL • E • SPER(I)AMO ■ I(L) • BE(N) • IL • TEMPO • P(A)SSA • E ■ LA • MO(RTE) • V(I)EN. I at first read "guarito" instead of "perito." But if I'ART I.-E.] MODERN APT -COMPARED. 165 " perito " is the true reading, the meaning of the four lines is simply as follows :— " Time passes and death comes ; Lost is he who does not do good; We do wrong (in this world) and we hope for good (in the life after death) ; Time passes and death comes." Cf. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Empedocles on Etna : " We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through." Mr. A. M. Hind has kindly directed my attention to a somewhat similar design in a Florentine woodcut by an unknown master of the fifteenth century, reproduced by G. Hirth and R. Muther in their work on Meister-Holzschnitte.144 The woodcut represents a naked boy leaning on a skull with an hour-glass on the trunk of a tree at his head and the inscription : LHORA PASSA. Cf. also the ivory statuette of a boy holding a staff which rests on a skull, and the bronze handle of a bell formed by a boy seated on a skull, described in the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition Catalogue (of Renaissance Italian Art), London, 1912.U5 A similar allegory of human life is represented by an alabaster statuette of a naked boy with a skull and a scroll (? German, sixteenth century) in the \Vallace Collection, London (Gallery X, Xo. 8). Another allegorical little ivory carving represents a naked infant boy reclining, with his head and arms on a human skull. It is German work of the seventeenth century, signed by an artist named W. F. Moll, about whom nothing else is known.146 Skulls, skeletons, and even death, are not rarely represented or alluded to on modern (notably German) bookplates (ex-libris) ; but this 144 G. Hirth and It. Muther, Meister-Holzschnitte, Miinchen, 1893, Plate 31. 114 P. 58, No. 8, and p. 66, No. 32. l4B It is figured by Julius von Schlosser, Werke der Kleinplastik in der Skulpturensammlung des allerh. Kaiserhauses, Wien, 1910, vol. 2, Plate xlvii. No. 2. 166 ASPECTS OF DExVTH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART I.-E. is often not specially for the sake of any memento mori significance. Thus, for instance, skulls and skeletons sometimes occur as a kind of professional ornamentation on bookplates of anatomists, anthropologists, surgeons, and physicians. On a medical bookplate (of Dr. P. Janssen) by Peter Janssen, figured by W. von Zur Westen (Exlibris, Bielefeld, 1901, p. 30, fig. 40), Death, holding scythe and hour-glass, is seen shrinking away from a figure of Hygieia, represented as a simple peasant girl, holding the Aesculapian serpent-staff. In some cases the skulls, &c, merely form part of a play on the book-owner's name. Death is alluded to in the bookplate motto, Sine libris vita est mors, or, Vita sine libris est mortis imago. Many are the allegorical devices on modern bookplates in which skulls, skeletons, or representa- tions of Death figure. An elaborate example of the kind is the bookplate of Wilhelm von Gebhardt by Eduard von Gebhardt (W. von Zur Westen, op. cit., p. 29, fig. 39), inspired by Albrecht Diirer's famous copper-plate engraving (1513) of " The Knight, Death and the Devil" (see Fig. 37). Gebhardt represents the knight in question as riding serenely onwards, regardless of the Devil and Death, the latter of whom he has left behind him; in the field is the motto: " Das durch Ergriinden des Gesetzes gelauterte Wollen ist Preiheit." A very fine bookplate is one engraved in 1878 by Charles W. Sherborn (1831-1912) for his own use, known as the "Life and Death" plate, and much valued by collectors of ex-libris. Of bookplate-designs having a true memento mori significance a good typical example is the sixteenth-century one (W. von Zur Westen, op. cit, frontispiece) of the Protestant Senator of Nurnberg and patron of artists, Hieronymus von Baumgartner (armorial, with skull, hour- glass and clock-dial as adjuncts), by Barthel Beham (1502-1540). This Baumgartner (1498-1565) was a collector of books, and in 1538 founded the Nurnberg town-library, to which his own collection was subse- quently added. Another is that of Moritz Karl Christian Woog (1684-1760), by M. Wernerin and C. F. Boetius (W. von Zur Westen, op. cit, p. 17, fig. 18), representing Death, seated on a sarcophagus, holding scythe and scales. A seventeenth-century monastic bookplate (illustrated as a separate plate in Count Leiningen's German Bookplates, translated by G. R. Dennis, London, 1901) of Arsenius, Provost and Archdeacon of Chiemsee (1637), represents a skeleton—mitred and holding two croziers—and the arms of the monastery and the abbot. The inscription below is from the Second Book of Samuel, xiv. 14 (Latin Vulgate version): " Omnes morimur et quasi aquae dilabimur in terram." The original copperplate is signed by Lucas Kilian (1579-1637), of Augsburg, who was a .pupil of his step- father, Dominik Custos (1560-1612). A modern bookplate of Alfred Anteshed, by Harold Nelson (illustrated in Harold Nelson His Book of Bookplates, Edinburgh, 1904), represents a standing figure, resplendent in magnificent armour, but with the face of a skeleton; the accom- panying motto is : Avise la fin (" Consider the end "). My own interest in memento mori medals, &c, dates from about 1892, when I contributed a short note to the Numismatic Chronicle (Third Series, vol. xii. p. 253) on a curious seventeenth-century medalet in my collection, bearing the inscription, " As soone as wee to bee begunne, We did begmne to be undone," an old English version of Manilius' line, "Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet." About that time I likewise acquired fine specimens of an Italian memento mori medal by Giovanni Boldu, dated 1466, and of the large medal of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1519), with his favourite "terminus" design on the reverse. PAET II. ANALYSIS AND ARRANGEMENT. Ix this part of the book I have attempted to classify the various possible aspects of death and mental attitudes towards the idea of death into the following groups, the headings of which are numbered by Roman numerals. When describing the medals, &c, in Part III., I shall refer, by Roman numerals in brackets, to the group or groups (according to the arrange- ment in this part) which I think each one illustrates. I. The Simple Memento Mori Idea. Ix this group death is viewed merely as the necessary end of life, the final goal (ultima linea): " Mors ultima linea rerum est" (Horace, Epist., i. 16, line 79); 0avdr(p Trdvres 6(pei\6/Me6a (Simonides, Anthol. Graec. Falat., x. 105). Slightly more complicated expressions of the same simple idea are : " Principium moriendi natale est" ; " Lex non poena mors "; " Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet," &c. " Zum Leben warst Du erkoren, Zum Sterben wirst Du geboren." In the common memento mori inscription, " Respice finem," the Latin word " finis," like the Greek ri\os and the English " end," may perhaps be taken to mean the final object as well as the final event of life. If this were so', "Respice finem" would be almost equivalent to " Live to die." So also when death is described as the " ultima linea rerum," the word "linea" (doubtless used by Horace as the goal-line in a race) may signify either the limit (end) or the object (goal). " Respice finem " need not, of course, always refer to the end of life; it may refer to the end or final result of any undertaking. Compare such sayings as : " The end crowns the work " (" Finis coronat opus "); the German, " Ende gut, alles gut" ; and the Jesuitical, " The end justifies the means," or " Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media." 168 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-l. The saying, " Exitus acta probat," occurs on a rare Thaler (1533) of Gabriel, Count of Ortenburg.147 Several German coins bear the inscrip- tion, "Anfang, bedenck das Ende." Many pieces of Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel (1634-1666), bear his motto, " Alles mit Bedacht," and on one of his interesting Thaler-types the associated words, "Jacta est alea," express the final decision. On a Floren- tine sandstone chimney-piece, of the early sixteenth-century period, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) is the hexameter: QVID ■ QVID . AGIS • PRVDENTER . AGAS • (ET) ■ RESPICE . FINEM. This was also a motto of a Hessian Landgraf in 1583. Compare No. 45 of Aesop's fables, and Ecclesiasticus, vii. 36: "What- soever thou takest in hand, remember the end." (Cf. Part III., regarding Dutch jetons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, bearing the motto, In omnibus respice finem.) Hans Sachs, the sixteenth-century " Meistersanger " of Nurnberg, wrote a poem entitled, Der Tod ein End alter irdischen Ding. In regard to the so-called " death " of all things, compare also— "Data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris," and the English equivalent— " So far is aught from lasting aye That tombes shal have ther dying day." Both of these, together with several other memento mori sayings, are inscribed on a painted wooden memorial tablet of the year 1586 in Adderbury Church, Oxfordshire.148 Cf. also, " Mox ruet et bustum," &c. (Petrarch's Africa). The line— " Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris" is from Juvenal (Satire, x. 146), and has been rendered by C. Badham, in his translation of Juvenal (1831)— " For fate hath fore-ordained its day of doom Not to the tenant only, but the tomb." Cf. " Mors etiam saxis nominibusque venit " (Ausonius) ; and "Habent sua fata libelli," though the oft-quoted words regarding books were really used by the Roman poet, Terentianus Maurus (De Literis, Syllabis, Pedibus, Metris), in a special sense—"Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli." Compare also Propertius, Opera Omnia (Kuinoel), lib. iii. 2, lines 19 et seq.— " Nam neque Pyramidum sumptus ad sidera ducti, Nee Jovis Elei caelum imitata domus, Nee Mausolei dives fortuna sepulchri, Mortis ab extrema condicione vacant." 147 Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 4323. 148 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, London, 1905, 2nd Series, vol. 20, p. 221. PART II.—i.] SIMPLE MEMENTO MORI IDEA. 169 Shakespeare, in his fifty-fifth Sonnet, has made use of the same comparison as Propertius :— " Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time." Death, like Time, Truth, Labour, Perseverance, Hope, Faith, Patience (waiting!), and Love, is said to conquer all things. The motto, Palientia vincit omnia, occurs on coins (1619-20) of Friedrich Cbristian, Count of Mansfeld.149 The last of the seven types of " Glockentbalcr" (Thaler with the representation of a bell on the reverse), issued in 1643 by Augustus, Duke of Brunswick (New Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel line), has the inscription : tandem patientia victrix ano 1643. The last " Glockenthaler" were struck when patience was rewarded by the departure of an objectionable garrison. The motto, Amor vincit omnia, has of course occasionally been chosen for a "posie" on wedding rings, betrothal rings, &c. In regard to Time conquering all things one might instance various old sun-dial inscriptions of the kind. G. F. Kunz (Bings for the Finger, 1917) illustrates a sixteenth century finger-ring, in the Albert Figdor collec- tion at Vienna, with a sun-dial and a Greek inscription signifying, "Time removes all things and brings oblivion." In the Apocrypha (First Book of Esdras iv. 41, Revised Version) occurs the famous passage: "Great is Truth and strong above all things"; of which saying the equivalent from the Latin Vulgate is the proverb: " Magna est Veritas et praevalet" (often quoted "praevalebit"). Yet, there is also tbe contrary saying, Vi vcrum vincitur, which may sometimes temporarily prove true. Here it may be mentioned that the motto, Vincit omnia Veritas, or Veritas vincit omnia, gives its name to the Brunswick " Wahrheits- Thaler," struck by Duke Henry Julius (in 1597 and 1598—probably for the same reason that he issued the so-called " Liigen-Thaler " in 1596 and 1597), which have this motto on one side and on the other side bear the interesting inscription : " Recte faciendo neminem timeas "— reminding one of Bismarck's famous saying (6th February, 1888) in the German Reichstag: " Wir Deutsche fiirchten Gott, aber sonst nichts auf der Welt." This saying appears on medals of Bismarck (W. Mayer, Oertel), 1888, and on a German medal by 0. Lutz, struck in 1914, at the commencement of the Great European War. The motto, "Recte faciendo neminem timeas," occurs also on coins (1715) of Frederick William I of Prussia, and on coins (1760) of John Frederick, Count of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein. A variety of the same motto, " Bene faciendo nemiDem timemus," occurs on certain coins of John III, King of Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1792. 170 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.—i. Sweden (1569-1592). Cf. personal or family mottoes in various languages, equivalent to: "Do right, come what may " (which should perhaps be contrasted with: " Tell the truth, come what may"). With Bismarck's utterance may be compared the last lines of an epigram by Richard Graves (in his Euphrosyne, 1783) quoted by H. P. Dodd (Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 277), on the reason given by an officer for avoiding a duel:— " I fear not man nor devil; but tho' odd, I'm not asham'd to own, I fear my God." The simple memento mori devices corresponding to the simple memento mori legends include such common emblems as the following: a human skull; a human skull and crossed bones; a human skull aud hour-glass; a human skull on the wheel of time ;150 a human skeleton holding an hour-glass; a winged boy holding an inverted torch;151 a tomb or sepulchral urn; a baby or child resting on a human skull. The last device specially illustrates the above-quoted line of Manilius (Astro- nomicon, iv. 16) : " Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet"; that is to say, as Bishop J. Hall (1574-1650) expressed the same idea, "Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave."152 Very 150 The typographical device of H. van den Keere, a sixteenth-century printer of Ghent, was the "wheel of time," with the twelve hours marked on it, as on the face of a clock, and a death's-head in the centre, sometimes accompanied by the motto, Respice finem. See L. C. Silvestre, Marques Typographiques, Paris, 1853-1867, Nos. 361, 645, 646, 685. 151 a " genius of death " like this occurs often as a device on Roman sarcophagi, &c. 152 The Greek philosopher, Theophrastus (about 372-287 B.C.), the successor of Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic school, is said when dying to have complained that " as soon as we are beginning to live we have to die," that is to say, our lives come to an end just as we are commencing to get an insight into the problems of human existence. The same thought has occurred to many since his days. And, after all, it is only a generalisation of the thought expressed in the aphorism of Hippocrates (about 460-377 B.C.): 'O ftos Ppaxvs, y 5e T4XJ>r) /j.aKp-1). PAPT II.-i.] SIMPLE MEMENTO MOPI IDEA. 171 similar are the lines in Edward Young's Night Thoughts (Night 5):- " While man is growing life is in decrease; And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. Our birth is nothing but our death begun." Inscriptions such as " Memento mori," " Vive memor lethi," occur on certain coins, tokens, " Sterbemiinzen," and medals, and a great variety of similar inscriptions occur on memorial finger-rings and memorial jewellery, and on rosary-beads, sun-dials, &c. In one sun-dial inscription, "We shall die all," there is a play on the word, dial.153 Sudden death from injury (especially accidental injury) or disease is expressed by such devices as a rose-bush and death's-head, or a dead stag transfixed with an arrow, and by such words as " Heut rodt, Morn todt" (To-day red, to-morrow dead"), as on certain so-called " Moralische Pfenninge " struck at Basel in the seventeenth century: " Heri vidi fragile frangi; hodie mortale mori." The passage in the Church of England Burial Service, " In the midst of life we are in death," is the translation of " Media vita in morte sumus," the commencement of a famous Latin antiphon (by the monk, Xotker Balbulus, of St. Gall, 830-912 a.d.), on which one of Luther's well-known German antiphons was grounded. A " Triumph of Death" picture by the Spanish artist, Juan de Valdes Leal (1630-1691), in the Caridad Hospital at Seville, has the inscription, " In ictu oculi," meaning, " In the twinkling of an eye" 153 It is mentioned by Miss S. F. A. Caulfeild (House Mottoes and Inscriptions, new edition, 1908, p. 118) as occurring over a house built by Lord Stair (Sir James Dalrymple, who lived 1619-1695). 172 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.—i. (St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, xv. r>2). As I have already said, one must not forget that the terrible and devastating pestilences of former times increased the significance of all memento mori tokens, which reminded people of every man's liability to sudden death. Significant in this sense must have seemed the words " Cavete, nescitis horam," which may be seen inscribed on the tomb in Eyam parish church (Derbyshire) of Catherine Mompesson, the young wife of the rector of the time ; she died in 1606, a noble victim of the epidemic of plague which is said to have carried off five-sixths of the inhabitants of that village. According to individual temperaments and circum- stances, as already stated, such simple aspects of death may give rise to various mental attitudes, and may exert very different effects. They may favour vital depression or excitation. They may, for instance, modify ambition, induce remorse, diminish future effort or stimulate to make the best use of life while life lasts. According also to individual temperaments and circumstances, the simple aspect of death may be as the " king of terrors" or as the "prince of peace." Some of the expressions above referred to (e.g. " Lex non poena mors";154 "Principium moriendi natale est") may be regarded as carrying a certain amount of consolation (cf. under Headings viii. and xviii.) with them — a kind of consolation independent of all creeds and religious opinions. In regard to non-Christian sepulchral inscriptions on Christian sepulchres, Harry Quilter writes : " One of the best epigrams in the English language is that of the Rev. William Clarke (1696-1771), on 154 Cf. the fourth century Christian poet, Prudentius (Hymn, in exeq. defunct.): " Lex eadem manet omnes." PART II. i.] SIMPLE MEMENTO MORI IDEA. 173 seeing Domus Ultima inscribed on the family vault of the Dukes of Richmond— " ' Did he who thus inscribed the wall Not read, or not believe St. Paul, Who says there is, where'er it stands, Another house not made with hands; Or may we gather from these words That house is not a House of Lords ?' " This is related in John Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 372. H. P. Dodd (Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 353) quotes the opinion of the poet William Hayley (1745-1820): " Perhaps there are few better epigrams in our language." The inscription on the vault of the Dukes of Richmond, in Chichester Cathedral, was in Latin, dated 1750, and ended, Haec est Domus ultima. It may be noted by the way that a seat in the House of Lords and a noble tomb have been contrasted in other popular sayings. Nelson before one of his great battles is reported to have observed that for him it would be " the House of Lords or a place in Westminster Abbey "—equivalent to the expression, "Victory or glorious death," which in one form or another rings through all martial annals. Thus, Pope Urban II, preaching the first crusade at the Council of Clermont, in November 1095, when the assembled people responded with their watch-cry, Deus vult, distributed among them the symbolic cross of red cloth, with the words: " Wear it upon your shoulders and your breasts; it will be either the surety of victory or the palm of martyrdom." II. Death as the Threshold of a Future Existence. Death from the Standpoint of Keligious Faith. Immortality of the Soul. Metempsychosis. '• Mops janua vitae." " A deathlike sleep, A gentle wafting to immortal life " (Milton, Faradise Lost, book xii. line 434). Cf. Thomas Parnell (1679-1718) :— " Death's but a path that must be trod, If man would ever pass to God." Amongst somewhat older similar passages in the English language, cf. Joseph Beaumont (1616-1699):— " Sweet Death, so let me call thee so, thy hand Alone can bring our shipwreck'd souls to land "; and Charles Cotton (1630-1687) :— "But where's the passage to the skies?— The road through Death's black valley lies. Nay, do not shudder at my tale; Tho' dark the shades, yet safe the vale." Cf. the Collect of the Church of England for Easter Even: " That through the grave and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection. Cf. Milton (Paradise Lost, book xii. line 571): "And to the faithful, death the gate of life." From the ordinary religious point of view of her time the idea of the reunion of friends and relatives in a spiritual life after death is well expressed by the Hon. C. E. S. Xorton (Lady Maxwell):— " For death and life, in ceaseless strife, Beat wild on this world's shore, And all our calm is in that balm— Not lost but gone before." Death may be regarded as the entrance into a higher state of existence by all those who believe in personal immortality, including those who incline to the doctrine 176 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [I'ART II-11. of a gradual evolution of souls, by a kind of metempsy- chosis, through the ages, analogous to Darwinic evolution in the form and functions of the body. The idea of a "diffused immortality" of souls is not altogether opposed to the same aspect of death. An amusing skit on human queries regarding a life after death, &c, is that of L. P. Jacks, who (All Men are Ghosts, 1913) makes one school of spirits deny the probability of a life before death. Cf. Euripides (fragment of Polyidus)— Tis 8' o'ltitv ei rb (yv /ueV « are likewise connected with the present heading, since the cruel executions for heresy, as well as the Crusades and other religious wars, depended to a certain extent on the belief in a future existence. The Christian inqui- sitors or other judges often really believed that they were benefiting their victims by mercilessly torturing and killing them—that, in fact, they diminished punish- ment in the life to come by present punishment inflicted in the name of religion. The " spirit of religious intoler- ance " might be abundantly illustrated from major and minor objects of art and from epigram and poetry. The fierce, unyielding spirit of all parties in the religious struggles of the sixteenth century in Europe is well illustrated by the anti-papal Latin hexameter line, said (probably wrongly) to have been written by Luther as an epitaph on himself: " Pestis eram vivus, moriens tua mors ero, papa." This occurs as an inscription, in capital letters (with FIPVS in place of VIVVS), on an old German woodcut, signed W. S., copied from Albrecht Diirer's engraving (1514) of " St. Jerome in his Cell," but with a seated figure of Martin Luther substituted in place of St. Jerome. With this may be compared the various anti-papal medals, cast or struck, in silver, bronze or white metal, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The earliest ones were, I think, always cast, and have been ascribed (but doubtless without sufficient evidence) to Nicolaus von Amsdorf (or Ambsdorff), the Protestant Bishop of Naumburg (1542-1546), a friend of Luther. On the obverse are the heads of the Pope and the devil, joined base to base, with the inscription, Perversa ecclesia tenet faciem diaboli ; on the reverse are the heads of a cardinal (or other Roman Catholic prelate) and a fool (in " cap and bells," that is, the cap with bells of a licensed jester of the period), similarly joined base to base, with the inscription, Stulti aliquando sapientes. The obverse type (with the inscription, Ecclesia perversa tenet faciem diaboli) was made use of for the reverse of one of the English medals, by George Bower, commemorating the murder of S*r Edmundbury Godfrey, in 1678 (Medallic Illustrations of British FART H.-ii.] FUTURE EXISTENCE. 195 History, London, 1885, vol. i. p. 578, No. 250). A silver anti-papal medal (struck), described by R. Nadrowski (Monthly Numismatic Circular, London, June 1894, column 718), has the usual combined Pope and devil head on the obverse, and the cardinal and fool head on the reverse, but the inscriptions are respectively : Sub quattuor normis peribit orbis, and Nulla salus quo hie malus. This medal is especially interesting because it is dated 1614 and signed with the letters, k.i.r. The so-called " Pfaffenfeindthaler," struck (it has been said, out of silver obtained from ecclesiastical treasure in the cathedral of Halber- stadt) in 1622 by Christian, Duke of Brunswick-Luneberg, one of the Protestant commanders in the "Thirty Years' War," have (in the centre of the obverse) the legend: Gottes Frcundt, Der Pfaffen Feindt. The intolerant element in Mediaeval Christianity is sometimes well shown by the descriptions and representations of Hell. See, for instance, the Jews being boiled in a caldron in Hell, on PL lxxiii. (fol. 255) of the reproductions (Strassburg, 1879-1899) of the Abbess Herrade von Landsberg's Hortus Deliciarum (twelfth century). On the other hand, in the Collect for Good Friday (English Book of Common Prayer), we read: "Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels and Hereticks." Here we may likewise mention that the types of certain antique engraved gems possibly refer to human sacrifices.178 The horrors of human sacrifices and the cruel rites (including " Sutteeism ") connected with barbarous religious superstitions (" Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum"),179 were denounced by the Epicurean philosopher and poet, Lucretius, to part of whose Be Rerum Naturd, and to the histories of the Christian Inquisition, might be prefixed the words : " 0 Religion ! (or rather, ' 0 ignorant K8 Of course some gem-types of the kind may merely depict mytho- logical incidents. On this question see A. Furtwangler, Die antiken Gemmen, Leipzig, 1900, vol. iii. pp. 229, 260. 179 Lucretius (De Berum Natura, i. 102), in reference to the sacrifice of Iphigenia. I cannot quite understand the historian, Edward Gibbon's attitude when, in Chapter ii. of his famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, speaking of the relative absence of religious intolerance in the Roman Empire, he says (the italics are mine): " The province of Gaul seems, and indeed only seems, an exception to this universal toleration. Under the specious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the Emperors Tiberius and Claudius suppressed the dangerous power of the Druids (Sueton. in Claud, and Plin. Hist. Nat, xxx. i.)." Although, according to Caesar, the Druids taught " that souls do not perish, but after death pass into other bodies," they nevertheless employed human sacrifices; the Gauls considered "that the favour of the immortal gods cannot be conciliated unless the life of one man be offered up for that of another." Sacrifices of the same kind were appointed on behalf of the state. As victims criminals were preferred, but innocent persons were sacrificed when the number of criminals was insufficient! o 2 196 ASPECTS OF HEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.—ii. Superstitions!') what crimes have been committed in thy name!"180 In regard to the survival of superstition, it may be mentioned that in England the laws against witchcraft were not repealed till 1736, and that active belief in witches and the "evil eye" still flourishes amongst the ignorant peasants of various parts of Europe. Unfortunate persons of defective intellect have in quite recent times been roughly handled (even killed in one case) during the process of exorcism or fancied casting out of devils. All over the world miserable old persons are occasionally still accused of witchcraft by their superstitious neighbours, and are even sometimes grievously persecuted (or killed!) as a result, with or without the semblance of justice or a kind of trial. (For a short account of all the terrible human cruelty resulting from the popular superstitious belief in sorcery or witchcraft, up to and including part of the nineteenth century in Great Britain, see Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, revised by Sir Henry Ellis, London, edition of 1849, vol. iii. pp. 1 to 43.) It is really the support of faith itself which has made some religious fanatics so terrible, just as a certain confidence in destiny has made " supermen" (compare the ideas of Gobineau, Max Stirner—his real name was Kaspar Schmidt —and Nietzsche), like Napoleon I, so dangerous, just as the fine quality of self-reliance may bring the enterprise of a well-meaning but inexperienced physician or surgeon to disaster. Voltaire said, " Jamais la nature humaine n'est si avilie que quand l'ignorance superstitieuse est armee de pouvoir." But is not human nature sometimes equally abased when, not religious, but other noble conceptions, ideals, aspirations, and passions "go wrong" through want of control and intelligent tolerance ? Is not Love (" the best of them") to some extent related to mad jealousy and the sexual lust, which, when armed with unbridled power, becomes so terrible? Is not a noble aspiration related to the reckless personal ambition that rides over and tramples down men in the blind race for power, wealth, and fame? Have not dreadful deeds been done in the name of (supposed) Truth, Justice, Honour, Patriotism, and Liberty ? Were not the Bibertas aurea of the medalets of the golden days of Dutch independence (when the United Provinces succeeded in throwing off the Spanish yoke) and the Bibertas optima 150 Altered from the words on Liberty ascribed to Madame Roland at the guillotine, 1793. In regard to what was then done in the name of " Liberty " one might compare some of the excesses during the course of the great Russian revolution of 1917. PART II.-ii.] FUTURE EXISTENCE. 197 rerum of Sir AVilliam Wallace181 related to the "liberty" of political murders (commemorated on certain Eoman and other coins and medals), and to the " liberty " of the great French Eevolution and various "reigns of terror," stained to the end of time with the foulest crimes ? The motto, Moderation in all things, is often forgotten by enthusiasts, as well as cranks, of all kinds, and neglect of moderation or intolerance may turn a virtue into a vice and give rise to many a crime. One might easily extend the subject of Part II. Heading ii. indefinitely by including epigrammatic sayings and art-objects illustrating the ideas of various peoples and various periods on immortality and existence of the soul after death—the heavens, hells, and purgatories of all religions and all times — in progressive evolution from the primitive conception (of the most ancient civilisations) of a future existence as a pale and shadowy counterpart of life in this world. What differences in faith in regard to retribution after death ! In considering only the ideas on heaven and the abodes of the blessed, what variety we meet with !—The strenuous and fleshly glories of the Scandinavian warriors' Valhalla; the ''happy hunting- grounds " of the North American Indians; the houris and sensuous delights of the Mohammedan garden of paradise; the idealized domestic happiness of the ancient Egyptian in the society of his wife and those who had been dear to him during his earthly life; the Elysian fields of the ancient Greeks and Romans, with dancing, bathing, athletic exercises, 1M According to John Fordun's Chronicle (fourteenth century), Wallace remarked, " When I was a youth and under the care of my uncle (the Priest of Dunipace in Stirlingshire), all that I could carry away from him was a single proverb, but it seemed to me above all price, and I never forgot it. It was this:— ' Dico tibi verum: Libertas optima rerum; Nunquam servili sub nexu vivito, fili.'" See also the account (with translation of these "Leonine" verses) on the base of the modern statue of Sir William Wallace at Aberdeen. Some Guelders coins of about 1590 are inscribed: " Libertas vita carior." 198 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PA11T ll.-ii. chariot racing, and other noble pastimes; the philosophic ideas of astral bodies and the gradual solution of the soul after death into air or aether ; the Buddhist idea of Nirvana as an ultimate zero-like equilibrium if not complete extinction ; the mental bliss following an altruistic life and the beneficent exercise of will-power; the Mediaeval Christian idea of a golden city 182 with the unceasing music of angelic orchestras and choirs, the Fathers of the Church, haloed saints, and palm-bearing martyrs—the wretched damned ones meanwhile suffering eternal torments in a world below ! Mediaeval Christians sometimes apparently pictured the blissful ones in heaven as having their happiness increased by being able (from a kind of celestial balcony) to look dowrn on the tortures of their miserable brethren far below them, writhing in the bottomless pit. Truly, in ideas of heaven and hell, as in most other religious ideas, " anthropomorphism " (both physical and mental) has played an important part ! But there is no wonder in that, for human nature is more or less intelligible to most persons, whereas in regard to some theological doctrines of orthodox faith (as well as some metaphysical theories) it is a.matter of : " Credo quia incredibile." 18:i 182 rp^ ]yXediaeval idea of the Christian Paradise as a "Golden City," a "New Jerusalem" (after the description of the "New Jerusalem" in Revelation, Chapt. xxi.), is especially well known from J. M. Neale's still-popular hymn, " Jerusalem the Golden" (founded on a portion of the twelfth century Latin poem, " De Contemptu Mundi," by the Benedictine monk, Bernard of Morlaix):— " Jerusalem the golden, With milk and honey blest. Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest." William Blake used the term "Jerusalem" to signify a kind of "Earthly Paradise," in his poem, "The Building of Jerusalem," ending:— " I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land." (This last stanza would serve as an excellent fighting motto for public- spirited hygienists and sociologists in England. Cf. preface.) 183 Or, " Credo quia absurdum," or, " Certum est quia impossibile est." Tertullian's words (De Came Christi, 5) were, it seems: " Prorsus credibile, quia ineptum est." PART II.—ii.] FUTURE EXISTENCE. 199 What man has fancied in regard to the unknown here- after has naturally been sketched and coloured, in anthropo- morphic fashion, with the dominating pleasures and desires of mortal life. Thus,—in regard to the above-mentioned ideas on heaven and the abodes of the heroes and blessed ones after their earthly life is over,—the pleasures and ambitions ronnected with the imperious animal instincts of self- preservation and obtaining food are represented by the lighting of the Valhalla warriors, the hunting-paradise of the North American Indians, the posthumous feasts and revelling of the Teutonic and Scandinavian heroes, and the sepulchral after-world banquets of the ancient Greeks and Romans ; the delights connected with sexual love during adult mortal life and the great animal instinct of reproduction of the species are represented by the houris, the sensuous Mohammedan garden < >f paradise, and by the female element in the Valhalla life; the habits connected with the instinct of keeping the body and muscles in a healthy condition are represented by the athletic exercises and contests, chariot-racing, out-door games, dancing, and bathing in the Elysian fields of the (ireeks and Romans; the enjoyment of singing, music, non- athletic games (like draughts), and the ordinary amenities of human social life on earth, are represented by the angelic orchestras and choirs of the Christian heaven, the pleasant family scenes, with playing of draughts, etc., of the ancient Egyptian idea of the land of the blessed (cf. Part IV. i.)—and so on. In regard to man's anthropomorphic conception of Deity (or Nature) cf. Part II. xv.—the idea that pain might have been spared and mortals rendered happier if things on earth had been otherwise arranged, and if the working of the universe had been differently planned from the beginning. A kindred subject is constituted by the ideas and longings <>f those rebellious minds who have refused to accept as the highest conceivable form of happiness, what orthodox teaching of the time promised to the faithful! Many children who have been compelled to sit through a long sermon in church every Sunday morning have had grave doubts as to the desirability of the Christian paradise. So also did Aucassin 200 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PAItT II.-ii. (in the Mediaeval French romance or love-story of the thirteenth century, Aucassin et Nicolette) revolt from the established teaching of Christianity, when he preferred the idea of hell to heaven because goodly knights and noblemen and soldiers who fell in tournaments and battles went there, as well as sweet and courteous ladies who had lovers besides their husbands. Surely, one cannot help admiring the boldness of this naive, though perhaps half- jesting, attack of Mediaeval so-called " chivalry" on the tyranny of the orthodox religious doctrines of the time. Cf. William Johnson Cory (1823-1892), "Mimnermus in Church":— "You bid me lift my mean desires From faltering lips and fitful veins To sexless souls, ideal quires, Unwearied voices, wordless strains." iii. survival after death in the mlxds of others. Posthumous Fame. Necrology. " On the mountains of memory, by the world's well-springs In all men's eyes, Where the light of the life of him is on all past things, Death only dies." (A. C. Swinburne, $41). " A monster, in a course of vice grown old, Leaves to his gaping heir his ill-gained gold; Straight breathes his bust, straight are his virtues shown, Their date commencing with the sculptured stone." Two of the best-known sayings connected with death are the following: "Call no man blessed before his death" (Ecclesiasticus, xi. 28); and " De mortuis nil nisi bonuin." Both of these sayings are associated with the name of Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, for, according to Valerius Ma.ximus (lib. vii. 2, Ext. 2), Solon con- sidered that "no one ought to be called happy as long as he was alive," and, according to Plutarch (" Life of Solon ") it was a law of Solon that men " must not speak ill of the dead." The former saying should be philosophically attached to the famous maxim attributed to Solon : "Opa tsAos /xaitpov fiiov. For, according to the story narrated by Plutarch in his Life of Solon, the substance of the advice given by Solon to Croesus, King of Lydia, was : " Keep in mind the end of a long life—account no man happy before his death." When later on Croesus was taken prisoner by Cyrus (Herodotus narrates that in the final battle, at which Croesus was captured, Croesus was about to be killed by a soldier, when his son, who from birth had been unable to speak, suddenly gained the power of speech, so as to be able to beg for his father's life—the soldier not having recognised that it was the king whom he was about to strike), Cyrus ordered him to be burned on a funeral pyre, but, hearing him three times call out the name of Solon, asked for an explanation. When Cyrus was informed of Solon's words, he countermanded the execution and made Croesus his friend. With this story may be compared one about Amrou-ben-el-Ass, the Arab general of the Caliph Abou-Bekr—as narrated in Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens (fourth edition, Bohn's Standard Library, 1847, p. 96). In a.d. 633 Amrou asked Omar (afterwards Caliph) to use his influence to make him (Amrou) general. Omar bade him not seek the superiority and dominion of this world. When Amrou, however, had given up all hope of command, the Caliph Abou-Bekr unexpectedly i'aiit 11.—iii.] posthumous fame, &c 203 made him general, bidding him " to take care to live religiously, and to make the enjoyment of the presence of God and a future state the end and aim of all his undertakings ; to look upon himself as a dying man, and always to have regard to the end of things," and so on. Sophocles, at the end of his great tragedy, Oedipus Tyrannus (translation by Thomas Dale, 1824), paraphrased Solon's saying of not calling any man happy before his death, as follows :— "Dare not to pronounce thy fellow truly happy, truly blest, Till, the bounds of life passed over, still unharmed he sinks to rest." P>ut might not life be merely one phase of a self-regulating mechanism for the education and evolution of souls through the ages of the universe? Death would then often be the termination of a relatively insignificant scene in an endless drama. Death may be said to " crown life " in the same way that "finis coronat opus," but "death, as the crown of life," will be referred to again under Heading xv. There are, of course, many medals bearing on the subject of fame of various kinds. Horace thought " Non omnis moriar" (Od., iii. 30. 6), when he had finished his third book of Odes, and this opinion of his has been amply confirmed by Time and the supreme earthly tribunal, Sccurus judicat orbis terrorum. Many men are said to have "immortalized" themselves by their writings or their deeds. It is a common expression to speak of men as having won " immortal fame " by their heroic bravery, patriotism, &c. The Greeks who fell bravely in the cause of patriotism at Marathon, Thermopylae, and other battles, are celebrated by numerous epigrams in the Greek Anthology. The following (English version given by Lord Xeaves) is by Simonides :— " Xobly to die ! if that be virtue's crown, Fortune to us her bounty well displayed. Striving to make Greece free, we gained renown That shrouds us where we lie, and ne'er can fade." 204 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AM) EPICIIAM. [ PAPT II.-iii. Abul Kasim Mansur, called " Firdausi" (about 940-1020), the great epic poet of Persia, wrote :— "With fame, even if I die, I am contented: Let fame be mine, since my body is death's." Compare the Motto, Literae immortalitatem pariunt, accompanying the printer's device of J. Waesberghe the first, 1557-1588 (L. C. Silvestre, Marques Typographiques, Paris, 1853-1867, vol. ii. No. 1021). Inspired by Horace's Non omnis moriar, Robert Herrick (1591-1674) wrote in regard to himself:— "Thou shalt not all die; for while love's fire shines Upon his altar, men shall read thy lines; And learned musicians shall, to honour Herrick's Fame, and his name, both set and sing his lyrics." Horace's Non omnis moriar may likewise be compared with the concluding lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses (xv. 871):— " Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, Ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, Si quid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam." Cf. also the epitaph lines on himself by the older Roman poet, Ennius (b.c 239-169), who was by Horace (Epist. ii. 1. 50) regarded as a kind of "Roman Homer" ("alter Homerus"), the father of Roman poetry:— " Nemo me dacrumis decoret, nee funera fletu Faxit. Cur? Volito vivus per ora virum." Contrast with all these the epigram184 by Isaac Hawkins Browne, the elder (1705-1760), on Edward Young's "Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality" (published in 1742):— "His Life is lifeless, and his Death shall die, And mortal is his Immortality." Surely the epigrammatist undervalued, or affected to undervalue, Young's at that time famous work, though it is indeed very seldom read nowadays. A medal (1717) commemorating a "pious foundation" of William Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, has on tlie reverse the quotation, " Xon omnis moriar " (Horace). An Italian medal of doubtful authenticity, described by J. J. Luckius,185 represents Fame, with two trumpets, flying to 184 H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 376. 185 Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, 2nd edit., Paris 1883 vol ii. p. 119, No. 60. PART II.—iii.] POSTHUMOUS FAME, &C. 205 left, and bears the inscription, " Mortalium immortalitas." • Vivit post funera Virtus" is a Latin saying which has been adopted as a motto by several families, and which occurs on a few " Sterbethaler" and mortuary medals. On the sepulchral monument of Dr. Caius, at Caius College Chapel, Cambridge, is the inscription: " Fui Caius. Vivit post funera Virtus. Obiit 1573, Mt. 63." A German mortuary medal of 1701 tells us, "Forma perit, virtus remanet." The inscription on the grand sepulchral monument (1525) in Eouen Cathedral of Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, who died in 1510, ends— '• Mortuus en jaceo, morte extinguuntur honores, At virtus mortis nescia morte viret." Cf. the Latin pentameter line :— " Excipe virtutem, cetera mortis erunt." A French commemorative bronze plaquette of Philippe de Girard, by L. E. Mouchon (1892), bears an allegorical representation of posthumous fame. History, like Fame, is sometimes represented warding off destructive Time (a figure, like Death, holding hour-glass and scythe), ;is on a medal of the historian, L. A. Muratori, by T. Mercandetti, of Rome. A Renaissance engraving of the " Triumph of Fame over Death"186 (printed at Paris by Charles le Vigoureux in the last part of the sixteenth century) represents, alter Petrarch's Trionfi, the triumphal car of Fame crushing the bodies of the three Fates or Parcae, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos (emblematic of the effects of time 1S(i See Pitrarque, VIllustration de ses Ecrits, by Prince d'Essling and Eugene Miintz, Paris, 1902, p. 251. 206 ASPECTS-OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-iii. and death). The car is drawn by cdephants and surrounded by the poets, philosophers, and rulers of ancient times: Virgil, Homer, Cicero, Aristoteles, Alexander, Plato, and Charlemagne. A French sixteenth-century design repre- sents Good Fame standing triumphant over the prostrate bodies of the three Fates.187 Fine Flemish early sixteenth- century tapestries exist at Madrid (Royal Palace), London (Victoria and Albert Museum), and Hampton Court, with various designs of the Triumph of Fame inspired by Petrarch's Trionfi. On a Hampton Court tapestry,188 the three Fates on their chariot of Death are falling down at the blast of Fame, who is flying towards them, whilst, all around, the heroes of legendary history and romance (Priam, Menelaus, Jason, Lucretia, King Arthur, Tristan, Charlemagne, Roland, &c.) are rising from their tombs. On the Madrid tapestry,189 Fame, blowing her long trumpet, is being borne along in an aerial chariot, with Death lying conquered at her feet. A French sixteenth- century miniature (Bibliotheque Rationale, Paris, Manu- script, Fonds Francais, No. 594) of Fame overcoming Death,190 shows the dead body of Petrarch's Laura stretched on the oxen-drawn car of Death. Death, a shrivelled figure of the Mediaeval traditional type, with a serpent coiled around him, standing over the body, staggers and lets fall his scythe at the trumpet-blast of Fame. Around the car Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus (Minor), and the heroes of antiquity are seen rising from their graves at the call of Fame (Fig. 29). The companion miniature, " The Triumph is: prince d'Essling and E. Miintz, op. cit., p. 235. 188 Ibid., the plate facing p. 210. 189 Ibid., the plate facing p. 216. 100 Ibid., p. 227. PART II.-iii.] POSTHUMOUS FAME, &C. 207 of Fame" (Fig. 30), shows Fame holding her long horn, standing victorious on her elephant-drawn car, with Death seated conquered at her feet. Julius Caesar, in Renais- sance armour, rides on her right, and Pompey the Great, holding a pennant, on her left. The car is surrounded by Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus Minor, Scipio Africanus Major, Mucius Scaevola, Fabricius, Cato, Brutus, Drusus, Fabius Maximus, Manilius (Manlius Capitolinus), Octavianus (Augustus), Hippolyte, Penthesilea, and other famous men and women of ancient history and tale. behind come Aristoteles, Plato, Pythagoras, Seneca, Uellius, Virgil, and other ancient philosophers, poets, and writers. Behind these come chaste virgins holding palm- branches. Another aspect of the relation of fame to death, very different to Petrarch's idea, but likewise illustrated to some extent by works of art, is furnished by the vision of the ruin, destruction, and death due to ambition and the relentless, insatiate, and sightless pursuit of Fame, who, just as Fortune, can reckon amongst her victims many who have pursued her and many more who have been destroyed by the blind rush of the pursuers, regardless of those around and dependent on them. (Cf. Part II. vi., last portion.) According to Tacitus (Hist., iv. 6): " Etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur " (" The desire for fame is the last desire that is laid aside even by the wise "). St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, preached against the love of fame and unreasonable desire for human praise ; one of the chapters of his Be Civitate Bei (lib. v. cap. Id) is headed: " De resecando amore laudis humanae, quoniam justorum gloria omnis in Deo sit." In another chapter of his work (op. cit., lib. v. cap. 18) he quotes the following 208 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AM> KIMCKAM. |~PART II.—iii. line from Virgil (Aeneid, vi. 823), "Vincit amor patriae laudumque immensa cupido "—and remarks : " Haec sunt Fig. 29.—Fame overcoming Death, after Petrarch. Photo of French sixteenth-century miniature in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. duo ilia, libertas et cupiditas laudis humanae, quae ad facta compulit miranda Romanos" (" It is these two PART II.—iii.] POSTHUMOUS FAME, &0. 209 things, liberty and the desire for fame, that impelled the Romans to their admirable deeds'). Fiu. 30.—The Triumph of Fame, after Petrarch. Photo of French sixteenth-century miniature in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Lecky, in his History of European Morals, writes : " The desire for reputation, and especially for posthumous p 210 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-iii. reputation—'that last infirmity of noble mind'191—assumed an extraordinary prominence among the springs of Roman heroism. . . . Marcus Aurelius, following an example that is ascribed to Pythagoras, made it a special object of mental discipline, by continually meditating on death and evoking, by an effort of the imagination, whole societies that had passed away, to acquire a realized sense of the vanity of posthumous fame." (For reflections of this kind by Marcus Aurelius see, for instance, the fourth, seventh, and tenth books of his " Meditations.") Cf. John Keats—the end of his poem on the Terror of Death :— ..." Then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and J'ame to nothingness do sink." We shall see further on that the vanity of posthumous fame is well expressed on some engraved gems of Roman times. There is much satire on posthumous fame in Lucian's "Dialogues of the Dead," for instance, in the dialogue of Diogenes, the cynic philosopher, with Mausolus, King of Caria, and in the dialogue of the same Diogenes with Alexander the Great. Cf. also Martial, Epig., i. 26. 8: " Cineri gloria sera venit." The ancient Greeks and Romans never condemned the desire for earthly fame and glory for the same reason as Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (see back), namely," quoniam justorum gloria omnis in Deo sit,"192 but some of them 191 Milton, Lycidas, line 71. 192 In this connexion it may be noted that since Saint Augustine's time, and, indeed, since the time of the first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, when there have been wars between Christian nations, the victors on both sides have generally or frequently attributed, or affected to attribute, their victories and successes to the help of God (cf. such common inscriptions as Soli Deo gloria or Soli Deo honor et gloria, on commemorative medals, jetons, and coins) or to the divine PART II.—iii.] POSTHUMOUS FAME, &C. 211 condemned or ridiculed it because the hope of posthumous fame favoured neglect of the proper use or of the enjoyment of the present time (whether from a so-called " Epicurean " point of view or otherwise). Petrarch's succession of " Triumphs " and his idea of a u'reat man's " second death " and " third death " (cf. under Heading xvii.) make the "glory of the afterglow" of human life completely fade, but the English poet-laureate, Alfred Austin (Lamia's Winter-Quarters, London, 1898, p. 114), holds out fond hopes:— "And though long sunk from sight, I know The glory of your afterglow Will never wholly fade." With Austin's verses those of Longfellow (Birds of Passage) may be compared :— " So, when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men." More homely is the idea of a cherished though fading life after death in the hearts of children and clear relatives and friends. As Thomas Campbell has expressed it:— " To live in hearts we leave behind Is not to die." In one sense, of course, every one does survive in the minds of his successors after the scroll of his life has l»een rolled up and his record (to his credit and against intervention of saints, just as in pre-Christian times victories were often ascribed to the help of various gods, demi-gods, and deified heroes. The Christian emblem on the labarum of Constantine the Great only replaced the eagle of Jupiter and other more or less religious symbols of the earlier kinds of Roman military standard, thereby increasing the " magical "virtue of the standard for military purposes. p 2 212 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-Ui. him) closed by the hand of death. A man's life may be obscure and of no obvious significance, or it may be sufficiently striking " to point a moral or adorn a tale " ; but every life must yet have some influence—for good or evil, or, doubtless more frequently, partly for good and partly for evil—on the lives of others, and that influence, though diffused and apparently lost, like a ripple on the water (when a stone is thrown in), will be borne down the stream of time into the ocean of eternity. Part of the modern east window of St. Margaret's Church, Lowestoft, represents the "book of life" and the "book of death." The former design pictures an angel unrolling a manuscript scroll, the latter pictures an angel holding a scroll that has been rolled up. But surely in some senses the scroll is not rolled up. Sir R. Douglas Powell in his Harveian Oration before the Royal College of Physicians of London (October 19th, 1914) remarks: " It is said by the Psalmist (cf. Psalm 146. 4), ' When the breath goeth out of a man he returns to his dust and all his thoughts perish.' But whilst the man may think no more, his thoughts live for good or evil to strive with other thought in the sentient atmosphere that gathers about the centres of civilisation and progress. ' Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.' (Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act iii., Scene 2.) Harvey's sentient atmosphere was shared by great anatomists and ardent pioneers of thought. Servetus had already described correctly the circulation through the lungs, although Harvey never saw his work. This fecundity of thought is finely expressed by Shakespeare in the words of King Richard— ' My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; My soul, the father; and these two beget A generation of still breeding thoughts, And these same thoughts people this little world; In humours, like the people of this world, For no thought is contented.' (Shakespeare's King Richard II, Act v., Scene 5.)" IV. Death as a Friend and the End of Pain and Misery. Death compared to Eest, or to a Peaceful Sleep after the Fatigue and Turmoil of the Day. Death as the Awakening after the Fitful, Feverish Dream of Life. " 0 death, acceptable is thy sentence unto the needy and unto him whose strength faileth, that is now in the last age, and is vexed with all things, and to him that ilespaireth and hath lost patience" (Ecclesiasticus, xii. 2). Aeschylus spoke of death as the " healer of irremediable ills " : " It is better to die once for all (aira^) than to suffer all our days" (Aeschylus, Prom. Vinct., lines 769, 770). " Death is better than a bitter life or continual sickness." (Ecclesiasticus, xxx. 17). Compare the following Latin quotations given in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy: "Omnibus una meis certa medela malis"; "Inertius deligitur diu vivere in timore tot morborum quam semel moriendo nullum deinceps formidare." (This latter, however, obviously suggests suicide as a means of escape.) Compare the following epigrams from the Sinngedichte of the seventeenth century German (Silesian) poet, Friedrich von Logau (Leipzig, 1870, Nos. 94 and 868):— "Tod ist ein langer Schlaf; Schlaf ist ein kurzer Tod. Die Noth, die lindert der, und jener tilgt die Noth." " Der argster Tod ist der, der gar zu langsam todtet; Die argste Noth ist die, die gar zu lange nothet." Shakespeare in certain plays alludes to death being welcomed or longed for by the miserable. In the first part of King Henry VI (Act ii., Scene 5) he uses the expression: "Just death, kind umpire of 214 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PAI!T II.-i\'. men's miseries." In King John (Act iii., Scene 4) he makes Constance, the mother of Arthur Duke of Brittany, say :— "Death, death:—0, amiable lovely death! Thou odoriferous stench ! sound rottenness ! Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And I will kiss thy detestable bones; And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows ; And ring these fingers with thy household worms ; And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, And be a carrion monster like thyself: Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st, And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love, 0, come to me 1 " In regard to death as a release from pain and disease, compare some verses to Death in the Greek Anthology (Appendix, Tauchnitz edition, 1829, No. 196): "Thou hast come sweeter to me than life, for thou hast freed me from diseases, toils, and painful gout." Henry Wellesley's translation is as follows :— " Sweeter than life thou com'st, who from disease, From painful gout and trouble giv'st me ease." Cf. Agathias, Anthol. Graec. Palat., x. 69; and also the quotations in Part I. A. The following English version (after Robert Bland, the younger) of Agathias's epigram is given by Lord Neaves (The Greek Anthology, Edinburgh, 1874, p. 106) :— "Why fear ye death, the parent of repose, That puts an end to penury and pain? His presence once, and only once, he shows, And none have seen him e'er return again. But maladies of every varying hue In thick succession human life pursue." Another translation is given by H. P. Dodd :— " Death brings us peace : oh ! fear him not: Death ends the sufferer's heaviest lot. He comes but once ; his awful mien Twice coming, none has ever seen. Whilst pain and grief, man's sadd'ning doom, Come often and are sure to come." PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 215 The following couplet is from Mrs. Hemans's translation of a poem by Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) :— "0 Death! to me, the child of grief, Thy welcome power would bring relief." Lord Neaves also quotes Henry Wellesley's translation of another epigram in the Greek Anthology (Aesopus):— " From thee, 0 life ! and from thy myriad woes, Who but by death can flee or find repose? For though sweet Nature's beauties gladden thee, The sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the sea, All else is fear and grief; and each success Brings its retributive unhappiness." Cf. Robert Bland, after Aesopus :— "Who, but for death, could find repose From life, and life's unnumbered woes, From ills that mock our art to cure, As hard to fly as to endure ? " The following Latin epitaphs are also interesting:— " Quod superest homini, requiescunt dulciter ossa. Nee sum sollicitus ne subito esuriam. Et podagram (sie) careo, nee sum pensionibus arra, Et gratis aeterno perfruor hospitio." (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. vi. No. 7193a.) " Morborum vitia et vitae mala maxima fugi. Nunc careo poems; pace fruor placida." (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. v. No. 5278.) Jean de La Bruyere observed that " a long sickness seems to have been placed between life and death, in order that death itself may become a relief both to those who die and those who are left." Montaigne finds that during sickness death may not have the same terrors which are experienced by a person in perfect health at the idea of dying: " the cheerful spirit, the vigour of body, and the enjoyment of life which I feel now, cause the contrary estate to appear in such strong contrast with the present, 210 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-iv. that in imagination I make its inconveniences twice as formidable as they really are." 193 In regard to the value of health for the full utilization and enjoy- ment of life, cf. Martial, Epig., vi. 70. 15: " Non est vivere sed valere vita "—a line which was adopted as a motto by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London (afterwards merged into the Royal Society of Medicine). Cf. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of kings and emperors look ridiculous. Emerson wrote : " The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve anyone ; it must husband its resources to live. But health or fulness answers its own ends, and has to spare, runs over, and inundates the neighbourhoods and creeks of other men's necessities." Sir Richard Baker (1568-1645) proclaimed : " Health is the wealth of wealth" ; Bickerstaffe's opinion was just the same: " Health is the greatest of all possessions, and it is a maxim with me, that a hale cobbler is better than a sick king." " Death is rest from labour and misery" (after Cicero); "Were death denied, to live would not be life" (E. Young). According to William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (died 1640), in his Tragedy of Darius— " Death is the .port where all may refuge find, The end of labour, entry unto rest" ; and in Part I. A. several epitaph inscriptions and sayings are quoted, more or less of the Inveni portum type. Compare A. C. Swinburne (The Garden of Proserpine)— " We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be! That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea." Cf. Robert Bland, the younger, an epigram after one attributed to Archias (on Thracian views of birth and death), ending:— " Well in your grief and gladness are expressed That life is labour, and that death is rest." 11)3 W. Lucas Collins, Montaigne, 1879, p. 125. PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 217 In some moods a restless or worried and conscientious man may like to repeat (after Petrarch):— "The unquiet man, through years of anxious breath, Still hastens death-ward: his best friend is Death!" Some verses by Matthew Arnold end as follows :— " But for peace her soul was yearning, And now peace laps her round. Her cabined, ample spirit, It fluttered and failed for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty hall of death." Matthew Arnold also, however, wrote on a calm not being exactly what youth desires :— "'Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here, And ease from shame, and rest from fear. . . . But is a calm like this, in truth The crowning end of life and youth ? . . . 'Tis all perhaps which man acquires, But 'tis not what our youth desires." Alfred Austin, in his " Go away, Death!" (Lyrical Poems), contrasts the popular notion of a so-called untimely death, in the first three stanzas, with the idea of a seasonable and friendly death, in the fourth stanza:— " Come to me, Death ! I no more would stay. The night-owl hath silenced the linnet and lark, And the wailing of wisdom sounds sad in the dark; Take me away." Just as apples and fruit, when ripe, fall to the ground without being violently torn off, so the "ripeness" of old age often renders death easy and free from struggle for human beings. Cf. the quotations in Part I. D. and Part II. x., and especially Shakespeare's King Lear, Act v., Scene 2 :— " Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all." hi regard to life, indeed, youth often prefers R. L. Stevenson's ideas of activity. There must be a propelling force and active motion of some kind for any purpose to be accomplished. The ship of life must be propelled if it is to obey the helm; it must have way if it is to be steered in any direction—in the1 direction either of right or of wrong. Stevenson made the puppets in his novels of great living, human, interest, because he kept them in active movement, often passionate movement, always purposeful movement—whether for good or evil, for right or wrong. An infant crowing, as it is being rocked and dangled in its fond mother's arms, may be enjoying life in a more or less passive and vegetative kind of way, but can hardly be pointed out as exhibiting the highest (conscious) human happiness. Sir Walter Scott's 218 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [lART II.—iv. famous verses on the "crowded hour" of glorious activity appeals to manly fancy, though " heroic" advice of this nature must bo the result of special circumstances and of really great and pure motives- otherwise it would have a taint of gambling in it:— "Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name." Prom a general and possibly also more or less medical point of view (neurotic cases) it is interesting to note that some persons seem to be handicapped by relative absence of spontaneous activity and inclination to work (propelling force), whereas in others purpose and object (ports to steer to) seem to be lacking, and again in others the will-power (steering apparatus, &c.) appears to be deficient. In the ancient Greek and Eoman mythology Tithonus, to whom the gods had granted immortality without perpetual youth, vainly longed for death—like the legendary " Wandering Jew " did—to release him from his wearisome life. In the great fresco (fourteenth cen- tury) of the " Triumph of Death " in the Campo Santo of Pisa, the poor and wretched are represented praying to die, but invoking death in vain (to this subject 1 shall revert under Heading xix.). Cf. " Sweet are the ways of death to weary feet" (song by John Leicester Warren, Lord De Tabley), and Philip Massinger's verses commencing:— "Why art thou slow, thou rest of trouble, Death, To stop a wretch's breath, That calls on thee, and offers her sad heart A prey unto thy dart ? " So also Robert Burns ("Man was made to Mourn ") exclaims:— "0 Death! the poor man's dearest friend— The kindest and the best." John Heath 19* (about 1615) refers to death being better than misfortune :— " I wail not those, Who take their sweet repose, Within the bowels of our common mother: Those grieve me most, Who still are tost, Prom bad to worse, from one fate to another." 1:14 H. P. Dodd's Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 208. PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 219 An old English memorial finger-ring has the inscription, " Breath paine, Death gaine." Of course, to believers in a future existence, death may appear not only as the end of pain, but also as the "crown of life," the recompense for pain and trouble bravely borne (compare Heading xv.). One of the in- scriptions on the sepulchral monument of Sir George Manners195 and his wife, in Bakewell parish church (Derbyshire), is, " The day of a man's death is better than the day of his birth" (see Ecclesiastes vii. 1). Edward Young (Night Thoughts, 1742) writes— "Death gives us more than was in Eden lost, This king of terrors is the prince of peace." Cf. William Blake (The Golden Keys) :— " The door of death is made of gold That mortal eyes cannot behold: But when the mortal eyes are closed, And cold and pale the limbs reposed, The soul awakes, and wondering sees In her mild hand the golden keys." A somewhat similar picture is called up by P. J. Bailey (Fcstus) :— " Death is another life. We bow our heads At going out, we think, and enter straight Another golden chamber of the King's, Larger than this wc leave and lovelier." Cf. also Sir Edwin Arnold (After Death in Arabia):— "Weep awhile, if ye are fain— Sunshine still must follow rain; Only not at death—for death, Now I know, is that first breath Which our souls draw when we enter Life, which is of all life centre." '" Sir George Manners, of Haddon, who died in 1623, was a son of the Haddon heiress, Dorothy Vernon, celebrated for her romantic elopement with Sir John Manners, by whom she became ancestress of the Dukes of Rutland. 220 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND KPKiRAM. [PART II. IV. In the " Monument aux Morts " (Fig. 1),196 the work of the modern French sculptor, Albert Partholome (born 1848), in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise at Paris, those who have just passed in at the gloomy portal of death are represented in an attitude of peace and beatification, whereas, of those still outside the entrance only the miserable and wretched appear desirous of entering; the others hide their faces and shrink with fear. This reminds one, not only of the famous Pisan fresco already alluded to, but also of a fragment (referred to again a few pages further on) of the Polyidus of Euripides: "Who knoweth if what men call dying be not living; what men call living be not dying ?" — a query of the eternally agnostic or sceptic group, a query to which Diogenes Laertius referred in his Life of Pyrrho (about 360- 270 B.C.), the founder of the sceptic or Pyrrhonian school of philosophy. Cf. also reference to the passage in Plato's Gorgias, 492; and John Fiske's Life Everlasting, 1901, p. 14. It was a favourite saying of the famous French essayist Michel de Montaigne, and he had it inscribed in his library. In connexion with the aspect of, or attitude towards, death as giving freedom from pain, the comparison of death to a peaceful sleep after the fatigue and turmoil of the day follows naturally. At the end of the first book of the Tuscidanae Disputationes, Cicero asks whether (if after all death signifies complete annihilation rather than a change or migration) anything could be better than, in the midst of the labours of life, to close one's eyes and 196 This monument is illustrated in T. H. Lewin's Life and Death, London, 1910. I am indebted for my illustration to the Frontispiece of a small book, entitled The Pros and Cons of Vivisection, by Charles Richet, with a preface by W. D. Halliburton (Duckworth & Co., 1908). PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS PEST OR SLEEP. 221 sink softly into an eternal sleep ? This is after Socrates, who (according to Plato's Apology) referred to death as either a change and migration of the soul, or else a complete annihilation, in which case it would be like a dreamless sleep. The beauty of Leonardo da Vinci's apophthegm will always last: "Si come une giornata bene spesa da lieto dormire cosi una vita bene usata da lieto morire." (" As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.") 197 Shakespeare (Macbeth, Act iii., Scene 2) makes Macbeth say of the murdered King Duncan : " After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well." Cf. Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book i. Canto ix. St. 40:— " Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please." The idea of dying as falling happily and calmly to sleep after a well- spent life is gracefully expressed by Sir William Jones (1746-1794) from a Persian original: — " On parent knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled: So live, that sinking to thy life's last sleep, Calm thou may'st smile, whilst all around thee weep." With such epigrams an epitaph by Carphyllides in the Greek Anthology (vii. 260) may be compared. It is translated by W. R. Paton (" Loeb Classical Library ") as follows :— " Find no fault with my fate, traveller, in passing my tomb; not even in death have I aught that calls for mourning. I left children's children, I enjoyed the company of one wife who grew old together with me. I married my three children, and many children sprung from these unions I lulled to sleep on my lap, never grieving for the illness or loss of one. They all, pouring their libations on my grave, sent me off on a painless journey to the home of the pious dead to sleep the sweet sleep." Some German " Sterbemtinzen" (1619) bear the in- scription, " Mors mihi quies, vita bellum." Amongst the 197 Leonardo da Vinci's Note-Books, rendered into English by E. McCurdy, London (Duckworth & Co.), p. 51. 222 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPKJRAM. [PART Il.-iv. Sinngedichte of Friedrich von Logau (1004-1().")5) is the following (edition by G. Eitner, Leipzig—F. A. Brockhaus —1870, Xo. 987) :— "Der Tag hat grosse Muh, die Nacht hat siisse Ruh ; Das Leben bringt uns Midi, der Tod die Kuhe zu." Heinrich Heine has put it thus— " Der Tod, das ist die kiihle Nacht, Das Leben ist der schwiile Tag. Es dunkelt schon, mich schlafert, Der Tag hat mich mud' gemacht." Byron (" And thou art dead ") exclaims— " The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep." A. Ptethel's beautiful design (1851) of "Death as a Friend," shows the " King of Terrors," divested of all terrors, tolling the bell in the church-tower at the peaceful termination of the aged bell-ringer's life (see Fig. ':51).198 " Be the day weary, or be the day long, At length it ringeth to Evensong." "Although the day be ever so long, Yet at last it ringeth to evening song." This version, according to John Foxe (the martyrologist), was quoted by George Tankerfield at the stake, in 1555. The end of an epitaph by Stephen Hawes (early sixteenth century) is— "For though the day be never so long, At last the bell ringeth to evensong." Cf. James Eussell Lowell (To George William Curtis):— " And Death is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey's end." 11)S Indeed, the voices of the bells in old cathedrals and beautiful country churches may suggest to some : " Laus Deo, pax vivis, requies aeterna sepultis." PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS I!EST OR SLEEP. QOQ In Matthias Claudius's "Der Tod und das Madchen" (iirst published in 1775, but chiefly known through Schubert's musical setting), Death, though in the repulsive Fig. 31.—"Death as a Friend," by A. Rethel. form of the " Knocheumann," comes to the beautiful maiden as a friend:— " Gieb deine Hand, du schon und zart Gebild ! Bin Freund und komme nicht zu strafen. Sei gutes Muths ! ich bin nicht wild, Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen ! "199 198 Compare the idea of Death being greeted as a friend in Claudius's poem (1780), " Auf den Tod der Kaiserin." 224 ASPECTS OE DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-iv. Still more did Death come as a friend to the poor weary woman in Adelaide Anne Procter's poem, " The Requital," so well known owing to J. Blumenthal's music. Cf. also " Non mihi mors sed somnus erit : sic carccrc clausus Saepius optatum gaudet adesse diem." William Cullen Bryant (1794 1878), the celebrate! American poet, in his Thanatopsis (published in 181G, when he was only 18 years old), counsels:— " Approach thy grave Like one that draws the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.'' In another poem we read :— " That's Death, my little sister, and the Night That was our Mother beckons us to bed : Where large oblivion in her house is laid For us tired children now our games are played." Yet, as J. S. Le Fanu says, old persons are sometimes as unwilling to die as tired-out children are to say good night and go to bed. La Fontaine's fable, La Mort et le Mour ant, tells us the same (cf. Headings xix., xx.). Moreover, as Sir Lyon Playfair (afterwards Lord Playfair) pointed out,200 it is merely poetry to call sleep the " twin- brother of death"; scientifically, sleep is rather the preserver of life and a sign of life than in any way analogous to death. Sleep, X. Vaschide has said, is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and Havelock Ellis adds, the elder brother.201 200 Vide Sir A. Mitchell's Dreaming, Laughing, and Blushing, 1905, p. 10. 201 Vide Havelock Ellis's The World of Dreams, London, 1911, p. 280. PART II.-iv.] HEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 225 These varying aspects of the relation of sleep to death have been well expressed by Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the author of Hudibras, in Repartees between Cut and Puss :— " And Sleep, Death's brother, yet a friend to Life, Gave wearied Nature a restorative." Edward Gibbon, the historian, has, like Hamlet, voiced another possible objection to the popularity of the idea of death as a long sleep. When, three weeks before his death, he was asked whether he thought the idea of death being a long sleep just and desirable, he answered, " Yes, provided one could be sure—of one's dreams."202 The words may have been suggested by Shakespeare's Hamlet: "To sleep, perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub." Cf. John Dryden (Aurengzebe, Act iv., Scene 1):— " Death in itself is nothing; but we fear To be we know not what, we know not where." Walter Savage Landor (Last Fruit, &c, lxi.) fears that the " sleep " of death necessitates the loss of sweet recollections of loved ones :— " Death, in approaching, brings me sleep so sound I scarcely hear the dreams that hover round ; One cruel thing, one only, he can do— Break the bright image (Life's best gift) of you." In Homer's Iliad (book xvi. line 671), Sleep (Hypnos) and Death (Thanatos) are alluded to as twin-brothers. In regard to ancient Greek and Roman representations of Sleep and Death on vases, tombs, &c., see Part IV. The German poet, G. E. Lessing, wrote a famous controversial essay on the subject, entitled, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (1769). It is hardly surprising that in the interpretation of symbolic representations in ancient art there should be occasional confusion between Death and Sleep. Sleep is poetically the twin- brother or the "living likeness" of death—Somnus, mortis imago. Sleeping is, in a sense, " living without life," and dying during sleep has been, perhaps, alluded to in some Latin lines (intended to have been placed under a statue of Somnus in the garden of James Harris, 12 See the Diary of Frances Lady Shelley, London, 1912, vol. i. p. 51. Q 226 ASPECTS OE DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-iv. of Salisbury) by the poet-laureate, Thomas Warton the Younger (1728- 1790), as dying without death : "Sic sine morte mori." Thus, indeed, would many like to die, though the Empress Maria Theresa, according to Carlyle, when she refused to take morphine, said : " I want to meet my God awake." Warton's verses in question were :— " Somne veni, et quamquam certissima mortis imago es Consortem cupio te tamen esse tori: Hue ades, haud abiture cito: nam sic sine vita Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori! " But the English version by John Wolcot ("Peter Pindar," 1738- 1819) probably gives a more correct interpretation of the meaning of Warton's last line :— " Come, gentle sleep! attend thy votary's prayer, And, though death's image, to my couch repair; How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie, And, without dying, 0 how sweet to die." Cf. William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585-1649), in some verses addressed to Sleep, " the child of Silence" :— " Come as thou wilt and what thou wilt bequeath, I long to kiss the image of my death." On the other hand, Lord Byron (Don Juan, Cantoxiv.) wrote:— " Death, so-called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep." In regard to real dying during sleep, a kind of poetical " dying without death" (sine morte mori), William Munk 203 refers to A. P. Wilson Philip's book On Sleep and Death,20* and writes : " Some pass away in sleep. ... Similar to, if not identical with them, are those to whom death comes so easily that not a ruffle disturbs any portion of the frame, and the most intelligent observer is unable to fix the moment when life has fled, so easy is the parting of the last link, ' when the body drops to earth and the soul rises to eternity.' It is probable that here a mere act of dozing becomes the act of dying. In these instances, as in old age, death is literally the last sleep, uncharacterized by any peculiarity. The general languor of the functions in the last waking interval is attended with no peculiar suffering, and the last sleep commences with the usual grateful feelings of repose." The oft-mentioned resemblance between sleep and death, though a somewhat superficial one, has been used by the ancient classical poets and writers, as well as by Christian theologians, to hold up a man's 203 William Munk, Euthanasia, London, 1887, pp. 40, 41. 204 A. P. Wilson Philip, Sleep and Death, London, 1834, p. 165. PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 227 daily sleep to him as a kind of periodically recurrent memento mortis. Thus Ovid (Amorum, ii. 10, 40) exclaimed :— " Stulte, quid est somnus, gelidae nisi mortis imago ? Longa quiescendi tempora fata dabunt." And Jeremy Taylor205 wrote "Then we sleep and enter into the image of death, in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world . . . Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night, when we lay in his lap, and slept in his outer chambers." St. Paul spoke of a " daily dying," thus making a memento mori simile out of every night's rest. Cf. various poems, devotional works, &c, for example, in the following short evening hymn from Sir Thomas Browne's Beligio Medici (Part ii., section 12):— "Sleep is a death; oh, make me try By sleeping what it is to die, And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed!" In this way, in poetical and devotional writings a memento mori significance may be attached not only to sleep, but to almost every physical phenomenon and sensory impression in life. Cf. the longer quotation given from Jeremy Taylor in Part II. xvii. In regard to the ideal of sleep on Italian tombs of the fifteenth century, G. S. Davies206 says that the sculptor had " to place upon the tomb the sleeping figure of Pope, or Cardinal, or Bishop, watched over by the Virgin and Child, and set about with the Virtues, who were to adorn in death, as they should have adorned in life, the dead man's presence." According to Davies, this ideal representation of death as sleep—"perfect, perhaps, in the hands of the perfect artist, peaceful and harmless in the hands of the less perfect, and dull and lifeless in the hands of the inferior "—though it was monotonous, was preferable to the more original and striking sculptures on the tombs of the later Kenascence (sixteenth century). :o:' Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying, 1651, Chapter i., Section i. 206 G. S. Davies, Benascence—the Sculptured Tombs of the Fifteenth Century in Borne, London, 1910, pp. 8, 9. Cf. P. Gregorovius, The Tombs of the Popes, English translation from the German (illustrated), by R. W. Seton-Watson, Westminster, 1903; and the third German edition of the work (illustrated), Leipzig, 1911. Q 2 228 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-iv. Death can in most religions be spoken of poetically as Aeterna quies, or as eternal rest :— "Laus Deo, pax vivis, requies aeterna sepultis." Cf. the Roman Catholic burial service and the mass for the dead: " Requiem aeternam dona ei [eis], Domine " ; also : " Dona eis requiem sempiternam." The Dies Irae Mediaeval Latin hymn (attributed to Thomas of Celano, the friend of Saint Francis of Assisi), as sung in the Roman Catholic mass for the dead, ends with :— "Pie Jesu Domine, Dona eis requiem." The above-mentioned line, Laus Deo, pax vivis, requies aeterna sepultis t is inscribed on the printed portrait of the Swiss physician, Paracelsus, in his work, De urinarum ac pulsuum judiciis, published at Cologne (1568) after his death. I reproduced the print in an article on "A Portrait Medal of Paracelsus on his Death," Numismatic Chronicle, London, 1893, third series, vol. xiii. p. 70, fig. 3. Similar inscriptions are suitable for church-bells, and occur on various mortuary memorials. One slightly reminiscent of it is engraved on the base of a cross on the top of Hindhead Common (Surrey), commemorating the murder of ,a sailor (1786) in that romantic neighbourhood, and marking the site of the gibbet where the murderers were hanged in chains: "In obitu pax, in luce spes, post tenebras lux, post obitum salus." But the ancients often thought of death as a perpetual sleep (or an endless night's rest), and that is a different conception. So Horace (Od., i. 24. 5) : — " Ergo Quinctilium perpetuus sopor urget "; and Catullus (Carm., v. 4) :— " Soles occidere et redire possunt: Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, Nox est perpetua una dormienda." (The analogous lines from Tasso and Samuel Daniel are quoted in Part I. A.) The idea of a long dreamless sleep of death was represented as a sad subject for regret in tbe Greek idyll on the death of Bion, formerly attributed to Moschus. Leigh Hunt's version of the passage is as follows :— " Alas, when mallows in the garden die, Green parsley, or the crisp luxuriant dill, They live again and flower another year ; But we, how great soe'er, or strong, or wise, When once we die, sleep in the silent earth A long, unending, unawakeable sleep." PART II.-iv.] . DEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 229 Bernard de Montfaucon spoke of the ancients dedicating their sepulchral monuments—Aeternali Somno ; and the Greek word for a burial-place is a cemetery, that is, KoipLnrr/ptov, a sleeping chamber. In relatively modern times, in 1794, Joseph F< niche, afterwards made Due d'Otranto by Napoleon, had the inscription, Death is an eternal sleep, placed on the gates of the cemeteries. Socrates (according to Plato's Phaedo) did not believe that human souls could vanish like smoke or that the dead would sleep, like Endymion, for ever; as life passed into death, so the dead would become living, and nature's circle would thus prevent everything being swallowed up in a final death of all things. On tombs and sepulchral monuments of ancient, mediaeval and modern times death has (as we have pointed out) been often represented as, or compared to, a beneficent sleep, a reward and compensation for the fatigues, troubles and trials of life. The true agnostic sentiment expressed on the tomb of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) is that it is well, •' even if the sleep be endless." Just as the phenomena of death have been often poetically likened to the phenomena of sleep, so also has the refreshing effect of sleep upon the mind been poetically illustrated by what is imagined to happen to the soul after the death of the body; and most of the substance of the following paragraphs might like- wise have been included under Heading ii. Milton (Paradise Lost, book xii. line 434) speaks of "A death- like sleep, a gentle wafting to immortal life," and Benjamin Franklin says: " I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning." Christina Eossetti writes of a " quiet night" after the work and waking day of a man's life :— "A long-drawn breath, a balm of sorrow, And all things lovely on the morrow." 230 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-1V. Cf. Maltbie D. Babcock (American):— "Is sleep a thing to dread? Yet sleeping you are dead Till you awake and rise, here, or beyond the skies."... "This is the death of death, to breathe away a breath And know the end of strife, and taste the deathless life." " And joy without a fear, and smile without a tear, And work, nor care to rest, and find the last the best." Here I would, for comparison, quote the old English poet and divine, John Donne (1573-1631) :— " One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more: Death thou shalt die I" William Allingham (1828-1889) hints at the same idea in the lines— " Sleep is like death, and after sleep The world seems new begun; While thoughts stand luminous and firm Like statues in the sun." So A. C. Swinburne (Atalanta in Calydon) speaks of life as lying between two periods of sleep :— " His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep." Edmond G. A. Holmes likewise seems to represent life as a period of wakefulness between two sleeps. In one poem (To Death) he writes :— "Sometimes I think that in thine arms of love, Sleeping the sleep of life, 0 Death ! I rest, Whilst through my dreams, like rhythmic tide-waves, move The pulses of thy breast. And when mine hour has come, thy lips at last Will touch my slurnb'rous eyelids with a kiss, And all life's fevered visions fading fast Will weave one dream of bliss." Another poem (The Quest) ends with the following stanza:— "And when, at Fate's behest, I wake at last To toil on earth, to laugh, to weep again— Dense be the darkness that enshrouds the Past, Deep be the draught of Lethe that I drain." PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS EEST OR SLEEP. 231 On the other hand, life itself has (from some ancient, mediaeval, and modern points of view) been poetically compared to a sleep and a fitful or feverish dream ("Vita est somnium"), from which death is but the awakening. Ovinia somnia, is a sun-dial inscription, dated 1680, on the Convent of St. Ursula, in Valetta, Malta. In Shakespeare's Tempest (Act iv., Scene 1) Prospero seems to compare human life to an island of dream amidst an ocean of sleep :— "We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." Calderon, the celebrated Spanish dramatist (1600-1681), in his play, Life is a Dream,201 makes Sigismund say (translation by E. C. Trench, Archbishop of Dublin) :— " What is life ? a frenzy mere ; What is life? e'en that we deem; A conceit, a shadow all, And the greatest good is small. Nothing is, but all doth seem; Dreams within dreams, still we dream." The painter, Arnold Boecklin, has named one of his beautiful designs, "Vita, Somnium Breve." Pindar speaks of Xicias ovap avQpwTros (" Man is like the dream of a shadow"). On one of the old houses in Edin- burgh I read, " Constanti pectori res mortalium umbra." On the rafters in the library of the studious, learned, and sceptical Montaigne was inscribed the "open-court" philosophical question, " Who knoweth if what men call dying be not living; what men call living be not dying?" (from a fragment of the Polyidus of Euripides). 207 La Vida es sueno. This title suggested the title of Franz Grillparzer's play (1834), Der Traum ein Leben (" Dream is a Life "). 232 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-iv. The original verses (which I have already mentioned—see back) of the free-thinking, but certainly not atheistic, Euripides would doubtless have been admired by the philosopher Anaxagoras, under whom he had studied, and by his intimate friend, Socrates, who is said never to have gone to the theatre excepting when the plays of Euripides were acted. The verses in question are:— T;s 8' oUev tl rb (fjv fxiu icrri KaTdavelv, Tb Ka-rQaveiv 5e Cyv koltw vofiiCerai. Plato (Gorgias, 492) and Diogenes Laertius (in his life of Pyrrho, the founder of the sceptical school of philosophy) both refer to this passage of Euripides, and Joannes Stobaeus quotes it, I think. Amongst the other inscriptions painted in Montaigne's library was the famous saying of Terence (in his comedy, Hcauton-timoroumenos, I, i. 25): " Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto." The quotations from the sceptical physician, Sextus Empiricus (" I determine nothing," and " It may be or it may not be ") were characteristic of Montaigne, whose own motto—que scay-je ?—accompanied by the emblematic device of a balance, first appeared on the title-page of his Essays in the edition of 165U.208 The later Platonists, as seen in the chapter of Macrobius " On the Descent of the Soul," termed tlie being born into this world " spiritual death," and dying "spiritual birth" (C. W. King). Thomas Hood has it (Her Last Will) :— " There are daily sounds to tell us that Life Is dying, and Death is living." Cf. Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832): " Life is the jailer of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is death. What we call life is a journey to death, and what we call death is a passport to life." Colton, the author of " Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words, addressed to Those who Think" (1820-1822), committed suicide, apparently in preference to undergoing a surgical operation. Wordsworth (Intimations of Immortality) writes :— " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar"; 208 See W. Lucas Collins, Montaigne, Edinburgh, 1879, pp. 36-40; also Edith Sichel, Michel de Montaigne, London, 1911, p. 55. PART II.-iv.] DEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 233 and in the same poem he tells us :— " Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither."' R W. Buchanan, in Balder the Beautiful, has the following lines:— " We wake in a dream, and we ache in a dream, And we break in a dream, and die !" Shelley (Prometheus Unbound, published in 1820) writes:— " Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted." In another place (Adonais, published in 1821, com- memorating the death of John Keats) he explains:— " Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awakened from the dream of life— 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife " ; and again (Adonais) :— " He lives, he wakes—'tis Death is dead, not he." A passage from Ali bin Muhammed Al Tahamy has been translated by J. D. Carlyle, as follows:— " Life is a sleep of three score years, Death bids us wake and hail the light, And man, with all his hopes and fears, Is but a phantom of the night." 209 Similarly, Eobert Browning (The Flight of the Duchess) writes:— " And like the hand which ends a dream, Death with the might of his sunbeam Touches the flesh and the soul awakes." 209 Quoted by Claud Field, in A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations, London, 1911, p. 198. The converse simile which refers to sleep as death, or rather, the typS of death, is of course much more frequently met with (see back, under the present heading, Part II. iv.). 234 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-iv. In regard to a feeling towards the idea of death, the contrary of that expressed in Ecclesiasticus xii. 2, Dr. Pietro Capparoni tells me of a small memento mori panel- picture in his possession (figured under Heading xix.) inscribed, "(Mors) amara habenti pacem in substautiis suis," that is to say, " 0 death, how bitter is the remem- brance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions!" &c. (Ecclesiasticus xii. 1). A Dutch jeton, dated 1518, bears the similar legend, "0 Mors, quam amara est memoria tua." Death as a Friend in another sense.—The saying, " Mors vivis salus," describes what occasionally happens, when Death, by striking down one mortal, "comes as a friend " to others. In this connexion there is the subject of legacies and such cynical epitaph quotations as the following:— " Resigned unto the heavenly will, The son keeps on the business still." Cf. W. Andrews, Curious Epitaphs, London (1883), p. 56, the epitaph on a publican at Upton-on-Severn:— "Beneath this stone, in hope of Zion, Doth lie the landlord of the "Lion," His son keeps on the business still, Resign'd unto the Heavenly will." The following " pseudo-epitaph " is by John Dryden:— " Here lies my wife ! here let her lie ! Now she's at rest, and so am I." A similar one is after the French of Boileau:— " Here lies my wife; and Heaven knows Not less for mine, than her repose." The original French epitaph by Boileau is, I believe, as follows:— " Ci-git ma femme : oh! que c'est bien Pour son repos, et pour le mien! " PART Il.-iv.J DEATH AS REST OR SLEEP. 235 In this connexion H. P. Dodd (The Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 139) quotes a remarkable epigram by James Smith (1775-1839):— "Where'er a hatchment we discern (A truth before ne'er started), The motto makes us surely learn The sex of the departed. If 'tis the husband sleeps, he deems Death's day a felix dies Of unaccustom'd quiet dreams, And cries—In coelo quies. But if the wife, she from the tomb Wounds, Parthian-like, post tergum, Hints to her spouse his future doom, And threatening cries—Besurgam." W. S. Walsh refers to a Roman husband who, after mentioning the years, months, days, and even hours that he and his departed wife had lived together, concludes: " On the day of her death I gave the greatest thanks before God and men." Historical life-saving results of the death of some cruel tyrant, or the end of some "reign of terror" (such as, for instance, accompanied the fall of Robespierre), or the execution of some dangerous criminal, have been illustrated by various works of art. The well-known woodcut already mentioned (Part I. B.) of " Death and a Fool," which by some critics has been considered an early work by Diirer, apparently satirises those who hope for the death of others, and illustrates the folly of " Waiting for dead men's shoes." It formed one of the illustrations to Sebastian Brant's Stultifera Navis (" Ship of Fools"), the first edition of which was printed at Basel in 1494, by J. Bergmann von Olpe. It was also used later to illustrate the Narren- beschworung (published at Strasburg in 1512), by Thomas Murner (1475-1537), the German satirist and opponent of the Reformation. V. Death as a Means of Punishment, Vengeance, or Atonement. The Threat of Death as a Means of exciting Terror. Political Murders and Political Executions. Under this heading medals commemorating executions should be included, such as those struck on the execution of Monmouth and Argyle in 1685, with the inscription, "Ambitio malesuada ruit," and those struck on the execution of Grand val in 1692. Amongst medals and jettons of various countries commemorating executions (as just or unjust acts), some of the most notable were issued in the Low Countries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On certain other medals death is threatened as a punishment or means of reprisal. Thus, on two English medals (described later on) com- memorating the loss of Minorca in 1756, the obverse inscription is, " Brave Blakney reward, But to B. (Admiral John Byng) give a cord." These medals belong to the popular ("toy-shop") class, and may really have helped in bringing the unfortunate Admiral Byng to his death. The popular or " toy-shop " medals (mostly more or less political) of the period constitute the class best known through the Admiral Vernon and Porto Bello medals of 1739, of which a great many varieties exist. If English history had to be made out by the evidence of medals only, then Admiral Edward Vernon (" Old Grog ") would be a most im- portant figure. About 180 varieties of Vernon medals, including those relating to Fort Chagre, Carthagena, and Havana, are described by C W. Betts (American Colonial History illustrated by Contemporary Medals, New York, 1894, pp. 88-152). Mount Vernon, the estate of the Washington family in America, was so named in honour of Admiral Vernon; so, doubtless, was Mount Vernon, at Hampstead, near London. The "toy-shop" medals served the purpose of political news- papers ; they were, in fact, " medallic newspapers," if the expression is permitted. Most of these " toy-shop " medals are in " Pinchbeck Metal" (an alloy of copper and zinc invented by Christopher Pinch- beck, ? about 1700), and were issued by the Pinchbeck family of " Clock, Watch, and Toy Makers." At the end of the century (about 1795), penny, halfpenny, and farthing tradesmen's tokens were sometimes made to serve a similar political purpose. Certain tradesmen's tokens (chiefly halfpennies) of the 238 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-V. last years of the eighteenth century, representing a man hanging from a gallows, with the punning inscription, " End of pain," though they did not cause the death of Thomas Paine, may yet have helped to prejudice the English people against him. On a small cast bronze medal, signed by the French sculptor, P. J. David d'Angers, commemorating the so-called " Massacres of Galicia" (revolt in Austrian Poland) in 1846, the reverse bears the representation of a gallows and the names of those who were regarded as responsible for the " massacres." Many paintings, drawings, and prints, both caricatures and others, representing degradation and ignominious death as the punishment or natural outcome of vice and crime, may be supposed to have exerted a certain deter- rent effect on the young. Of eighteenth-century work of this kind in England, several characteristic designs by William Hogarth (1697-1764) are especially worthy of mention, whilst later on come various caricatures by Thomas Kowlandson (1756-1827), George Cruikshank (1792-1878), and others. Amongst Hogarth's designs of the kind there are, for instance, the final scenes in the series of " The Harlot's Progress " and in that of " The Eake's Progress," and the ignominious death at "Tyburn Tree" of Tom Idle, the " Idle Apprentice," in his " Industry and Idleness " series. Hogarth's "Pteward of Cruelty" (1751), well known, like nearly all his designs, by the engravings (engravings by or after Hogarth), is a caricature of the dissection of a criminal's body at Surgeons' Hall in Old Bailey, London.210 210 A certain number of the bodies of executed criminals could be claimed each year by the surgeons for dissection at Surgeons' Hall. In T. G. Smollett's Boderick Bandom (1748) there is a reference to these dissections. After 1783 the public place of execution was in front of Newgate Prison, close by. I'ART II.-V.] DEATH AS PUNISHMENT, &C. 239 Tlie rope by which he (" Tom Nero ") was hung at Tyburn is still around his neck, his intestines are being placed in a pail below the dissecting-table, and a dog has taken possession of his heart. The skeletons of two recently- executed criminals, labelled respectively, " Macleane" (James Maclaine or Maclenn, a noted " gentleman high- wayman," hung at Tyburn in 1750) and " James Field " (who was, according to the " Newgate Calendar," executed for highway robbery early in 1751) adorn niches in the walls. Over the lecturer's or Master's chair2n is the hand feeling a pulse—a device of the present Ptoyal College of Physicians of London. Many prints and minor works of art of various epochs either represent or symbolize in a terrifying manner the natural result of vices. Some such designs are referred to in Part I. E. George Cruickshank's famous satirical pattern for a Bank of England note (1818) should be mentioned. In 1818 there were an enormous number of Bank of England notes for relatively small amounts (one-pound and two-pound notes) in circulation, and the ease with which they could be imitated encouraged forgery. Many persons convicted of forging bank-notes or of uttering forged bank-notes, were transported or suffered the death- penalty. The first forger of Bank of England notes, If. W. Yaughan, was executed in 1758. The prosecutions between 17(.»7 and 1817 were said to have cost the Bank of England nearly a quarter of a million pounds. 211 The Master of the Company of Surgeons in 1750 and 1751 was John Ranby, whom Henry Fielding introduced into his novel, " Tom Jones." I do not know if the occupant of the chair was intended as a caricature of the actual Master of the Company, but certainly the surgeons and anatomists present at the dissection (whether intended or not as caricatures of actual individuals) are all of them held up, by Hogarth's art, in no very pleasant light. 240 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-V. Between 1805 and 1818 five hundred and one convictions were said to have been obtained, resulting in 207 execu- tions. In 1817 the number of forged one-pound notes detected was stated to have been 28,412. Cruikshank's satirical pattern (see Fig. 32) is inscribed, " Bank Restriction Note. Specimen of a Bank Note—not to be imitated. Submitted to the Consideration of the Bank Directors and the inspection of the Public." Eleven bodies (men and women) are hanging from a Ion" Fig. 32.—G. Cruikshank's satirical pattern for a Bank of England note (1818). gibbet, and " Jack Ketch " (the traditional nickname for the hangman), "for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England," promises to perform the hangings— the number ad libitum—" during the Issue of Bank Notes easily imitated, and until the Ptesumption of Cash Payments, or the Abolition of the Punishment of Death." These "Bank Restriction Notes" were published by William Hone, at his shop in Ludgate Hill, London, and when they were first exhibited such crowds gathered PART II.-V.] DEATH AS PUNISHMENT, &C. 241 round his shop-window that the police had to disperse them. Cruikshank maintained that by this caricature he had taken a considerable part in the abolition of the death-penalty for comparatively trivial offences. In 1821 all one-pound and two-pound bank-notes were withdrawn from circulation. The last execution in England for forgery of any sort was that of Thomas Maynard, in 1829. This "Bank Restriction Note" of Cruikshank and Fig. 33.—Satirical anti-republican pattern for a Bank-note (1819). Hone, in 1818, evidently gave rise to the "anti-re- publican " satirical pattern note (see Fig. 33), published in 1819 by S. Knight, 3, Sweetings Alley, Royal Exchange, London. It is inscribed, " House of Cor- rection, 1819. I promise to pay to all Republicans, Jacobins and Knaves, the sum of a Perpetual Flagella- tion ; to be strictly inflicted and most judiciously applied, until their turbulent spirits be duly expunged. . . . For the King and Constitution—J. Flogwell." On the left of the note is a man at • the cart-tail being flogged by " Jack R 242 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-V. Ketch." The man who is being flogged is evidently meant to represent William Hone (the publisher of Cruikshank's note), who, in 1817, had been prosecuted by the Government, but acquitted. The men drawing the cart are labelled H—T (Hunt) and C—TT (Cobbett). The accompanying inscription is, "Pain Exemplified, or the Age of Reason" (an allusion to Thomas Paine's Age of Reason). Above, on the left, is a devil acting as hangman, arranging the rope on a gallows, with the inscription: "A Printer's Devil. The Knave's desert, or a strong binding for a bookseller." The bookseller referred to was certainly William Hone. Below, on the left, is a man in the stocks, with the inscription, "A Scourge for Rogues with Venomed Stings." The man in the stocks also undoubtedly represents Hone, for the stocks themselves are so drawn as to represent the capital letter H, and this is followed by the "One" to resemble the " One " on one-pound notes. The " pattern " note is numbered in two places, N° 222, the N° being formed by a lion with a looped tail, and the twos by figures of men kneeling to be flogged, labelled respectively " C—tt," " H—t," and " H—e," for William Cobbett (1762-1835), Henry Hunt (known as " Orator Hunt," 1773-1835), and William Hone (1710-1842), the author and bookseller referred to above. In this connexion it may be remem- bered that in 1810 Cobbett had been fined and imprisoned for publishing censures on flogging in the army. I do not know who designed this " satirical bank-note," and it has apparently attracted little attention. A few other less elaborate caricature notes were published about the same time. Death's-heads might appropriately have adorned the handles of an executioner's sword, and though I know no I'ART II.-V.] DEATH AS PUNISHMENT, &C. 243 example of that, I have seen a scourge with iron tails, part of the handle of which was formed by a death's-head carved in wood. Though in Shakespeare's Tempest (Act iii., Scene 2) the drunken butler, Stephano, says, "He that dies pays all debts," death can scarcely be supposed to cancel every- thing. I do not know of any medals referring to the idea of death (voluntary or involuntary) as an act of atonement— apart, of course, from religious medals. There are some medals, however, on which might have been inscribed the first Napoleon's saying: " Death may expiate faults, but it does not repair them." The fancied terrors of death and hell have naturally been much more illustrated on engravings, drawings, and paintings than on medals, engraved gems, &c.; but this subject will be again referred to under Heading xx., on the " Fear of Death." Certain satirical medals might be mentioned here, especially the English political ones of the toy-shop class (see back), issued in 1741, representing the devil leading Sir Robert Walpole by a rope round his neck towards the open jaws of a monster (hell), with the inscription: MAKE • ROOM • FOR • SIR • ROBERT---NO • EXCISE.212 Emblems of the Death's-head class, when employed to inspire terror in certain cases and in certain ways, may be supposed to have exercised a panic-striking effect similar to that produced (according to stories of former days) when pirates of the traditional Captain William Kidd style ran up their Death's-head ensign,213 the hoisting of the flag causing doubtless an equivalent 212 See Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. ii. p. 561, Nos. 190-192. sn ipjjg n D}ack flag " (with white skull and crossbones on it) of the pirates, according to boys' pirate-stories of the " Captain Kidd " and " penny dreadful " kind----the " Jolly Roger," as Sir Walter Scott calls it, in The Pirate (chapter xxxi.). R 2 214 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-V. sinking of the blood-pressure and courage in some of those who looked at it. In regard to the terror inspired by the Gorgons head in the ancient world, C. W. King214 writes that, accepting the explanation that " at its origin this terrific visage was designed for the 'vera effigies' of the queen of the dead, it was the most speaking emblem of her office that could possibly be chosen." It occupied the centre of the Aegis of Zeus and Athene, and in the Heroic ages it was depicted upon the warrior's shield; with the progress of art, cut in cameo, it became the regular decoration of the Roman Emperor's breast- plate ; " in which post it served, as Lucian in his Philo- patris remarks, ' both to terrify enemies and [as an amulet] to avert all danger from the wearer.'" The terror-inspiring use of the symbols of death is very intelligible, and is analogous to the employment during warfare of war-paint (and terrifying devices of all kinds) by savage tribes, in former times by native races of North America, &c. The military emblems referred to further on, under Heading vi., have likewise some significance in this connexion, and so has certain hideous devil-like armour for face and head. Devil-like masks are to be seen in collections of European armour of the sixteenth century, and the hideous Chinese masks are well-known. The ancient Korean warriors (e.g. of the fourth century a.d.) are represented wearing fiendish masks (for instance, faces with two or three pairs of eyes) designed to terrify the enemy and ward off evil spirits. In this connexion there is some interest in the account of the so-called Arii by Tacitus (De Moribus et Populis Germaniae, cap. 43, as quoted by Edward Gibbon): " The Arii study to improve by art and 214 C. W. King, The Gnostics and their Bemains, second edition, London, 1887, p. 184. PART II.-V.] DEATH AS PUNISHMENT, &C. 245 circumstances tbe innate terrors of their barbarism. Their shields are black, their bodies are painted black. They choose for their combat the darkest hour of the night. Their host advances, covered as it were with a funereal shade (feralis umbra); nor do they often find an enemy capable of sustaining so strange and infernal an aspect. Of all our senses the eyes are the first vanquished in battle." After all, the main original object of memento mori devices in Mediaeval Europe was to inspire fear and bring all sinners to timely repentance. A secondary object was perhaps to increase ecclesiastical authority and the earthly power and possessions of the Church. Thus arose the various gloomy or horrible representa- tions of skulls, skeletons, figures of Death of the " skin and bones" type (the German Hautskelett), the pictures and carvings of decaying corpses being " eaten with worms," the tale of the " Three Dead and the Three Living," the " Dance of Death" designs, the " Triumph of Death " pictures, tapestries, &c.; and not least of all, the ingenious pictorial, plastic and descriptive variations of the horrors of Hell. See, for instance, a painting of the school of Hans Memling, figured by S. Reinach.215 It represents a horrible devil over the open mouth of a monster (hell), in which are seen the wretched ones, damned for all eternity; above, on a scroll, is the in- scription: INFERNO NYLLA EST REDEMPTIO, that is to say, "There is no escape or redemption for those in hell." (Cf. also Part II. xvii.) What, indeed, could be conceived more horrible than Dante's description of the horrors of Hell 'n* in his Inferno ?—magnified by the 213 In his BCpertoire de peintures du moyen age et de la Benaissance, Paris, 1910, vol. 3, p. 746, No. 1. 21,1 Quite as terrible, according to Rowbotham, is the description of them by Adam de Ros, the English trouvere (troubadour), in his poem on St. Paul's Visit to Hell, a poem which to some extent anticipated Dante's Inferno. See J. P. Rowbotham, The Troubadours and Courts of Love, London, 1895, p. 130. 246 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-V. inscription on the portal: " Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate" ("Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"). About the end of the fourteenth century some of the fanatic " Flagellants" had skeletons depicted on their clothing, which added superstitious fear to the excitement caused by their mad doings. It is probable that in "morality plays" of the "Dance of Death" type, figures were sometimes introduced (to represent Death or the dead) clothed in a tight-fitting black dress with a white skeleton painted on it (like the "jockeys of death" in modern circus-performances). In tournaments also skeleton-like disguises may have been occasionally em- ployed to produce spectacular effects resembling that at "Castle Perilous" in Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette. (Cf. Part I. B.) Here, too, as also under Heading x., one must refer to the interesting medals, tokens, &c, on which fatal epidemics of plague and other infectious diseases are referred to as punishments or retributive calamities, visitations, or manifestations of the divine wrath on account of the wickedness of the people. For convenience all medals, memorial rings, &c, commemorating political executions and political murders, may be included under this heading, though some of them (e.g. medals commemorating the death of John van Olden Barneveldt in 1619, of James Graham, first Marquis of Montrose, in 1650, and of the brothers De Witt in 1672) might also be classed under Heading xi, in so far as they commemorate a kind of martyrdom for political principles. In this connexion it cannot of course be forgotten that the political assassins and rebels, who have sometimes inflicted a kind of martyrdom on others, have not rarely been impelled to their bloody work by highly conscientious motives, according to their own point of view. In their PART II.-V.J DEATH AS PUNISHMENT, &C. 247 turn, therefore, when killed in the tumult of a riot or a rebellion, or when executed afterwards on a charge of treason or murder, they have suffered veritable martyrdom in the mental eyes of their friends or political followers, and sometimes in the opinion of neutral onlookers. The writings of P. H. Pearse, the Irish poet, who was executed after the Dublin rebellion of Easter 1916 (his collected works were published in 1917) show that his death furnishes us with an illustration of this kind. Cf. the following passages from his " ranns " (Irish for verses):— "I have turned my face To this road before me, To the deed that I see And the death I shall die." " A rann I made within my heart To the rider, to the high king, A rann I made to my love, To the king of kings, ancient death. Brighter to me than light of day The dark of thy house, tho' black clay; Sweeter to me than the music of trumpets The quiet of thy house and its eternal silence." Memorials of this class, owing to their number, cannot all be described here, but we may instance the Roman denarius commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar; certain coins of Athens bearing a representation of the so-called tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton (the statue of them by Kritios and Nesiotes); the medals commemorating the Pazzi conspiracy (1478) at Florence and the assassination of Giuliano de' Medici; the medal on the murder of Alessandro de' Medici, the first Duke of Florence, by his kinsman Lorenzino de' Medici, the "Tuscan Brutus," in 1537; the medals, medalets, and other memorials on the execution of King Charles I of England, and on the execution of Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette; also memorial medals on the other victims of the great French Revolution, and of various other revolutions in France and other coun- tries. Here, too, belong medals commemorating such 248 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-V. comparatively recent political assassinations as those of Spencer Perceval (1812), Charles Ferdinand due de Berry (son of Charles X of France) (1820), the Czar Alexander II (1881), Lord Frederick C. Cavendish (1882), the French President Carnot (1894), the Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1898), King Humbert of Italy (1900), King Alexander I and Queen Draga of Serbia (1903), King George I of Greece (1913), the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (heir to the throne) (1914),217 the Presidents of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln (1865), J. A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901). Family crests and various kinds of badges sometimes commemorate political murders, political executions, &c. Thus, the dagger-crest of a Kirkpatrick family is said to be derived from the share taken by an ancestor in the death of John Comyn,the younger (" the Red Comyn"), in 1306. Comyn was slain or severely wounded by Robert Bruce (who soon afterwards became Robert I, King of Scotland) in the church of the Franciscan friars at Dumfries, and, according to one account, when Bruce, on leaving the church in a very agitated state, said, " I doubt that I have slain the Red Comyn," one of his followers, named Kirkpatrick, cried out, " Do you leave such a matter in doubt ? I will make sicker ! " Thereupon, Kirkpatrick, with a companion (Lindesay), entered the church and made "sicker" (certain) of the death with their daggers. Pilgrims' badges or signs, made of lead or pewter, of various designs, commemorate the murder of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canter- bury, by Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, Reginald Fitzurse, and others, in Canterbury Cathedral, on December 29th, 1170. He was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1172, and his shrine in Canterbury Cathedral became one of the most famous objects of pilgrimage in Europe (cf. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). At the Reformation in England, however, the shrine was broken up (1538), and the murdered prelate was ordered to be styled " Bishop Becket," instead of "Saint Thomas." After all, his murder was a political one, corresponding to what on the Continent of Europe would have been the murder of a. powerful Guelfic (Papal) leader by the Ghibelline or Hohenstaufen faction, and one may remember that the Papal party and Charles of Anjou were responsible for the political execution of Conradin, the last in the male line of the Hohenstaufens, at Naples, in 1268. 217 Of this spark that kindled the Great European War there are com- memorative medals by A. Hartig, R. F. Marschall, A. Weinberger, &c. PART II.-V.] DEATH AS PUNISHMENT, &C. 249 As a punishment for the murder of Thomas a Becket, the men of Kent, and, indeed, all Englishmen, were said to be born with tails, showing that they were children of the Devil. In the seventh crusade, under King Louis IX (Saint Louis) of France, William Longespee (Longsword), Earl of Salisbury, was taunted for his supposed caudal appendage by Robert, Count of Artois (the French King's brother), who objected to the English Earl's cautious advice : " What cowardice in these long-tailed English!" The English answer was, however, sufficiently boastful: " We shall be to-day where you will not dare to touch my horse's tail."218 It was not long afterwards that the Earl of Salisbury met with his heroic death at the battle near Mansurah (1250). Possibly the phrase, " Perfidious Albion" (" Perfide Albion"), as applied to England by Napoleon I, may be regarded as a late survival, or, rather, representative, of this Continental taunt of the Middle Ages—a taunt which is well summarised in the following insulting Mediaeval Latin couplet:— " Anglicus a tergo caudam gerit: est pecus ergo; Cum tibi dicit 'Ave,'sicut ab hoste cave." 219 Incidentally, it may be mentioned that, in regard to human beings really possessing tail-like appendages, a great many references are given by G. M. Gould and W. L. Pyle (Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, 1896, pp. 277-279, paragraphs on " Human Tails "). A very interesting leaden pilgrim's relic of the thirteenth century,220 shaped like an ampulla (possibly intended to hold a trace of the saint's blood mixed with water), has on one side a figure of St. Thomas of Canterbury, with the hexameter line, Optimus cgrorum medicus fit Thoma bonorum (" Thomas is made the best physician for virtuous sick persons"); on the other side is a representation of two priests attending a sick person in bed. Here it may be remarked, however, that in England (to satisfy the curio-collector's demand for pilgrims' tokens, Mediaeval badges, weapons, &c), some ignorant workmen in London, in the second half of the nineteenth century, manufactured numerous spurious badges, relics, &c, roughly cast in lead or brass (often bearing dates such as 1001 or 1301). They were buried ("planted") wherever excavations were going on, and then dug up again as " antiquarian finds," if persons likely to purchase them were observed to be watching the excavations. These ridiculous " antiques " were produced in great quantities, and many old curiosity shops soon became "flooded" with them, not only in London, but also in other towns of Great Britain, and gradually -''* J. M. Ludlow, The Age of the Crusades, Edinburgh, 1897, p. 345. 219 Waltenbach, Anzeigcr fiir Kunde der Dcutschen Vorzcit, 1874. -" Now in the York Museum. Cf. G. Clinch, Handbook of English Antiquities, London, 1905, p. 203, and fig. 167. 250 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-V. some of them found their way to other parts of Europe, and, indeed, beyond the limits of Europe. English travellers, still ignorant about them, occasionally bring them back, as curious antiques, to London, their original home, and American curio-hunters in London are warned against them by specimens exhibited in the Guildhall Museum, bearing impossible dates, &c. This type of falsaria may be discovered almost everywhere, just as may genuine Nuremberg counters (jetons, jettons, " Rechenpfennige ") of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. VI. Death as an Emblem of Stubborn Purpose in War. Death, War, and Ambition. Death's - heads have been used as military devices in Germany, France, and England. The device was apparently first adopted by the Prussian " Black Hussars " (" Death's-Head Hussars "), who were brought into existence by Frederick the Great in 1741. They wore a black uniform and a Death's-head instead of a cockade. The " Black Brunswickers," raised in 1809 by Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Brunswick-Oels (killed at Quatre-Bras, 1815), were likewise given a black uniform with a Death's-head as their badge, partly, it is said, as a token of mourning for the previous duke, who was mortally wounded at the battle of Auerstadt (October 14, 1806), in the war against Napoleon. A little bronze Death's-head, worn by the Prussian Black Hussars on their shakos during the war of 1815 against Napoleon, is illustrated (see Fig. 34). Three Prussian regiments, which at the present day represent the Black Brunswickers and the Black Hussars, continue to wear a Death's- head device. From the newspapers I understand that besides these the 21st Battalion of Chasseurs of the Reserve in the German Army received permission in 1915 to place skulls on its flags and on the headgear of the soldiers, on account of their work " in breaking through the Russian lines near Lodz " during the Great European War of 1914, &c. The famous Italian condottiere, Giovanni de' Medici (1498-1526), called " Giovanni delle Bande Nere," was popularly given this title on account of the sombre mourning dress worn by his terrible bands of mercenaries after the death of his kinsman, Pope Leo X (1521). According to another account, the " Bande Nere," which Giovanni founded, were so called only after the death of their founder, when they changed their uniform from white to black, in token of grief. In France a skull and crossed bones constituted the badge of the 9th Regiment of Hussars, which was formed 252 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-vi. in March, 1793, out of the second corps of "hussard* noirs du nord." The device was apparently copied from that of the Prussian Black Hussars. The English 17th Lancers wear as a badge on their head-dress and collar a skull and crossed bones, with the words "or glory " below (see Fig. 35), suggesting that the wearers of the badge are the "brave, who rush to glory or the grave" (Thomas Campbell, Hohenlindcn). The object of this device (" Death or Glory "), which was introduced at the suggestion of Lieutenant-Colonel John Hale in 1759 Fig. 34.-Bronze death's-head Fig. 35.—" Death or Glory" brass badge badge (actual size), worn (actual size), worn on the head-dress on the shakos of the Prus- of the English 17th Lancers. sian Black Hussars in 1815. (who was Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of the newly formed corps), was to create emulation, and to com- memorate the glorious death of General Wolfe at Quebec (1759).221 It was indeed, however, the ideal of obedience to duty and to his country's call that doubtless largely con- tributed to make Nelson the great English hero that he 221 Vide Major J. H. Lawrence Archer, The British Army; its Begimental Becords, Badges, Devices, dc, London, 1888, p. 77. I am indebted to Mr. L. Forrer for this reference. PART II.-vi.] DEATH, WAR. AND AMBITION. 253 was, an ideal exemplified by his famous signal at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805): "England expects that every man will do his duty." The feeling was the same that the Spartan band under their King Leonidas had who fell at Thermopylae (480 B.C.), and is well illustrated by the epigram of Simonides in the Greek Anthology on the fallen heroes (English version by Bowles):— "Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie."222 Lord Neaves223 writes: "This Spartan obedience, which Simonides long ago celebrated, is that virtue which will in all times gain the ascendant both in war and in peace." With such epigrams may be compared others in the Greek Anthology, on the extreme patriotism of Spartan mothers. Amongst those quoted on this subject by H. P. Dodd,224 one by Dioscorides (English version by Goldwin Smith) may specially be noted:— "Eight sons Demaenaeta at Sparta's call Sent forth to fight; one tomb received them all. No tear she shed, but shouted, ' Victory ! Sparta, I bore them but to die for thee.'" "We are strong," said Napoleon, "when we have made up our minds to die "; but yet, victorious fighting and life are more valuable in a war than martyr-like death, and so it is not really surprising that words such as, " Pro patria mori, vivere est," " Dulce est pro patria 22 In regard to the soldier, "whose business 'tis to die," and to obey, cf. the famous lines in Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade :— " Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die." 223 Lord Neaves, Tlie Greek Anthology, Edinburgh, 1874, p. 25. 224 H. P. Dodd, Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 56. 254 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGKA.M. [PART II.-vi. mori," 225 or " Pro religione mori" or " Pro libertate mori, vivere est," have not found favour on military badges.-s Similar sentences do indeed appear on some medals and medalets, which, however, as they commemorate patriotic deeds, should be classed under Heading xi. A medal commemorating the capture of Breda in 1590 by the Dutch under Prince Maurice of Nassau, has the inscription, " Parati vincere aut mori." Boniface, Count of Savoy, who died in 120^.1, took as a motto, "Ni potior, morior " (" Unless I am master, I die "); but this approaches the idea of the saying, "Aut Caesar aut nihil."227 This is perhaps the place to allude to works of art relating to " Death and Ambition" (cf. Part II. iii.), especially the insatiable ambition that has justly, or unjustly, been supposed to have no consideration for those pushed aside, killed, and trampled on in the pursuit of power and glory. Most of us have seen prints of a modern picture by P. Fritel (" The Price of Glory"), which was exhibited at the Paris " Salon" some years ago, representing a resplendent cavalcade of military con- 225 Cf. Horace, 0v D. K Chodowiecki (1726-1801), who likewise made a series of " Dance of Death" designs, there is a small engraving of Death appearing to a medical student, with the following inscription underneath, which is what the student is supposed to be saying in order to be spared:— " De grace epargne moi, je me fais medecin, Tu recevras de moi la moitie des malades." One of Thomas Rowlandson's " English Dance of PART IL-X.] MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 315 heath" series (first volume, London, 1815) shows Death and the quack doctor " Nostrum," outside the shop of the undertaker, " Ned Screwtight" ; and the letterpress (by William Combe, the author of " Doctor Syntax ") describes how grieved the undertaker was when his friend Nostrum died so suddenly at his door. His wife explained that it was another job for him, and nothing to be sorry about, but— '•' You foolish woman,' he replied, ' Old Nostrum, there, stretched on the ground, W;is the best friend I ever found. . . . How shall we Undertakers thrive With Doctors who keep folks alive 1 . . . We've cause to grieve—say what you will; For, when Quacks die, they cease to kill.'" Similar allusions to the undertaker are of course very frequent. Thus, in "The Apothecary's Prayer," by (r. M. Woodward (engraved by Thomas Rowlandson in 1801, and published by R. Ackermann, at 101, Strand, London), the Apothecary prays to Aesculapius that people may be ill and require medicines, and mentions that his neighbour, Crape, the Undertaker, is suffering considerably by his (the Apothecary's) want of practice. 1 have seen two little English engravings, signed " W. E. G.," not dated, but probably of the early part <>f the nineteenth century, which might be mentioned in this connexion. One of them depicts an apothecary on a rather sorry hack, wljich is apparently running away and knocking people over. The inscription below is, What can be expected of a horse with an apothecary on his back ?" Below this are the words Newcastle Apothecary. The other shows a huge widely-open mouth, into which a funeral procession of (death-bringing) 316 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [l'AKT II.-x. medicine-bottles is entering ; at the rear of this procession come little figures of Death and the Doctor, apparently good friends, and chatting with each other. The title, " A Medical Allegory," is inscribed below this print, on a PAIJTII.-X.) MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 317 mortar made out of a human skull with a long bone in it as a pestle. (See Fig. 36.) The first of these engravings is an illustration of " The Newcastle Apothecary," 294 a comic poem by George Colman the younger (1762-1836), which describes the imaginary fatal result of an apothecary labelling a bottle of medicine: " When taken, to be well shaken." The lines in question are as follows:— " It was, indeed, a very sorry hack ; But that's of course : For what's expected from a horse W'ith an Apothecary on his back?" In Robert Burns's " Death and Doctor Hornbook," a poem which is illustrated by a small wood-carving in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum (London), Death gives no nattering account of the skilful doctor in question :— " That's just a swatch o' Hornbook's way; Thus goes he on from day to day, Thus does he poison, kill an' slay, An's weel paid for't ! Yet stops me o' my lawfu' prey, Wi' his damn'd dirt." I must here refer also to the following stanza in " The Devil's Walk" or "The Devil's Thoughts," a poem apparently partly by Robert Southey and partly by ■s. T. Coleridge, though by some it was thought to have been originated by the witty Richard Porson (1759-1808), Uegius Professor of Greek at Cambridge :— il A pothecarv on a white horse Rode by on his vocations, And the Devil thought of his old friend Death in the Revelations." 295 -!" The poem is included in Colman's Broad Grins, fifth edition, London, 1811, pp. 27-34. ws The allusion is to Revelation vi. 8 : " And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed." 318 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPKiPAM. | PAPT II. X. This poem has been illustrated by Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856, brother of the famous caricaturist, George Cruikshank) in Facetiae, London, 1831, vol. ii. ; and also by Thomas Landseer (1795-1880, brother of the animal- painter, Sir E. H. Landseer), Ten Etchings, illustratiovs of the Bevil's Walk, London, 1831. Amongst the caricatures of Medical Consultations (e.g. by L. Boilly, 1760) a remarkable one figured, after C. Motte, by Lucien Nass,296 represents four consultants seated in the patient's room. One of them, with much gesticulation, is explaining his views of the case in an excited manner; his discourse has had a soporific effect, not on his patient, but on his colleagues, and even Death (represented as a skeleton holding a scythe), comfortably seated on the ground behind the chair of one of the physicians, appears to have fallen into a doze. An eighteenth-century print by John Lightbody, constituting the frontispiece to A Physical Fade Mecum (London, 1741), by Theophilus Philanthropos (Robert Poole, 1708-1752), illustrates the curious admixture of theology in some medical writings of the time. The physician (apparently a portrait of Dr. Robert Poole, the author) and patient are seated facing each other; the doctor feels the patient's pulse and prescribes for him. In the foreground are a skeleton and a coffin, the latter bearing the inscription: "As now I am, so must you be. Therefore prepare to follow me." On the right in the distance, Death (as a skeleton) threatens the patient with his dart, telling him : " Prepare to die, for behold Death, and Judgment is at hand." The various figures are connected by bands of inscriptions with a triangle (on 6 Lucien Nass, Curiositis Medico-Artistiques, Paris, first series, p. 6. I'AKT II.-X.] MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 319 which is the word &EOS) amidst clouds and cherub- heads in the sky. One of these bands explains what God is saying to Death: " Hold, stay thy hand, and give space of repentance." Below this whole complicated design are the lines:— "In the midst of Life Death doth us pursue, Let each therefore with Speed for Mercy sue." In further illustration of the stories current in dispraise of physicians, I will refer to certain little bronze coins struck in the island of Cos, bearing the portrait of Xeuophon, a Coan physician, and a descendant of the family of the Asclepiadae, who practised at the Imperial Court of Rome in the time of the Emperor Claudius. Of three of these pieces in my father's collection the inscription accompanying the portrait on two (possibly of the second century a.d.) is ZENO^flN ; on the third (apparently of the first century a.d.) it is ZGNOc|>nN i€P€YC, showing that Xenophon was apparently a priest of Aesculapius, as well as a physician. This Xenophon, according to Tacitus (Annal., xii. 61), obtained certain privileges for his native island from his patron, the Emperor Claudius. According to Tacitus also (Annal., xii. 67), he had the ingratitude to allow himself to be induced by the Empress Agrippina to help her to murder his patron (54 a.d.) by means of a poisoned feather which he was stated to have introduced into his mouth under the pretence of making him vomit.297 The account of Tacitus runs as follows298: " In fact, all the particulars ■9■ For other references on tbe subject, see the notes in Orelli's second edition of the works of Tacitus, Zurich, 1859, vol. i. p. 388; also Pauly and Wissowa, Beal-Encyclopadie der classischen Altertums- wissemchaft, Stuttgart, 1899, vol. iii. column 2815. 2,8 Bohn's Oxford translation, London, 1854, vol. i. p. 311. 320 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART ANTD EPIGRAM. [I'AKT II.-X. of this transaction were soon afterwards so thoroughly known, thatt the writers of those times are able to recount ' how the poison was poured into a dish of mushrooms, of which he was particularly fond; but whether it was that his senses were stupefied, or from the wine he had drunk, the effect of the poison was not immediately perceived '; at the same time, a relaxation of the bowels seemed to have been of service to him : Agrippina, therefore, became dismayed; but as her life was at stake, she thought little of the odium of her present proceedings, and called in the aid of Xenophon the physician, whom she had already implicated in her guilty purposes. It is believed that he, as if he purposed to assist Claudius in his efforts to vomit, put down his throat a feather besmeared with deadly poison; not unaware that in desperate villanies the attempt without the deed is perilous, while to ensure the reward they must be done effectually at once." From this account of Tacitus it is clear that Xenophon was called to his Imperial patient when the latter appeared to have eaten some poisonous food. He, as a physician, immediately did what would have been expected of him; namely, he endeavoured to induce vomiting (by tickling the patient's fauces with a feather). It is unlikely that any real evidence was forthcoming that he assisted the murder by introducing poison on the feather, or that he was in any way an accomplice in the crime. Strictly speaking, under this Heading (Part II. x.) one might also refer to various memorials and sepulchral monuments bearing inscriptions of medical interest. The famous epitaph on Dame Mary Page, in Bunhill Fields Burial Ground (London), records that she died in 1728, at the age of 55 years, and that she was tapped (para- centesis abdominis) 66 times in 67 months, and " had taken PART II.-X.] MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 321 away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining at her case, or ever fearing the operation." A similar epitaph on Mrs. Susanna Wood, in the graveyard of Bermondsey parish church, records that that lady died in 1810, in her 58th year, after a long illness, which she bore with the greatest fortitude; "she was tapped 97 times, and had 461 gallons of water taken from her, without ever lamenting her case, or fearing the operation." Under Heading xi., I shall refer to a sepulchral marble at Senlis, commemorating the death, in 1673, after the Caesarian operation, of a woman who saved the life of her unborn child by voluntarily undergoing that operation; she her- self died as the result, and thus by her death for the sake of her child, " she succeeded in uniting Love and Death." Much grim humour of a homely sort has been displayed in epitaphs relating to the causes of death, but the genuineness of many of them may be doubted. There is, for instance, that on the poor old body, who "had two sore legs and a baddish cough, But her legs it was that carried her off." Then there is one on the old woman who appeared " so cunning, While one leg kept still, the nther kept running." The following are " chestnut '* examples:— " This little hero lying here Was conquered by the diarrhoea." " Here lie I and my four daughters, Killed by drinking Cheltenham waters. Had we but stuck to Epsom salts, We wouldn't have been in these here vaults." Compare this with the lines on the Abbey Church at Bath, by Dr. Henry Harington (1727-1816) :— " These walls, so full of monument and bust, Show how Bath waters serve to lay the dust." Y 322 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-X. The next epitaph (on a baby) might well be applied to examples of excessive infantile mortality, of specific origin:— '• Since I am so quickly done for, I wonder what I was begun for." In J. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (10th edition, 1914, p. 875) the following is given as the epitaph in Cheltenham Churchyard on a child who died at the age of three weeks:— " It is so soon that I am done for, I wonder what I was begun for." In regard to the death of children, cf. the quaint epitaph by William Browne (1591-1643) on a girl who died at the age of six years2" :— " Nature in this small volume was about To perfect what in woman was left out. Yet fearful lest a piece so well begun Might want preservatives when she had done, Ere she could finish what she undertook Threw dust upon it and shut up the book." When the omnibus or bus was less common than nowadays, Henry Luttrell (died 1851) wrote :— " Killed by an omnibus—why not 1 So quick a death a boon is. Let not his friends lament his lot— Mors omnibus communis." Death from gangrene of the foot commencing after the careless cutting of corns (which has not rarely occurred in senile diabetics and arteriosclerotics) is commemorated by a fanciful epitaph, beginning:— " Here lie the bones of Richard Lawton, Whose death was strangely brought on. Trying one day his corns to mow off, The razor slipped ..." An epitaph or pseudo-epitaph on one of the "born- tired " class, commences as follows :— " Here lies a poor woman who always was tired, She lived in a house where no help wasn't hired"; Quoted by H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 220. PART II.-X.] MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 323 and ends thus :— " Don't mourn for me now, don't mourn for me never; I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever." Here I shall draw attention to a curious "poetical conceit" (though not an epitaph) relating to the death- producing effects of renal calculus. The verses in question were quoted by Sir John Bland-Sutton,300 and are a translation from the seventeenth-century Italian original of Ciro di Pers (? himself a sufferer):— " Other white stones serve to mark happy days, But mine do mark days full of pain and gloom. To build a palace, or a temple fair, Stones should be used : but mine do serve To wreck the fleshly temple of my soul. Well do I know that Death doth whet his glaive Upon these stones, and that the marble white That grows in me, is there to form my tomb."301 In regard to the last lines cf. the following:— "One day the surveyor, with a sigh and a groan, Said, ' Doctor, I'm dying of gravel and stone.' The doctor replied, 'This is true then, though odd, What kills a surveyor is a cure for the road.' " Though not an epitaph, I will also quote Edgar Allan Poe's picturesque reference to one of those terribly sad deaths of young persons, for instance, from acute pneumonia, with which all medical men are familiar. It comes in his ballard of " Annabel Lee " :— " The angels not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me—• Yes ! that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud one night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee." 300 Sir John Bland-Sutton, in his Cavendish Lecture, before the West London Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1916, Medical Press, London. 1916, vol. 153, p. 293. 301 This splendid English version is given by G. F. Kunz, Curious Lore of Precious Stones, 1913, p. 384. The original Italian poem of Ciro di Pers is quoted by Giuseppi Gonnelli, in his Thesaurus Philosophicus, Naples, 1702, pp. 157, 158. Y 2 324 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-X. Incidentally, one may note how well this modern poem expresses the ancient Greek idea of the gods being jealous of too much mortal bliss. The Greeks and Romans imagined their anthropomorphic god3 and goddesses to be richly endowed with all the human passions. When the human tyrannos, or king, became envious or covetous of a nobleman's wealth or influence, the head of the latter had to be cut off, if some other great calamity did not overtake him. And so it was with their deities, only that perhaps they pictured the immortals as being sometimes worse than themselves, more wanton and lascivious, more jealous, cruel and revengeful. Thus Prometheus, for his dangerous encouragement of scientific discovery (" betrayal of nature's secrets"), was said to have been punished in the well-known dreadful way—as an " example to others." Apollo was not contented with merely proving his musical superiority over Marsyas, but flayed that mythological personage alive, for presuming to challenge him to a contest of skill. So also when a mortal became very successful and wealthy, the gods were supposed to wish to humble him. Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, tried to avert their displeasure by casting his treasured signet-ring into the sea, but not even that could save him.30- Henry Heath (about 1615) expresses the different idea of Death carrying off a woman because he loved her, as Hades or Pluto abducted Persephone (Proserpina), according to Hesiod and later ancient poets, and as God (in a different sense) takes away those he loves, according to many modern poets :— " In Beatrice did all perfections grow, That she could wish or nature could bestow. When death, enamour'd with that excellence, Straight grew in love with her and took her hence." In poetry and epigrams death bas often been represented as a ravisher, or as coming as, or in the guise of, or in place of, a bridegroom. There is an early unsigned engraving by A. Diirer of "Death as a Ravisher," referred to in Part I. B. Cf. also some sepulchral epigrams in the Greek Anthology, vii. 182 (by Meleager), 183 (by Parmenion), 185 (by Antipater of Thessalonica), 186 (by 302 In Christian Europe of feudal Mediaeval times the great nobles tried to avert divine anger and make up for aggressions and ruthless exactions by gifts to tbe Church and by foundation and endowment of abbeys, priories, churches, and religious charitable institutions. They did not entertain the idea that mere success was likely to incur the divine displeasure, but, on the contrary, regarded it as rather a token of divine favour. It is narrated, however, that a powerful ecclesiastic, when he heard that Rudolph of Hapsburg (originally plain Count of Hapsburg) had obtained the Imperial crown, exclaimed : " Have a care, 0 God, or Rodolph may take Thy throne too !"—or else uttered words to the same effect. PAPT II.-X.J MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 325 Philippus), 188 (by Antonius Thallus). No. 182 commences: "No busband but Death did Clearista receive on her bridal night as she loosed her maiden zone." Similarly, No. 183 commences : " (as she had loosed her maiden zone) Death came first and took the maidenhood of Crocale."303 In No. 188 Hades is said to have burst in at the marriage feast in place of Hymenaeus. In regard to relatively modern times, there is, I believe, a seventeenth-century tomb in the choir of the Gothic churcb of Handschuchsheim (near Heidelberg), recording that a certain young lady, the last of her line, became the bride of Death. The modern conception of the most beautiful in body and the most charming and lovable in mind falling early victims to fatal disease, not because they are " too good to live " or specially loved (cf. the say- ing of Menander and Plautus : " He whom the gods love dies young") and " rewarded by God," but because they are so delicately fashioned in body (as in mind) that they cannot resist the onslaught of disease (whether rough and acute or insidious and chronic) to the same ex- tent that their more coarsely constructed fellows can — applies to many deaths of particularly gifted, bright and sympathetic, children and young adults from tuberculosis (and at least formerly, from diphtheria)—and is gracefully expressed in the following verses :— " 'Tis ever thus—'tis ever thus, with all that's best below, The dearest, fairest, loveliest, are always first to go, The bird that sings the sweetest, the pine that crowns the rock, The glory of the garden, the flower of the flock. 'Tis ever thus—'tis ever thus, with creatures heavenly fair, Too finely framed to 'bide the brunt more earthly natures bear; A little while they dwell with us, blest messengers of love, Then spread the wings we had not seen, and seek their home above." [Cf. Thomas Moore (The Fire-worshippers):— " Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 'twas the first to fade away." This has been parodied by many writers, including C. S. Calverley {Disaster):— " 'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour! My fondest hopes would not decay: I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away." 303 See translations by W. R. Paton in " The Loeb Classical Library." 326 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM [PART II. X. In regard to the best and brightest dying first, cf. the following quotations:— "All that's bright must fade,— The brightest still the fleetest; All that's sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest." (Thomas Moore.) "There is no death! The cboicest gifts That heaven hath kindly lent to earth Are ever first to seek again The country of their birth. And all things that for growtb of joy Are worthy of our love or care, Whose loss has left us desolate, Are safely garnered there. Though life becomes a dreary waste, We know its fairest, sweetest flowers, Transplanted into paradise, Adorn immortal bowers." (J. L. McCreery, of Iowa, U.S.A., three stanzas from his beautiful poem, There is No Death, written and published in 1863.) "Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower." (W. C. Bryant: A Scene on the banks of the Hudson.) " Stern fate and time Will bave their victims; and the best die first, Leaving the bad still strong, though past their prime, To curse the hopeless world they ever curs'd, Vaunting vile deeds, and vainest of the worst." (Ebenezer Elliott, The Village Patriarch.) "0, sir! the good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the sock." (Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book i.)J J. D. Eolleston30i refers to several strange, causes of death mentioned in epigrams from the Greek Anthology. 304 J. D. Rolleston, Proceedings of the Boyal Society of Medicine, Section of the History of Medicine, London, 1914, vii. pp. 34 et seq. PAKT II.-X.] MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 327 A grimly humorous example of such epigrams is the following (Anthol. Graec, Tauchnitz edition, 1829, ix. No. 67): " A young man hung a garland on the column of his stepmother's tomb, thinking that in death her character had changed. But the column fell on the tomb and killed the young man. Children of a former marriage, beware- your stepmother's grave!" The epigram by Diogenes Laertius (ibid., vii. No. 112) on the peripatetic ' philosopher Lycon (third century B.C.) is thus given by Ptolleston: " No, by Zeus, we will not forget Lycon, whom gout killed; but what I marvel at most is that he who could only walk with the feet of others, traversed in a single night the long road to Hades." Then there is the celebrated epigram (cf. Part I. A.) by Callimachus, in the Greek Anthology, on Cleombrotus, a youth of Ambracia, who committed suicide by throwing himself down from a high wall after having read Plato's Phaedo, on the immortality of the human soul. The epigram was referred to by Cicero, and the act of Cleombrotus was discussed by the Fathers of the Christian Church and was alluded to in another well-known Greek epigram (by Agathias). A few epitaphs in the Greek Anthology warn the reader of the dangers awaiting persons (in those times, as in present times) on their way home from feasts in a state of drunkenness. An historical disaster, attributed to too much " good cheer," was the wreck of the "White Ship" ("Blanche Nef"), on a rock off Barfleur in calm weather (1120), when Prince William, the only son of King Henry I of England and grandson of William the Conqueror, was drowned, together with over 140 young noblemen of the principal families of England and Normandy. In tbe tragic story of the wreck, as told by one of the two survivors (a butcher of Rouen), a relieving feature is the conduct of Prince William. He was being rowed away to safety in a boat, but insisted on the boat being put back to the sinking ship, considering that it was preferable to die than to desert his (natural) sister, the Countess de la Perche, who was still on board. When he approached the ship, such numbers jumped into his boat that it sank 328 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [PAPT II. X. with all in it. Thomas Fitz-Stephens, the Captain of the wrecked ship, who succeeded in getting hold of the mast on which the butcher of Rouen saved his life, let go when he heard of Prince William's fate, preferring death by drowning than to survive the disaster. In modern times "speeding the parting guest" with copious draughts of wine has sometimes hastened his exit from the world. One or two epitaphs refer to the " resurrectionist" period in the history of medical and surgical anatomy 305:— " Though once beneath the ground this corse was laid, For use of surgeons it was thence conveyed. Vain was the scheme to hide the impious theft—■ The body taken, shroud and coffin left. Ye wretches, who pursue this barbarous trade, Your carcases in turn may be conveyed Like this to some unfeeling surgeon's room; Nor can they justly meet a better doom." " Her body dissected by fiendish men, Her bones anatomized, Her soul we trust has risen to God, A place where few physicians rise." This horror of the idea of the dissection and "mutilation" of the body after death is still felt by many, but especially by the uneducated classes. The dissection of a criminal's body by surgeons after his execution was evidently in the minds of the populace (cf. Hogarth's design, " The Reward of Cruelty," to which I have already referred, in Part I. E. and Part II. v.) regarded as a kind of additional, though posthumous, ignominious punishment for the crimes committed ante- mortem—just as people thought of the .quartering of the bodies of rebels, traitors, &c, and the exposure of the head and four-quarters on poles at the main gates and bridges and castles and open spaces of great cities. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1109), in a short Latin poem (cf. Part II. xvii.), spoke of a man dying a " second death " when his dead body is tortured (cruciatur) by worms. Scarcely more far-fetched was Petrarch's poetical conceit of a great man's "second death "—when his tomb and monument decay and fall to pieces—and his " third death "—when his writings are destroyed or forgotten (cf. Part II. xvii.). Allied to all this is tbe fear of having one's tomb and bones disturbed. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotaphia (1658), adduced, as one reason in favour of cremation, that ordinary burial admitted the " tragicall abomination, of being knav'd out of our graves and of having our skulls 305 See British Medical Journal, 1908, vol. i. p. 1340, and Lancet, 1903, vol. i. p. 899. PART II.-X.] MEDICAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES. 329 made drinking bowls and our bones turned into pipes." Strange, indeed, it is that, in spite of this protest of his, Norwich, the city where he lived and died, always desirous to honour him, has neverthe- less allowed his skull to be exhibited under a glass case in the city museum. The royalist writer, Sir John Berkenhead,30' in December, 1679, gave directions in his will for his burial in the yard outside the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (by the modern Trafalgar Square, London) instead of inside the church, "because he sayd they removed the bodies out of the church." Compare the feeling which suggested the inscription placed on Shakespeare's tomb at Stratford-on-Avon :— " Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones."307 In epitaphs and pseudo-epitaphs the alleged cause of death is naturally often of uncertain meaning to the medical reader. Thus, one may wonder what the nature of the "ague-fits" was in the following epitaph, which (according to Pettigrew) was to be found at Dymock, in Gloucestershire:— " Too sweetur babes you nare did see Than God amity geed too wee. But they wur ortaken wee agur fitts And hear they lys has dead as nitts." In regard to medals and portraits of physicians and surgeons it may be noted that skulls and skeletons sometimes form part of the design, not in allusion to anatomical, medical or surgical work, but for the sake of the memento mori idea. Thus, amongst the English series a skull and crossed bones, with the inscription RESPICE FINEM, constitutes the reverse design of the seventeenth century halfpenny token of the surgeon, John Brearcliffe, of Halifax (see Part III., Fig. 75). Then there is the curious frontispiece design in the Physical Vade Mccum (1741) by Theophilus Philanthropos (Robert Poole), which I have already described (see back). A printed portrait of the German surgeon, Fabricius Hildanus (1560-1634), that is to say, Wilhelm Fabry, of Hilden (near Diisseldorf), represents him, at the age of fifty-two years, with his left hand resting on a human skull, close to which, on the same table, is a rose; the skull is inscribed, Talis eris ("Such you will be"), and below is the motto, Omnis medela a Deo (" Every remedy is from God "). Many similar examples could be found. 306 According to John Aubrey's Brief Lives, quoted by Sir Sidney Lee. jo: por references to various early transcripts of these lines, see Sir Sidney Lee's Life of William Shakespeare, new edition, London, 1915, p. 486. c XI. Death for the Good of Others, or for the Sake of Ordinary Duty or Honour. Martyr- dom for Eeligious, Patriotic, Political, or Social Opinions, or in the Interests of Scientific Discovery and Adventure. Duty, Honour, and Martyrdom. As illustrating death for the good of others, all medals and other memorials commemorating heroic deeds of life-saving, or attempted life-saving, might be included, as well as the various medals and decorations awarded to those who have risked their lives in defence of, or in helping, others. " But whether on the scaffold high, Or in the battle's van, The fittest place where man can die Is where he dies for man." 308 In this connexion, however, it may be noted that in so far as the death of the individual man is necessary for the progress of the race, the natural death of every one may, in a kind of way, be regarded as a sacrifice or " involuntary martyrdom "—if the term be permitted—for posterity. This aspect of death, like No. xiv., may be termed an " altruistic " aspect of death. Strictly speaking, all coins, medals, and works of art, with representations or symbols of tbe Crucifixion of Jesus Christ might be placed under this heading; for the Christian significance of such types is: Mors tua nostra salus est. Cf. especially the so-called " Wittenberger Pestthaler" of the sixteenth century, with Moses' brazen serpent on the obverse and the Crucifixion on the reverse. Some of these " Pestthaler " were perhaps really made, as Pfeiffer and Ruland pointed out, at the flourishing mining-town of Joachimstbal 308 These lines, by Michael J. Barry, appeared in The Dublin Nation, for September 28th, 1844, vol. ii. p. 809. Cf. Henry Newbolt (Farewell):— " They found the secret of the word that saith, Service is sweet, for all true life is death." 332 ASPECTS of death in art and epigpam. [part n.-xi. in Bohemia. Cf. also the fine sixteenth-century medals by Hans Reinhard of Leipzig, representing the Crucifixion. The cross and monogram of Christ, used as Christian symbols, have had a curious fate, which to some extent may be followed in minor works of art. They have of course always been emblematic of the Christian doctrine of the salvation of the soul being rendered possible by the sacrificial death of Christ. The Emperor, Constantino the Great, however, after his alleged miraculous vision of the cross in a.d. 312 - and his conversion to Christianity, adopted the Christian monogram for his military standard—the labarum, as it was thenceforward called—with the motto, TovtV v'aca, or in Latin, In hoc signo vinces. The labarum appears on the reverse of certain coins of Constantine the Great, but much more frequently on coins of later emperors. Gradually the cross of Christ came to be used as a potent instrument in the pursuit of earthly power and military conquest and fame. The Crusaders marched against the Saracens and Turks with the cross as their badge and as their standard, singing their stirring military hymn, Lignum Crucis, Signum Ducis. Christians also fought against Christians, each party claiming that God was on their side, and the victors attributed their victory to the help of God. Soli Deo Gloria (" To God alone be the glory! "), or Soli Deo Honor et Gloria (" To God alone be the Honour and tbe Glory ! "), is a frequent inscription on commemorative medals. The handle of the sword itself, owing to its shape, came to be used by the knights of Mediaeval chivalry as the emblem of the cross, symbolical of Christ and the Christian religion. This all makes one think of the allegorical picture (and the fine prints after it) by Frank Dicksee, R.A., called "The Two Crowns," representing the magnificent and spectacular entry of some triumphant ruler of the world, reflecting the brilliant light of human glory from his face and golden crown, whereas, in the shadow by the wayside stands a figure of the crucified Christ, wearing a crown of thorns (cf. the end of Part II. vi.). In regard to opposing Christian rulers, each one claiming that their victories are due to God being on their side, there is the following remarkable feu d'esprit by Coventry K. D. Patmore (1823-1896), intended as a kind of poetical satirical paraphrase of tbe spirit of letters written in 1870, during the Franco-German war, by the Prussian King (afterwards the Emperor William I) from the seat of war to Queen Augusta:— " This is to say, my dear Augusta, We've had another awful buster; Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below! Thank God from whom all blessings flow." In connexion with superstitious ideas of Divine help the remarkable recklessness of King Richard II (" Rufus ") may be referred to by way of contrast. In a superstitious age (the end of the eleventh century) that dare-devil monarch was on one occasion desirous of hurrying i'AKT II.-xL] DUTY, HONOUR, MARTYRDOM. 333 from England to the relief of Le Mans; the sailors entreated him to wait till the weather became more favourable, but he answered that he had never heard of a king being shipwrecked : " Weigh anchor, and you will see that the winds will be with us." Intimately allied is the subject of death for the sake of .ordinary duty, or for the sake of what is rightly or wrongly supposed to be honour. Of countless persons it could be truly said that "they loved duty [or honour] more than they feared death." Many indeed have proved it by the manner of their life and their death. " Nothing is worth living for which is not worth dying for." " Great deaths beget great children." 309 King Francis I of France, after the battle of Pavia (la25), is said to have written, "Tout est perdu, fors l'honneur" ("All is lost except honour");310 but in reality life, and with it hope, remained. When honour is really all that is saved, there is often no voice to tell the tale, no hand to write it, and no artist to celebrate it on a medal.311 With the mottoes, " Dum spiro, spero," and " While there is life there's hope" (John Gay, Fables), and the hackneyed quotation, 309 These last two sayings have been (so it is stated) favourites with the Russian democrat, Kerensky. 310 The actual passage in his letter was : " De toutes choses ne m'est demoure que l'honneur et la vie qui est saulve." Cf. J. A. Dulaure, Histoire physique, civile et morale de Paris, 4th edition, Paris, 1829, vol. iv. p. 85. 311 In regard to medals and decorations for " honour," there are, of course, numerous satirical sayings. Harry Quilter quotes the following anonymous English version of a French epigram on the Cross of the Legion of Honour :— " In ancient times—'twas no great loss — They hung the thief upon the cross: But now, alas! I say 't with grief, They hang the cross upon the thief." The Emperor Napoleon I is said to have remarked, " On n'ira pas chercher une epaulette sur un champ de bataille, lorsque' on peut l'avoir dans une antichambre." 334 ASPECTS OF DEATH 1$ ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XL "Hope springs eternal in the human breast" (Pope, Essay on Man), may be compared the following proverbial saying from Theocritus: 'EA.ir/5*s iv {qoiaiv, aveXirunoi 8e Qav6vres (" Living beings have hopes, but the dead are hopeless," or " There is hope for the living, but none for the dead"). Theognis of Megara in the sixth century B.C. wrote (translation by John Hookham Frere) :— "For human nature Hope remains alone Of all the deities—the rest are flown. Faith is departed; Truth and Honour dead; And all the Graces too, my friend, are fled." In the Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus Prometheus recalls how, amongst his other beneficent gifts to mortals, he gave them " fire," the mother of all arts, and also blind hopes to prevent them from always brooding over their unhappy lot (and the fate awaiting them). Cicero, in one of his letters to Atticus (ix. 10), wrote: "Aegroto, dum anima est, spes est " ("For the sick man as long as there is life there is hope"). A sixteenth-century medal of Faustina Sforza, wife of the Marquis of Caravaggio Muzio, has a reverse design and legend signifying: "It is preferable to die than to dishonour one's self by committing a disgraceful action." Two Italian medals of about 1500 bear an inscription having a similar significance: " Prius mori qua(m) turpari." The buttons on a Welsh regiment in the British army bear the inscription: " Gwell angau na chywilydd," signifying: " Better death than dishonour." Cf. Tacitus, Vita Agricolae, xxxiii.: " Honesta mors turpi vita potior" ("An honourable death is better than a disgraceful life"). Cf. also Euripides: Tov £fjv Se \vnpa>s ttpei (uncert. fragment); 2i/ S'Sxrirfp *Ik6s Ka.Tda.vtl Kaaibs icanus (Medea, 1386). With all this might be compared the reverse inscription on two other medals: " Potius mori quam animo immutari," if the change of mind referred to were intended to imply cowardice. A sixteenth-century finger-ring, referred to later on, has the inscription, " Rather death than fals fayth "; and a ring supposed to have belonged to a Knight Hospitaller of Winckbourne, is PART II.-xi.] DUTY, HONOUR, MARTYRDOM. 335 inscribed, "Mieu mori que change ma foi" ("Better to die than change my faith"). Compare the family mottoes: "Mutare fidem nescio"; "Mutare vel timere sperno." The saying, Besser Band und Beute verlohren als einen fahchen Eid geschworen,312 was placed on certain German coins of Philip IX, Landgraf of Hesse (1552), and Henry II, Count of Mansfeld (1593) (Madai, Vollsi Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 1240, 1783,4303). « Safety first! "— is a good motto, especially when crossing a crowded thoroughfare in London, but it is not always the best maxim in life. Cf. Ealph Waldo Emerson (Sacrifice) :— " Though love repine and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,__ ('Tis man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die.'"313 Under this heading should belong all medals (and similar memorials) on the death of those who have under- 312 In Shakespeare's King Bichard II (act iii., scene 2) Richard says:— " The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold. Say, is my kingdom lost ? why, 'twas my care; And what loss is it to be rid of care ? Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we? Greater he shall not be; if he serve God, We'll serve him too, and be his fellow so: Revolt our subjects? that we cannot mend; They break their faith to God, as well as us: Cry woe, destruction, ruin, loss, decay; The worst is death, and death will have his day." 313 Cf. also Emerson's Voluntaries :— " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can I " For similar patriotic inspiration see also Emerson (Boston) :— " For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?" 336 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XL gone martyrdom for their religious,314 patriotic, political, or social opinions. We may instance the medals oh the death of John Huss in 1415, of French Huguenots in 1572 and 1G85, of Archbishop Afire at Paris in 1848, of John van Olden Barne veldt (political) in 1619, of James Graham, first Marquis of Montrose, in 1650, and of the brothers De Witt (political) in 1672.315 For convenience, however, medals commemorating political executions like that of Barne veldt and that of Montrose, and political murders like that of the De Witts, whether there be an element of martyrdom about them or not, have been included under Heading v. Here belong also medals and similar memorials of the " martyrs" in the cause of the progress of science and the progress of civilization, notably those who have lost their lives in perilous exploration by land or by sea, including Arctic and Antarctic expeditions : David Livingstone (1873), Henry Hudson (1611), Sir John Franklin (1847), Captain B. F. Scott, and the brave coni- 314 In regard to devices which have been supposed to relate to martyrdom, a curious instance of Mediaeval misinterpretation of an antique gem-type may be mentioned. An antique engraved gem in the British Museum, which King describes as representing the Muse Thalia, seated, contemplating a comic mask, with a young faun balancing himself on a pedestal before her, was (King thinks) in Mediaeval times supposed to represent Herodias gloating over the severed head of St. John the Baptist, whilst her daughter Salome practised her steps. The Mediaeval silver setting of this antique gem bears the inscription, IE SVI SEL DE AMVR LEL ("I am the seal of loyal love "). See C. W. King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, second edition, 1885, PL xxxv. No. 1; but is King correct as to the Mediaeval interpretation ? For ancient representations of the martyr- dom of Christians, see the illustrations in F. Cabrol's Dictionnaire d'ArchCologie Chretienne, Paris, vol. i. part i. cols. 423-438. 313 It is remarkable how few medals there are of men who have- devoted or sacrificed their lives to the good of their fellows. I believe, for instance, that there is no medal of the " leprosy-hero," Father Damian (Joseph Damian de Veuster, 1840-1889). PART II.-xi.] DUTY, HONOUR, MARTYRDOM. 337 panions who died with him in his successful Antarctic expedition (1912). These heroes perished in the struggle of civilization against the physical agencies of Xature, and so have others who have lost their lives in the adventurous pursuit of scientific (chemical, medical, &c.) knowledge.316 With them may be reckoned those who, in the cause of civilization, have met their deaths, not from natural physical agencies, but at human hands, in uncivilized parts of the world—such as Captain James Cook (1779) and General C. G. Gordon (1885), of whom there are a few numismatic and similar mementos. On certain medals, rings, &c, commemorating the death of King Charles I of England, a martyr's celestial crown is represented as being conferred on him instead of his lost earthly one. Similarly, on the monument, in St. Andrew's (Parish Church) in Scotland, commemorating the murder (1679) of James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, by Covenanters on Magus Muir, the archbishop is represented as receiving a celestial crown in exchange for his earthly mitre. Strictly speaking, all medals and similar memorials connected with patriotism may likewise be admitted here, including those commemorating individuals who have risked or lost their lives in fighting for or defending the real or fancied interests of their country. It is remarkable how few numismatic memorials there are of the great patriotic heroes of Greek and Eoman history and legend, though patriotism in ancient Greece and 316 The ardent natural philosopher, Robert Boyle (1627-1691), is said to have remarked that he feared death only because after it he would know all things, and no longer have the delight of making discoveries. (See R. A. Gregory, Discovery or the Spirit and Service of Science, London, 1916, p. 18.) Z 338 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.--xi. Eome was probably considered the highest of all virtues. The legendary patriotism and good faith of M. Atilius Eegulus is not commemorated on any of the coins of the Eoman Eepublic struck by members of the gens Atilia. So, also, we look in vain to (genuine) coins for repre- sentations of Marcus Curtius, Horatius Codes, and other legendary heroes of Eoman patriotism, though in Eenais- sance and later times the traditional exploits of Marcus Curtius, &c, were sometimes represented on medals and minor works of art as types of valour, patriotism, &c, A silver denarius struck by L. Manlius Torquatu.s (who was quaestor in 104 B.C.) bears on the obverse a torque (torques) . surrounding the head of the goddess Eoma. This is an allusion to the famous exploit of T. Manlius Imperiosus Torquatus, who, in the war against the Gauls (361 B.C.), killed a gigantic Gaul in single combat, and obtained the surname of Torquatus from wearing the torque taken from the dead body of his adversary. Here, however, we touch upon the large class of medals and other minor works of art commemorating deeds of valour of various kinds and at various ages in the world's history, including posthumous medals of real or legendary heroes, such as Eenaissance medals of ancient Greek and Eoman patriots, modern medals of Joan of Arc, &c. Such medals are, of course, too numerous to be included in my list. In regard to coins of certain Greek towns bearing the portrait of the deified Antinous, it should be noted under the present heading that, according to some oonjectures, this beautiful youth, who was drowned in the Nile (122 a.d.) during one of Hadrian's journeys, voluntarily gave up his life for the sake of, and from some (possibly PART II.-xi.] DUTY, HONOUR, MARTYRDOM. 339 Egyptian) superstitious point of view, as a kind of sub- stitute for, the Emperor Hadrian.317 Amongst medals commemorating deaths for patriotism and military duty in relatively modern times there are those of James Wolfe and the capture of Quebec (1759), Nelson and the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and Sir John Moore at Corunna (1809), and a vast number of medals and jettons of the military and naval heroes of all coun- tries. The motto, " Dulce est pro patria mori" (cf. Horace, Od., iii. 2. 14), occurs on a German mortuary Thaler of 1676 and on a Transylvanian medal of 1605. A medal on the death of Marshal Schomberg at the battle of the Boyne (1690) has on its edge the inscription, " Pro religione et libertate mori, vivere est." Here, too, belong some coins and medals commemorating the death of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden at the victorious battle of Liitzen (1632), bearing various inscriptions. Very fine is the medal described in Part III. (date 1915), by Henri Nocq of Paris, presented (Fondation Maurice Barres) to the nearest relative of every French writer killed on the battlefield, in the Great European War; and noteworthy is its inscription: Crcdidi propter quod locutus sum.....et mortuus. Bronze medallions, plaques, engraved gems, and finger-rings representing the early Eoman legend of the suicide of Lucretia might perhaps (in spite of Beza's " common sense " epigram, quoted later on in Part III.) be regarded as illustrating one side of this aspect of 317 The relations of Hadrian to Antinous remain shrouded in mystery, and perhaps it is best so, though surely it has been too readily accepted that Antinous was merely Hadrian's " Ganymede." A curious idea it would have been to think of the deified Antinous as merely a kind of Ganymede in the other world to the Roman Emperor, deified ("Divus Hadrianus Augustus ") to a kind of Jupiter. Z 2 340 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-X1. death. An antique paste is figured by F. de' Ficoroni318 as representing Sextus Tarquinius threatening Lucretia, but it seems to me that it might represent the slaying of Clytaemnestra by Orestes, in spite of what Ficoroni described as a figure of Psyche on the altar in the background. At any rate, representations of Lucretia were popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as emblems of chastity and honour. An Italian engraving (sixteenth century) of Lucretia, by Marcantonio Eaimondi, bears the inscription, "A/uetvov tnrodvrjaiceiv rj aia^pw^ f/)i/ (" Better to die than to live disgracefully "). The fine (Mautuan ?) medal (described in Part III.) of Giulia Astallia (a "Lucretia" of the fifteenth century) has a phoenix on the reverse, with an inscription signifying: "a unique example of courage and chastity." On a German sixteenth century bronze (cf. Part III., sixteenth century) the Eoman Lucretia is represented with her right foot on a human skull, as if, in her case, suicide implied not death, but the conquest of death. An Italian niello finger-ring of the fifteenth century, figured in Thomas Wright's introduction to Fairholt's Miscellanea Graphical from the Londesborough Collection, bears a representation of Lucretia holding .a dagger to her breast, doubtless emblematic of chastity and honour (cf. Part IV. Subdivision ii.). On an early sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry (in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London), inspired by Petrarch's Trionfi, the " Triumphal Death of Chastity" is represented. Chastity, seated on her triumphal chariot drawn by unicorns, surrounded by the Eoman 318 F. de' Ficoroni, Gemmae Antiquae Litteratae, dc, Rome, 1757, second part, Tab. iii. Fig. 4. 31a Fairholt's Miscellanea Graphica, London, 1856, p. 75. PART II.-X1.] DUTY, HONOUR, MARTYRDOM. 341 Lucretia, Scipio Africanus Major and other attendants, and with Cupid, his arms bound behind him, standing as a prisoner in front of her, is being speared by Atropos, who, accompanied by the other twTo Fates (Lachesis and Clotho), mounted on the oxen-drawn car of Death, meets the triumphal procession. On the second portion of the same tapestry (to the right of the scene just described) the three Fates have conquered and are seated victorious in the triumphal car of Death with Chastity at their feet. A similar early sixteenth-century Flemish tapestry is preserved at Hampton Court. On another tapestry in the Victoria and Albert Museum the three Fates are seen standing on a prostrate female figure, which, accord- ing to a French sixteenth-century design, is evidently meant to represent Chastity. In reference to Scipio (that is to say, Scipio Africanus Major) as the type of male continence in Renaissance art, cf. Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition Cat, London, 1912, p. 127. The famous anecdote of Scipio's continence and magnanimity (after the capture of Carthago Nova in Spain, b.c 209) is narrated in Livy's Annals of Borne, xxvi. 50. A monument of female virtue of another kind may here be referred to. It is a sepulchral marble relief by a sculptor named Malouvre, of Senlis, and is figured by Marcel Aubert.320 It represents a young woman floating on a cloud, with a tender suffering expression and attitude of self-sacrifice. In front of her is a baby, offering her in the right hand a palm-branch, and holding in the left a scroll inscribed, " Meruisti." Below is an inscription, preceded by the Latin hexameter line, " Mors et Amor tanto potuerunt funere jungi" (" Love and Death could be united by such a funeral"). The deceased woman, the wife of Pierre de Puget, voluntarily -'-'" Marcel Aubert, CatMdrale de Senlis, Senlis, 1910. 342 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xi. underwent tbe Caesarian operation for the sake of her child, who was thus delivered and lived, whilst she herself died (1673). In this connexion I would add the following note. Physicians and others who have had the opportunity of frequently seeing women sent into hospital after childbirth, suffering from various forms of puerperal fever, cannot fail to have been struck by the psychical condition often present in such cases. The septic poisons (toxins) of the disease seem to not rarely act on the patient's brain so as to produce a state of almost complete mental " euphoria," with relative absence of sensa- tions of pain and anguish, even when death is inevitable and is rapidly approaching. The whole expression of the patient is one of beatitude, sublime contentment and happy resignation to whatever fate is awaiting them, suggesting the wonderful " peace of God, which passeth all understanding." Fortunately, recovery does sometimes occur in such cases, and then perhaps it is better still to witness the charming manifestations of the radiant " psyche," on the gradual return of corporeal activity and all those interests and loves which constitute the best of life. With the subject of this chapter (Part II. xi.) the following personal and family mottoes 321 may be con- sidered in addition to the mottoes and epigrams already given: " Aut mors aut vita decora"; " Mors aut vita decora "; " Mors potius macula " (cf. back, Tacitus, &c.); " Mors patriae, mors mea"; " Melius mori quam inguinari "; " Mori potius quam foedari "; " Potius mori quam foedari"; " Prius mori quam foedari"; " Potius mori quam fidam fallere";322 "Prius mori quam fidem fallere "; "Malo mori quam foedari"; "Malo mori quam maculari"; " Malo mori quam turpari"; " Malo pati quam foedari"; " Mourir plutot que se souiller"; " Plutot mourir que se salir "—" que changer "—" que mentir "— 321 See J. Dielitz, Die Wahl- und Denkspriiche, new edition, Frank- furt a M., 1888. 322 How well this would serve as a motto for many a dog faithful unto death to a human master, how well for many a human slave ! PART II.-xi.] DUTY, HONOUR, MARTYRDOM. 343 " que palir "—" que vivre sans vertu "—" que flechir "— " que plier "—" que ployer." 323 Shakespeare (Troilus and Cressida, Act v., Scene 3) wrote:— " Life every man holds dear ; but the brave man Holds honour far more precious-dear than life." And Shakespeare also wrote:— " Set honour in one eye, and death i' the other, And I will look on both indifferently ; For, let the gods so speed me, as I love The name of honour more than I fear death." Wordsworth, in describing the Character of the Happy Warrior, pictures this ideal knight as one— " Whom neither shape of danger can dismay Nor thought of tender happiness betray." Cf. Part II. xvi., and Diirer's famous allegorical copper-plate engraving (1513) of " the true knight," commonly spoken of as " The Knight, Death and the Devil" (Fig. 37). One of the best-known quotations in the English language is from Eichard Lovelace (1618-1658), "To Lucasta, on going to the Wars " :— " I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more." Juvenal (Sat., 8. 83) declared :— " Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori, Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas." Plautus (b.c. 254-184), in his comedy, Captivi (iii. 5. 32) proclaimed: "Qui per virtutem peritat, non interit." 323 In some cases the motto may be connected with the beraldic use of the ermine, i.e. referring to the power of some of the Mustelidae to save their lives by ejecting a fluid of intolerable odour, which compels their pursuers to abandon the chase. 344 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICI!A.M. [>AliT II.-XI. On one plate of a fifteenth-century Italian (Umbrian) pair of wafering-irons is the inscription, VBELMVRIRE TVTA • LAVITA • ONORA ("A fine death honours the whole life "), a motto found on other household objects of the same period.324 Henry J. Newbolt, in his Sacra- mcntum Sapremum, has the following lines :- - "Life is no life to him that dares not die, And death no death to him that dares to live.' Schiller's Die Braut von Messina ends with the declaration :— " Das Leben ist der Giiter hochstes nicht, Der Uebel grosstes aber ist die Schuld." A. C. Swinburne (Thalassius) emphasizes: " How he that loves life overmuch shall die The dog's death, utterly." Cf. also Swinburne, The Triumph of Time:— " At the door of life by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for man than death." In connexion with the whole subject of the present heading the question must, of course, frequently arise: "What is right? what is one's duty? " Securus judicat orbis ten-arum—is a maxim commonly supposed to be correct, but the world's opinion of what is right and what is wrong changes with the times----from age to age, according to the knowledge and prejudice of the age. Everybody, however, must decide what, according to his present knowledge, is to be regarded as right or wrong, and that is the main question for the individual at the moment, though later on he may have opportunities of increasing his knowledge, and his opinions may change. In spite of such mottoes as Facta non verba, and the Biblical sayings—"By their fruits ye shall know them " (St. Matthew vii. 16), and, " Each tree is known by its own fruit" (St. Luke vi. 44)—a man can only really be judged by the quality of his intentions and the quantity and degree of his endeavours in relation to bis strength and ability and circumstances : well I wot, if there be a hereafter and a judgment, a man will not only be judged by what during bis life he has done and what he has left undone, but still more, by how he has tried to do what he believed to be right. Some such pronouncement as that, but beautifully worded, J. H. Shorthouse skill- fully put into the meditations of his hero, John Inglesant, in his well-known novel of that name (1881). On this subject many illustra- tions could doubtless be adduced from the fields of art and epigram. 324 See W. L. Hildburgh, " Italian Wafering-Irons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries," Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1915, second series, vol. xxvii. p. 183. XII. The "Epicurean" Attitude towards Death. The debased "Epicureanism" of so-called followers of Epicurus in Eoman times has been already considered (cf. Part I. A.), and Eoman gems (cf. Part IY.) exist engraved with memento mori devices, plainly advocating present enjoyment of tbe sensual pleasures of life. Various other Eoman or Graeco-Eoman antiquities are described (cf. Part I. A. and Part IV.), conveying similar so-called " Epicurean " hints : " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die " (in the words of St. Paul,, explaining a pagan aspect of life, First Epistle to the Corinthians xv. 32); or, as Philip Doddridge has put it—in part of his epigram on the motto attached to his family arms, " Dum vivimus vivamus " :— " ' Live while you live,' the epicure would say, ' And seize the pleasures of the present day.' " The rest of this well-known epigram, said by Dr. Johnson to be one of the finest in the English language, is as follows:— " ' Live while you live,' the sacred preacher cries, ' And give to God each moment as it flies.' Lord, in my view let both united be ; I live in pleasure when I live to Thee." In regard to the Christian interpretation of the Latin, Dum vivimus vivamus, we may also quote Milton (Paradise Lost, Book xi. line 553): " But what thou liv'st, live well." Dum vivimus vivamus has been adopted as a motto by countless individuals and many families of many countries, by various societies and institutions, and doubtless by dining clubs. A medalet or medallic member's ticket of the Porcellian Club (founded in 1789), of the Harvard University (Massachusetts, U.S.A.), has the motto in question on the obverse, with the date, 1831.3" 325 See Malcolm Storer, " Medallic Harvard," in The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, for June, 1916. 346 aspects of death in art and epigram, [part ii.—xii. A mortal's manifestations of love and friendship towards the fellow-mortals whom he holds most dear might sometimes with advantage be stimulated by the Epicurean Carpe diem maxim, and many a pang of vain regret might be thereby lessened— " But oh ! the very reason why I clasp them is because they die." Cf. William Johnson Cory (1823-1892), Ionica, " Mimnermus in Church " (the last stanza):— " Forsooth the present we must give To that which cannot pass away; All beauteous things for whicb we live By laws of time and space decay. But oh ! the very reason why I clasp them is because they die." Even if pleasure may at times be stimulated or intensified by the recollection that it cannot last, there is, it must be owned, some bitter-sweet in the idea of the happiness or " joy whose hand is ever at his lips bidding adieu." Some persons' mental temperament is naturally of so happy a kind that they might, if fortunately placed amidst suitable surroundings, truthfully say, with the sun-dial in the garden— " Serene I stand amid the flowers, And only count life's sunny hours." On the other hand, some persons who spend their lives in the pursuit of pleasure, fortune, or fame, have a feeling of Apices notes le deluge, and would perhaps like to be consoled for the approaching end or ruin of their own life by the knowledge that it would be accompanied by some great world-cataclysm (floods, fires, earthquakes, wars, &c), or the end of all things: 'E/xov davovros yala ILi-xdrjTw irvpL An idea that their death is to be immediately shared by vast numbers of others may have PART II-xii.] " EPICUREAN " ATTITUDE. 347 occasionally acted as a poor kind of solace, even to wise and good men. In many countries, and amongst peoples of the most different religious opinions, there have been from time to time rumoured prophesies, or forebodings, of an approaching final annihilation of the world or of the whole universe. The younger Pliny wrote (for his friend, the historian Tacitus) a description of the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in the summer of the year a.d. 79, when Pompeii was buried in volcanic ashes, and when his uncle, the elder Pliny, died (apparently from sudden cardiac failure connected with fatigue or the inhalation of noxious vapours—but he was a corpulent man, whose heart was previously probably not sound). Many of the people, it was stated, were convinced that the final " endless night" of which they had heard had come upon the world. The younger Pliny, himself, thought that " he was perishing in company witb tbe universe and the universe with him—a miserable and yet a mighty solace in-death." XIII. Contemplative Attitudes. Mindfulness of Death, and a Cloistered Life of Contem- plation, as a Preparation for Death. ■' Mini oppidum career et solitudo paradisus." "Eegnum mundi contempsi propter amorem domini nostri Iesou Christi." A life of contemplation and quiet study in a cloister, withdrawn from worldly passions and ambitions, calmly awaiting and ever mindful of the coming of death, was a monkish ideal of former times. Some of the ideals of the early ascetic recluses in the desert are reflected in Paphnutius, a Latin drama by Eoswitha, or Hrotsuit, mm of Gandersheim, in the tenth century; an English version was not long ago privately acted in London. The contrast between the life of the religious recluse and an ordinary worldly life is pictorially expressed in the well-known fresco of the fourteenth century (already alluded to) known as the " Triumph of Death " in the Campo Santo of Pisa. (Cf. Part I. B. and Part I. D.) A human skull was often kept to serve the purpose of a simple kind of memento mori, by monks and religious recluses in their cells—as is seen in many prints, pictures, and works of art, of various periods. Workmen, digging near Holyrood Palace, found a skull, " which had no doubt formed the solitary companion of one of the monks " of Holyrood Abbey (founded in 1128). It had a hole in the top of the cranium, probably for securing a crucifix, and over tbe brow was traced in antique characters, Memento mori. The relic in question was procured by the late Sir Patrick Walker. (Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh, vol. iii. p. ii.) The memento mori design on the reverse of an Italian cincpicccnto medal (Fig. 48), by Giovanni Boldu, apparently suggested the design of a marble medallion 350 aspects of death in art and epigram, [part n.-xiii. which I have seen on the facade of the famous Church of the Carthusian Monastery (Certosa) near Pavia, though the legend, Innccentia et memoria mortis, was substituted for that on the medal (" Io son fine "). An Italian medal of Fra Cesario Contughi, by Sperandio (fifteenth century), represents Fra Cesario, in the dress of the Servite order, seated in a contemplative attitude, with a death's-head by his side. The inscriptions, "Mors omnibus aequa" and " Vita est meditatio," on a Danish memorial medal of George Hojer (1670), were obviously meant to suggest that a contemplative life is the best means of preparing for, and being ready for, death, which no one can escape. The same may be said in regard to a medal of Nicolas Georg de Eaigersperg, with his motto, Cogita mori ante mortem. It is, perhaps, the aspect of death from the old religious point of view of the preparation for death (by prolonged meditation on death and the almost necessarily associated withdrawal of interest and energy from the affairs of life) which has more than any other cause tended to make all studies connected with the idea of death unpopular in modern times. Indeed, the constant medi- tation on death and the unceasing demand, Vigilate et orate, during life, may sometimes have helped to make death longed for as a happy release. It is not astonishing that such mottoes should sometimes have occurred as, " Melior mors vita " (" Death is better than life "), chosen by the Dutch prelate, J. van Neercassel, who died in 1686. Cf. Heading xvii., on Pessimism in regard to Life. It is also not surprising that in extreme instances— more or less as a result of the traditional Christianity handed down from Mediaeval times—a morbid brooding and pathological love of death and everything connected PART Il.-xiii.] CONTEMPLATIVE ATTITUDES. 351 with death (thanatophilia of French authors—not the same as, though it may be combined with, necrophilia) should have arisen in mentally peculiar individuals and families. This was, perhaps, the case in the Spanish Hapsburg dynasty, which ended (1700) with the feeble King Charles II. Cf. P. R. Mersey, L'Amour de la Mort cJiez les Habsbourg, Oilier- Henry, Paris, 1912. In a kind of way, however, thanatophilia (morbid love of death) may be interpreted as excess in a courageous method of opposing too much love of life—an opposition (dictated by man's religious or moral opinions) towards extreme and selfish indulgence of the conservative animal instinct of self-preservation. This instinct finds part of its natural expression in healthy love of life and joy of living, and in ordinary fear of death (not morbid fear of death, or thanatopJwbia) and avoidance of death as far as possible, by shunning unnecessary and useless risks and dangers to life. Havelock Ellis32s insists on the Mediaeval brooding over death being peculiarly congenial to the Spanish temperament. The Escorial, founded by King Philip II of Spain in the sombre mountains to the north-west of Madrid, includes a royal palace and the royal mausoleum of the Spanish sovereigns. In this gloomy " palace of death," as Havelock Ellis calls it, the reigning monarch may descend directly from his state rooms to view the sarcophagus prepared long before he was born to receive his body when he dies. In the huge pile there is nothing so essentially Spanish as the little suite of dark rooms which Philip II " built for himself, so that he might lie on his dying bed with its outlook on the high altar, fingering the same crucifix as his father, the still mightier monarch, Charles V, also held when he too lay dying, in the same Spanish way, gazing at the altar in the Convent of Yuste." Intimately allied to the subject of the present Heading is the question of asceticism in general (not merely religious asceticism) and the influence of ascetic habits in the practical life of modern times. C. A. Mercier (The Flesh and the Spirit) " shows the deep foundations in human nature on which ascetic practices rest, their value to the community and to the race." J" Havelock Ellis, The Soul of Spain, London, 1908, pp. 21, 25. XIV. Activity and Utility. Mindfulness of Death as an Incentive to Eight Living, Charity, helping Otheks, and making the Best Active Use of Life. " Teach us to remember that we must die, so that we may become wise " (Psalm xc. 12, after Luther's transla- tion) ; " In all thy matters remember thy last end, and thou shalt never do amiss" (Ecclesiasticus, Eevised Version, vii. 36); " Eemernber thy last end, and cease from enmity" (ibid., Eevised Version, ch. xxxviii. 6); " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest" (Eccle- siastes ix. 10). " I must work the works of him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work " (St. John ix. 4). Of this last passage Goethe has given a poetical version :— " Noch ist es Tag, da riihre sich der Mann ! Die Nacht tritt ein, wo niemand wirken kann." The above-mentioned quotation from the 90th Psalm occurs on a Danish medal, dated 1634, which will be described later on (see Part III.). Life may well be regarded as a period during which man should make the best use he can of his strength, his light, and his free will (however little the last may be), before the darkness of death overtakes him. " I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, &c." 32T Cf. G. J. Whyte-Melville (1821-1878): 328 " Life is but to 327 See Benham's Book of Quotations (p. 448), on the many persons to whom this saying has been attributed. Stephen Grellet (1773-1855), an American quaker of French birth, seems the most likely of them. 32S Appropriately quoted by R. W. MacKenna, The Adventure of Death, London, 1916, p. 2. 2 A 354 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPK.KAM. [PAItT II. xiv. do a day's work honestly, and death, to come home for a day's wages when the sun goes down." An attitude of this kind towards death should he contrasted with those attitudes that suggest a merely contemplative life and withdrawal from worldly cares and temptations (Heading xiii.) or that suggest a life devoted to sensual pleasure (Heading xii.). It tends to induce a life, not of selfish idleness or sensual pleasure, but of activity and utility. The past is unalterable and irretrievable, the future is uncertain and hidden from us, but the present is ours, for us to use it well. Miss S. F. A. Caulfeild (House Mottoes and Inscriptions, Revised edition, London, 1908, p. 53) says that over the door of the school- master's house at Leyburn, Yorkshire, is the following :— "Time is thou hast; see that thou well employ. Time past is gone; thou canst not that employ. Time future is not, and may never be. Time present is the only time for thee." Cf. similar views, as expressed by R. W. Emerson, in Society and Solitude, and cf. also Cicero, De Senectute, chapter xix. 69 (translation by C. R. Edmonds) : " Hours indeed depart from us, and days and months and years; nor does past time ever return, nor can it be discovered what is to follow." In regard to tbe whole subject of tbis chapter (Part II. xiv.) the following passages from the poems of Longfellow may be compared :— " Trust no future, bowe'er pleasant; Let tbe dead past bury its dead! Act, act in tbe living Present! Heart within, and God o'er head!" (A Psalm of Life.) "It is tbe heart, and not tbe brain, That to the highest doth attain." (The Building of the Ship.) " Live I, so live I, To my Lord heartily, To my Prince faithfully, To my Neighbour bonestly, Die I, so Die I." (After tbe Sinngedichte of Friedrich von Logau.) PAKT II -xiv.] ACTIVE USE OF LIFE, &C 355 W. E. H. Lecky 329 wrote: " A life of active duty is the best preparation for the end, and so large a part of the evil of death lies in its anticipation, that an attempt to deprive it of its terrors by constant meditation almost necessarily defeats its object, while at the same time it forms an unnaturally tense, feverish, and tragical character, annihilates the ambition and enthusiasm that are essential to human progress, and not unfrequently casts a chill and a deadness over the affections." Living a life of activity and utility, such as I have here referred t»>, would, doubtless, by some be regarded as "the best form of Epicureanism " (" Labor ipse voluptas "), were it not that the word " Epicureanism" in this connexion might be supposed to signify that the attainment of pleasure is the prime motive, rather than merely a frequent and agreeable consequence or accompaniment, of the active life (" Non dux, sed comes voluptas"). Montaigne concluded that, "let philosophers say what they will, the final end we all have in view, even in virtue itself, is pleasure." He held that the pleasure which tbe Stoic takes in being strong enough to resist the pleasures of sense is only pleasure of a higher kind. He maintained that the quest of virtue is not disagreeable, for even tbe pursuit must have a savour of tbe (unattainable) quality itself. " The happiness which shines in virtue illumines all its avenues and approaches, from the first entrance to the last inner-gate." Tbe highest blessing that virtue can confer is, Montaigne contends, the contempt of death.330 As illustrating the particular aspect of life and death under consideration, we may refer to medals and medalets of physicians or medical societies, inscribed with the famous Hippocratic aphorism : rO /3io? fipa-xyq, g 8e re^yr) fiaKprj (as on a medal commemorating the foundation 3-!l W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals, 1905 edition, vol. i. p. 203. 33t' See W. Lucas Collins, Montaigne, 1879, p. 122. 2 A 2 356 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xiv. of the Medical Association of Warsaw, 1800), or its Latin translation, " Ars longa, vita brevis " (as on a medal of J. H. Pozzi, 1697-1752, poet and physician of Bologna, and on another of Dr. C. G. B. Daubeny, 1795-1867, of Oxford). "Art is long, and time is fleeting" (Longfellow's Psalm of Life); " Ach Gott! die Kunst ist lang, und kurz ist unser Leben " (Goethe's Faust). The Latin form occurs in Seneca's De Brevitate Vitac. Under the present heading the familiar " Eespice finem " might be replaced by " Ptespice vitam." It is not so much " Think of the end," as " Think of the shortness of life, and make active use of the time you have," or, as Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania Almanac, 1758) said, " Dost thou love life ? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." " There will be sleeping enough in the grave" (Benjamin Franklin, ibid.). " Shall I not have all eternity to rest in ?" exclaimed Thomas Carlyle. In his Past and Present (1843) he regarded all " true work " as religion : " Admirable was that saying of the old monks, Laborarc est orare." The motto, " Ora et labora," occurs on some German coins of the seventeenth century, namely, on some so-called " Kippermiinzen," coins of very bad quality, struck about 1620.331 Eesting easily leads to rusting, so Luther thought. He is supposed to have said: "East' ich, so rost' ich" ("If I rest, I rust"—Eesting leads to rusting). An old German proverb was: " If 1 rest, I rust, says the key." " It is better to wear out than to rust out" (saying attributed to Eichard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough, 1631-1718), The Greek signifying, " For the night cometh" (after St. John ix. 4) was adopted as a motto by Dr. Samuel Johnson, on his watch, and by 331 See Mumen und Medaillen der Welnschcn Ldnde—Das mittlere Haus Braunschweig—Linie zu Wolfenbiittel, by E. Fiala, Leipzig, 1906, pp. 215 et seq. PART Il.-xiv.] ACTIVE USE OF LIFE, &C. 357 Sir Walter Scott, on a sun-dial at Abbotsford. " Ask me for anything but time ! " was a pregnant phrase of the great Napoleon, according to Colonel G. F. R. Henderson's Life of Stonewall Jackson. Compare the following sayings and sun-dial inscriptions: "Life is fleeting as the shadow " ; " You may waste, but cannot stop me " ; " There is nothing more precious nor time" ; " Days make years"; " Time and tide stay for no man " (on a sun-dial on old London Bridge); " Every hour shortens life"; "Time when past is irreparable"; "(Soles) pereunt et imputantur" (Martial, Epig., lib. v. 20. 13); " Horae cedunt, et dies, et menses et anni, nee praeteritum tempus unquam revertitur" (Cicero, De Senectute, xix. 69). This last passage from Cicero's writings has been already referred to above in its English rendering. Amongst old sun-dial mottoes are also the follow- ing:—" Laborare est orare"; " Ora et labora " ; "Qui laborat orat " ; " Labor ipse voluptas " ; " Labora dum lucet." In tbe following lines (English, and also in a kind of Mediaeval Latin hymnologist style) I have endeavoured to put together some of the views expressed by Carlyle, in his enthusiastic encomium on "true work" (included in Past and Present, 1843), and by other old and modern writers on the physical and mental advantages of work and exercise :— " Let others rest, if they would rust Before they must return to dust. It's exercise that I advise, And so will you, if you are wise." " Ambularc, so curaro ; Sc movcio est valeie ; Laborare est orare; Nox et quies imminent." A memorial medal of the reign of Christian III of Denmark bears an inscription similar to those seen on old sun-dials, " Bedenck das Endt und die Stunde" ("Ee- member the end and the hour," that is to say, do not waste precious hours), recalling the words of Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471): " Memento semper finis, et quia perditum non redit tempus" (Book I. ch. 25. 11). A little gold enamelled coffin-shaped pendant in the British Museum bears the words, " Cogita mori ut vivas," i.e. " Think of living, that you may live (properly in this world, and thus obtain everlasting life)." "Live to die" is one of many similar inscriptions to be found on old memorial finger- rings. The thought of death as an inducement to help others is well illustrated by many medals to the "pious memory " of founders of, and donors to, colleges, hospitals, and other philanthropic and charitable institutions. 358 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND KPN1KAM. [PART Il.-xiv. This attitude towards death is to some extent illustrated by epitaphs of the following type :— " That I spent, that I had ; That I gave, that I have ; That I kept, that I lost." Amongst the various epitaphs containing passages like this, the best known in England are probably the Courtenay (Earl of Devonshire) one, and the Eobert Byrkes one (Doncaster), of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively ; but the idea of such epitaphs was probably derived from one of the tales in the Gesta Romanorum, a monk's compilation of the thirteenth or fourteenth century.332 In digging the foundations for a palace, says the tale, the workmen came upon a golden sarcophagus, inscribed as follows : " I have expended; I have given ; I have kept; I have possessed ; I do possess ; I have lost; I am punished. "What I expended, I had; what I gave away, I have." Possibly the idea is older still, for a saying preserved from the lost works of a Eoman poet of the Augustan age is: " Hoc habeo quodcunque dedi." The same idea is suggested by the Mediaeval doggerel, already referred to: "0 dominus dives, non omni tempore vives; Fac bona dum vivis, post mortem vivere si vis." Compare the following epitaph- advice (1592): "Lyve well and Dye never, Dye well and Live ever" (epitaph on Joane Brodnax, 1592); also the more ordinary mottoes, "Vive ut vivas in vitam aeternam " ; " Vive ut postea vivas." Under the figure of a priest on a circular brass plate 332 See the English translation by Charles Swan, the edition published by Boutledge and Sons, London, 1905, tale xvi. page 109. In Swan's translation, revised and corrected by Wynnard Hooper, as reprinted by G. Bell & Sons (in their "York Library," London, 1905, page 39), tbe passage reads: " What I formerly expended, I have "— which is evidently a mistake. PAKT Il.-xiv.J ACTIVE USE OF LIFE, &C. 359 in St. Peter's Church, St. Albans, occurs (according to Pettigrew) a Latin version as follows :— " Quod expendi habui, Quod donavi habeo; Quod negavi punior, Quod servavi perdidi." The same (according to Pettigrew) is on a brass of John Killyngworth (1412), formerly in Eddlesborough Church, now in Pitstone Church (Buckinghamshire), and also on a brass at St. Olave's Church, Hart Street, Minories, London. The same epitaph is quoted in the notes to Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, and is to be found in John Weever's Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631), which also contains the following once well-known epitaph inscription (similar to verses on a hearse quoted in Part IV. ii.) :— " Respice quid prodest praesentis temporis aevum ; Omne quod est, nihil est, praeter amare Deum." In Weever's book (p. 19) are given two other Latin lines (also quoted in Jeremy Taylor's notes on the same subject), which were apparently taken from an addition to the Vo.r Clamantis (John Gower, 1325-1408):— " Da dum tempus habes; tibi propria sit- manus haeres ; Auferet hoc nemo, quod dabis ipse Deo."333 Of the Courtenay epitaph which formerly existed in Tiverton Church (Devonshire) there are various accounts. It is mentioned in Tristram Risdon's Survey of Devonshire (finished in 1630) and in many other works, as being on tbe tomb of Edward Courtenay, third Earl of Devon, called the blind or "good erle," who died in 1419. The following is the version given by Pettigrew:— '' Hoe ! hoe ! who lies here ? I, the goode Erie of Devonshere; With Maud, my wife, to me full dere, We lyved togeather fyfty-fyve yere. What wee gave, wee have; What wee spent, wee had; What wee left, wee loste." 333 Cf. the "Temple Classics" edition of Taylor's Holy Dying, London, 1901, p. 353. 360 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIC 1!AM. [PAKT Il.-xiv. Tbe epitaph on Robert Byrkes, dated 1579, formerly in Doncaster Parish Church, is given in Edward Miller's History and Antiquities of Doncaster (1804, p. 74), and in Richard Gough's Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain it is mentioned as " new cut" upon the tomb :— "Howe, Howe, who is beare? I Robin of Doncaster and Margaret my feare [wife]. That I spent, that I bad, That I gave, that I have, That I left, that I lost. a.d. 1579. Quoth Robertus Byrkes, who in this world did reign Threescore years and seven, and yet lived not one." The Robert Byrkes in question was Mayor of Doncaster in the years 1569, 1573, and 1577. The great popularity of such epitaphs was shown by their repetition in various parts of England. In the Parish Church of Leek, in Derbyshire, I have seen the following version forming the epitaph of a certain Thomas Osborn, who died in 1749 :— " As I was, so be ye; As I am, ye shall be; That I gave, that I have; That I spent, that I had; Thus I end all my cost; What I left, that I lost." H. P. Dodd refers to a tombstone in St. Stephen's Church, at Ipswich, to tbe memory of a certain Stephen Manister, who died in 1751. The tombstone, by desire of the deceased, bore tbe inscription:— "What I gave, I have; what I spent, I had; What I left, I lost, for want of giving." On the picture, entitled, "Sic transit gloria mundi," by G. F. Watts, in the Tate Gallery (National Gallery of British Art) in London, the artist inscribed— " What I spent, I had. What I saved, I lost. What I gave, I have." Francis Quarles probably bad a similar idea in mind when he wrote the puzzle verses— " The goods we spend we keep; and what we save We lose; and only what we lose we have." And it is said that an epitaph on a lady in an Italian churchyard declares : " Here lies Estella, who transported a large fortune to heaven in acts of charity, and has gone thither to enjoy it." Cf. the seventh PAKT II. -xiv.] ACTIVE CSE OF LIFE, &C 3lil stanza of Bishop C. Wordsworth's hymn—No. 365 in Hymns Ancient and Modern:— " We lose what on ourselves we spend, We have as treasure without end Whatever, Lord, to Thee we lend, Who givest all." An epigram by Martial (Epig., v. 42) points to the advantages of generous liberality from a worldly point of view; an English version, after William Hay, quoted by H. P. Dodd, ends:— '' Who gives to friends so much from Fate secures, That is the only wealth for ever yours." The corresponding Latin lines are :— " Extra fortunam est quicquid donatur amicis: Quas dedaris solas semper habebis opes." A Greek epigram by Lucian (English version quoted by H. P. Dodd) points to the same conclusions:— " He who his wealth to generous ends applies, Is rich, and honoured by the good and wise. He, who for endless treasure ever sighs, Whilst pile on pile, and bags on bags arise, Shall toil like yonder bees with fruitless care, And others shall the luscious honey share." Inscriptions on ancient Egyptian sepulchral stelae, Arc., show, however, how in ancient Egypt charity was regarded as a virtue, the practice of which would be helpful to the practiser in the judgment of his soul after death. There are, of course, numerous poems, paintings and works of art illustrating Mediaeval and later aspects of charity. One need merely instance the poems and works of art referring to Saint Elisabeth of Hungary (1207-1231), and the ceremonious distributions of alms and washings of the feet of the poor, as observed at the 362 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICKAM. [PART II.-XIV. various Christian courts of Europe; the legendary idea of Saint Martin dividing his military cloak with a naked beggar; the story of "The Lady of La Caraye," as poetically told (1862) by Mrs. Norton, and how Claude Toussaint, Comte de la Garaye, and his wife (died 1755. 1757), gave up their gay worldly life, converted their chateau of La Garaye (near Dinan, in Brittany) into a hospital, and studied medicine and surgery in order to take care of the sick. Edward Gibbon,334 the historian, in commenting on the above- mentioned Courtenay epitaph, says that it " inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by thoughtless charity." Modern England has, indeed, witnessed an exuberant growth of charitable institutions of all kinds, competing one with another, and sometimes impeding or suffocating each other, necessitating the expenditure of vast sums of money in their adminis- tration. Perhaps we are approaching a time when a great part of this work will be undertaken by the State out of the State revenues (income tax, &c), and when those with superabundance of wealth will devote much of their superfluous funds towards paying off the National Debt. [But probably the present income tax and death duty arrangements will considerably reduce tbe number of persons able or inclined to act in this manner.] Perhaps also increased State-control would tend to diminish the abuses of charity and lessen the evil effects due to misdirected charity; it might also remove the feeling of degradation sometimes felt by deserving recipients of (well-directed) charity. With all the preceding may be contrasted the reputed epitaph (anonymous, in the Greek Anthology, vii. 325) ol' King Sardanapalus, and the Latin epitaph (Corp. Inser. Lat., vol. ix. No. 2114): " Dum vixi vixi quomodo condecet ingenuom, quod comedi et ebibi tantum meu(m) 334 In the "Digression on the Family of Courtenay," appended to Chapter lxi. of his Decline and Fall of the Boman Empire. Gibbon regarded the English Courtenays as being a branch of the same house that produced the three Byzantine Emperors of that family name, who reigned at Constantinople. He pointed out that there was not much question of any fall in the English family, such as the motto of the Powderham Courtenays would seem to suggest: Ubi lapsus, guid feci 1 (" Where have I fallen ; what have I done? "). PART H.-xiv.J ACTIVE USE OF LIFE, &C. 363 est." The Sardanapalus epitaph is translated by \Y. E. Paton (" The Loeb Classical Library") as follows: " I have all I ate and drank and the delightful things I learnt with the Loves, but all my many and rich possessions I left behind." With this may be contrasted No. 326 (attributed to tbe cynic philosopher, Crates of Thebes), which is rendered by Paton (loc. cit.) as follows: " I have all I got by study and by thought and the grave things I learnt with the Muses, but all my many and rich possessions Vanity seized on." The passage of Cicero (Tusc. Disputat., v. 35) relating to the Sardanapalus epitaph runs as follows : " Quo modo igitnr jucunda vita potest esse, a qua, absit prudentia, absit moderatio ? Ex quo Sardanapalli, opulentissimi Syriae regis, error adgnoscitur, qui incidi jussit in busto: " ' Haec habeo, quae edi, quaeque exsaturata libido, Hausit : at ilia jacent multa et praeclara relicta.' ' Quid aliud,' inquit Aristoteles, ' in bo vis, non in regis sepulcro inscriberes ? Haec habere se mortuum dicit, quae ne vivus quidem diutius habebat quam fruebatur.'" J. D. Eolleston refers to a similar epitaph by Simonides of Cos (Anth. Grace, vii. 348) on Timocreon of Ehodes, "a fellow-poet celebrated alike for his satirical and gastronomic prowess." It is translated by W. E. Paton (" The Loeb Classical Library ") as follows : " Here I lie, Timocreon of Ehodes, after drinking much and eating much and speaking much ill of men." This may be compared with the next epigram in the Greek Anthology (vii. 349, anonymous), which is thus rendered by W. R. Paton (loc. cit.): "After eating little and drinking little and suffering much sickness I lasted long, but at length I did die. A curse on you all!" XV. Death and Love, and the " Crown of Life." The Praise of Death. A well-known picture might reasonably be interpreted by any one looking at it as representing the angel of death conducting away a human soul, who in the gloom recognizes the face of the messenger, transformed from that of death to that of love. To this picture a quota- tion from the first of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese has been added— " ' Guess now who holds thee.' 'Death,' I said; but then The silver answer rang, ' Not Death, but Love.' " Death is a veiled figure. What kind of aspect does the removal of the veil reveal to the dying ? Is it the aspect suggested by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton (1805- 1873), the novelist, in two stanzas of his poem on Bore a nd Beath ?— " When death smites the aged, Escaping above Flies the soul re-deliver'd By Death unto Love." " And if, nobly hoping, Thou gazest above, In Death thou beholdest The aspect of Love." In keeping with this meaning is the following stanza from Edmond G. A. Holmes's poem, To Death:— " And yet perchance death's mask of terror hides The very face divinely fair and bright, Whose baffling beauty lures us on and guides Our hearts into the light." Wordsworth poetically described a miserable crowd before " the footsteps of a throne," crying:— " ' Thou art our king, 0 Death ! to thee we groan.' I seemed to mount those steps; the vapours gave Smooth way: and I beheld tbe face of one Sleeping alone within a mossy cave, With her face up to heaven ; that seemed to have Pleasing remembrance of a thought forgone ; A lovely Beauty in a summer grave ! " 366 ASPECTS OF DEATH INt ART AND EPIGRAM. [I'ART II.-XV. Oliver Goldsmith refers to the removal of death's " mask of terror," in the following lines:— " Death, when unmask'd, shows me a friendly face, And is a terror only at a distance; For as the line of life conducts me on To Death's great court, the prospect seems more fair." A kind of allegorical illustration of the same nature is suggested by what happened at Castle Perilous in Lord Tennyson's " Gareth and Lynette" (The Round Table), when Sir Gareth was confronted by the fearsome image of Death :— " At once Sir Lancelot's charger fiercely neigh'd, And Death's dark war-horse bounded forward with him. Then those that did not blink the terror, saw That Death was cast to ground, and slowly rose. But with one stroke Sir Gareth split the skull. Half fell to right and half to left and lay. Then with a stronger buffet he clove the helm As throughly as the skull ; and out from this Issued the bright face of a blooming boy Fresh as a flower new-born." " Death's mask of terror " has indeed to be bravely met by the strong and the weak, the healthy, the diseased and the dying. The saying, " La Mort est le baiser de Dieu," is supposed to have been suggested from old Jewish (scriptural) sources. Death may perhaps, like Pain, be consoled by Love. Cf. Alfred Austin, Lamia's Winter Quarters, London, 1898, p. 58 :— " The sweetest thing in all the world is pain Consoled by love." A mother may be consoled for both tbe pains of labour and the danger of death connected with child birth by tbe knowledge that a child has been born into the world. Cf. St. John xvi. 21: "Awoman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she. is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." PART II.-XV.] DEATH AND LOVE, &C. 367 This may be compared to a kind of " plasmal" idea of " immortality gained through having offspring," in some respects analogous to August Weismann's modern doctrine of the immortality of germ- plasm. Jelliffe in a review335 of an article by G. Stanley Hall, on "Thanatophobia and Immortality," writes : "It is the idea of the life still existing beyond the body, the difficulty of accepting annihilation, that makes man adhere to the belief in the existence of souls in some other world after death. This provides a compensation for the crude fact of bodily death, just as love finds its redemption from mere passionate gratification in immortality in its offspring. ... To live in one's children brings a satisfaction of the immortality wish, and removes the sting of death. Contemplation of their future may even enter into the happiness pictured in the life beyond." The idea of Love and Death being united by a mother voluntarily undergoing the Caesarian operation for the sake of her child, who was thus delivered and lived, whilst she herself died, is expressed by the inscription on a monument (referred to under Heading xi.) : " Mors et Amor tanto potuerunt funere jungi." The lady in question, the wife of Pierre de Puget, died at Senlis in 1673. So also, in the Greek play by Euripides, did Alcestis, the ideal woman, wife and queen, " succeed in uniting Love and Death," by " daring for love to die "—to save the life of her husband, Admetus. From another (religious) point of view death and love may be connected, as an inscription recalls, which is cut on a chateau of Lavolte, on the Rhone: " Omnia praetereunt praeter amare Deum,;'336 a favourite saying of Kaspar Cruciger (1504-1548), the German Protestant theologian and friend of Luther—a saying doubtless after Thomas a Kempis. Another manner of union of Death with Love or Friendship is implied by the pentameter—" Te teneam moriens deficiente manu "—addressed by Samuel Johnson, on his death-bed, to his old friend, Bennet Langton. 335 Journ. Nervous and Mental Disease, 1917, vol. xl. p. 274. 33,1 See Miss S. F. A. Cauifeild's House Mottoes and Inscriptions, new edition, London, 1908, p. 107. Cf. the inscription on an old hearse which I quote in Part IV. ii., together with a reference to Thomas a Kempis. 368 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PART II.-XV. The actual handclasp of a dying person may be sometimes analogous to the grasp of a patient being anaesthetised for a surgical operation. Johnson held Langton in the highest esteem, and on one occasion said to Boswell: "I know not who will go to Heaven if Langton does not. Sir, I would almost say, Sit anima mea cum Langtono." Johnson's fear of dying and dislike of the subject of death has probably been often overestimated. Undoubtedly he expressed his dread of it in conversations with Dr. William Adams (his old friend, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford) and others, and on different occasions he well explained the reason why, from his religious point of view, there were logical grounds for fearing death. Indeed, when Boswell (1777) mentioned an acquaintance, who used to fear death greatly, but at that time contemplated his approaching dissolution with equanimity, Johnson answered : " Sir, this is only a disordered imagination taking a different turn." He was also sometimes impatient of discussing or dwelling on the subject of death. He told Boswell (during their tour to the Hebrides): " If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still." On another occasion when Boswell pressed the subject on him, he seemed annoyed, and answered : " It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time. ... A man knows it must be so and submits. It will do him no good to whine." When Boswell then tried to continue the conversation, he was quite provoked and said: '' Give us no more of this . . . Don't let us meet to-morrow." Such conversations are, however, not out of keeping with his having had Greek words engraved on his watch (see Part II. xiv.), signifying, For the night cometh (after St. John ix. 4). Johnson had the courage not to fear to admit his fear regarding death— and, in his downright, blunt way, probably exaggerated that fear and, moreover, explained, bis logical reasons for it. At the end he certainly met his approaching death in a manly manner. A hope of the survival of conjugal love after death and a renewal of a happy married life in another world is obviously indicated on various ancient sarcophagi and sepulchral monuments. On a well-known archaic (sixth century B.C.) Etruscan terracotta sarcophagus, from Cervetri (the ancient Caere), in the British Museum 33T— which bears various allusions to death and a life after death—the husband and wife are represented reclining on the cover, apparently taking part in a banquet of the 337 Terracotta Sarcophagi, Greek and Etruscan, in the British Museum, by A. S. Murray, London, 1898, Plate ix. PART II.-XV.] DEATH AND LOVE, &C. 369 blessed in their after-life. This sarcophagus incidentally likewise suggests that the Etruscan ladies must have been honoured and esteemed, and must have held a high and influential position in the Etruscan social life of the period. The wealthy ancient Egyptians hoped for a life of domestic bliss after their earthly death. Thus, in the papyrus of Anhai (about 1040 B.C.) this lady is seen meeting her father and mother in the Sekhethetep (a kind of " Elysian Fields ") and sailing with her husband in a boat on one of the canals; in the papyrus of the scribe Ani (about 1500 B.C.) the deceased is seen seated with his wife Thuthu, playing draughts.338 Xowhere, however, is the hope for the renewal of conjugal happiness in the life to come better expressed than on the modern sepulchral monument of the surgeon, E. P. P. Macloghlin (1855-1904), and his wife, the work of the sculptor, Alfred Gilbert, E.A. (made about 1908). This is now to be seen in the hall of the Eoyal College of Surgeons (Lincoln's Inn Fields, London), and bears the appropriate motto, Mors Janua Vitae. The affectionate couple are represented in an attitude of tender endearment, holding and examining a richly ornamented casket in front of them (intended for the reception of their ashes), the decorations on which and on the base of the monument are emblematic of the survival of souls and spiritual love after death. In regard to love's power of changing the aspect both of life and death, see George Meredith's beautiful Hymn to Colour, beginning:— "With Life and Death I walked, when Love appeared, And made them on each side a shadow seem." 338 Cf. E. A. Wallis Budge, A Guide to the Egyptian Collection in the British Museum, London, 1909, pp. 137-151. 2 B 370 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XV. From tbe same highly poetical point of view Life and Death may be imagined as both "dancing" to the melody of Low- see One Hundred Poems of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore, 1914, Book ii. 103—as quoted by Robert Bridges, in The Spirit of Man, 1916, No. 66. Love, like religious faith, may indeed be said to con- quer death, when death loses its sting by means of love, and when love produces a fearlessness towards death and a willingness to die or to risk death for the sake of others. One of G. F. Watts's pictures in the Tate Gallery (London) represents " Love Triumphant" (over death). The idea of Love (in the form of Cupid) shoot- ing a dart at Death is not unknown as a partly playful, partly serious, design amongst minor work of art. See, for example, the illustration on page 248 of Pitrarque, by the Prince d'Essling and Eugene Miintz, Paris, 1902. In a poem in the Greek Anthology, Cupid is said to be able to shoot his darts " even to Acheron and the King of Hades." According to Thomas Stanley's English version (seventeenth century)—■ " His band, though little, can an arrow throw; To Hell he shoots, and wounds tbe powers below."339 On the other band, Love is often compelled to witness tbe separation of two lovers by Death. Compare the subject of one of Jos.t Ammann's emblematic devices (at tbe end of Enchiridion Artis Pingendi, Prancof., 1578): Death is about to cut off two lovers with his scythe, whilst Cupid hovers over them. The idea of death cutting off lovers is illustrated by the following epigram attributed to Simonides, trans- lated by John Sterling340 : — " Ah ! sore disease, to men why enviest thou Their prime of years before they join the dead? His life from fair Timarchus snatching now, Before tbe youth bis maiden bride could wed." Dodd compares this epigram with the epitaph on Euphemius (English version by Samuel Wesley junior) by St. Gregory Nazianzen 339 See tbe Greek Anthology, in Bohn's Classical Library, London, 1852, p. 150. 340 Quoted by H. P. Dodd in bis Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 54. PART II.-XV.] DEATH AND LOVE, &C. 371 (about 325-390 a.d.), one of the fathers of the Eastern Christian Church :— "A blooming youth lies buried here, Euphemius, to his country dear. Nature adorned bis mind and face With every Muse and every Grace; About the marriage-state to prove, But Death had quicker wings than Love." The fanciful idea of Love wounding or killing Death is made use of in a Latin epigram of tbe early seventeenth century, by Balthasar Bonifacius,341 of which H. P. Dodd342 quotes the following English translation:— " Yon eye, that into shade the sunlight throws, Death, had he sight, would have no heart to close. My life upon 't, e'en Death himself would die Of love, at sight of yonder starry eye." This poetical conceit may be compared with tbe idea of Time throwing a dart at Death, which is contained in the well-known epitaph sometimes ascribed to Ben Jonson, but almost certainly by William Browne (1591-1643 ?) on Mary, Countess of Pembroke (1561- 1621), the mother of the poet's patron, William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke (1580-1630), and sister of Sir Philip Sidney ("Astro- phel") :— " Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse, Sidney's sister—Pembroke's mother.— Death, ere thou hast slain another, Learn'd and fair and good as she, Time shall throw his dart at thee." This beautiful epitaph may in some respects be compared with the following lines "on a dead lady," by Sir Edwin Arnold, from an Italian original (in which Death is poetically represented as being ennobled by the beauty and grace of tlie deceased, so that the survivor begins to look forward to, instead of dreading, the approach of his own death):— "Death cannot change her face, tender and fair! 'Tis she who changes Death, and makes him dear." One has from several considerations to acknowledge that deaths, like births, are both necessary and beneficial 341 Printed in Abraham Wright's Delitiae Delitiarum, Oxford,, 1637, p. 97. 342 H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 157. 2 B 2 372 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XV. for the progress of the human race. Moreover, as Montaigne wrote: " We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbour from the storms and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils ?" Doubtless, in a kind of way, natural death may be regarded as a manifestation of Nature's love for her children. It is, of course, in a quite different sense that the French poet, Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), wrote: " L'Amour et la Mort n'est qu'une mesme chose." Aleister Crowley has written a poem headed "Mors Janua Amoris,"343 as if death were tbe entrance to both life and love, and he quotes a passage from Kelly: " None but the dead can know the worth of love." Here one may also call to mind the strange paradoxical truth (cf. Part I. B.) in biology, which Anatole France expresses thus: " All union of sexes is a sign of [coming] death; and we could not know love were we to live indefinitely." It is interesting that on Eoman works of art the Genius of Death so closely resembles a Cupid, the " Genius of Love." He differs by his more serious appear- ance : his torch is inverted and extinguished, or he is extinguishing it, and occasionally he is without wings, to express (according to C. W. King) the cessation of move- ment at death. It seems as if death and decay are as necessary for life and growth as life and growth are for death and decay, as the existence of pain and sadness is for pleasure and gladness, grief for joy, misery for happiness, evil for good, opposition for valour, vice for virtue, pessimistic ideas for optimistic ideas, darkness for light, female sexuality for male sexuality, negative electricity for The Works of A. Crowley, 1905, vol. i. p. 175. PART II.-XV.] DEATH AND LOVE, &C. 373 positive electricity ; a consideration of this " polarity " throws some light on the " mystery " of pain, misery, and death. It is difficult to believe that anything necessary and beneficial for the race would not appear kind and beneficial to the individual also if only he were able to understand everything about it. According to a fragment of the Hypsipyle of Euripides, quoted by Plutarch and— as " from an old poet "—by Cicero,344 " what is necessary cannot be grievous." " Death cannot be an evil, since it is universal "■—is how Schiller expressed a similar idea, in conversation with his sister-in-law, Caroline von Wolzogen. Cf. Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1697) : "If some men died and others did not, death would indeed be a most mortifying evil." The motto, " Marcet sine adversario virtus" (from Seneca, De Providentid, cap. ii.), appears on the reverse of three medals which have been published as of the fifteenth century."345 Mr. G. F. Hill has, however, kindly pointed out to me that only the last of these is genuine, namely, the medal by Jean de Candida,346 of bis friend and patron, Robert Briconnet, enlightened scholar of the new learning, French statesman and Archbishop of Rbeims, who died in 1497. I have been able to examine one of the supposed medals of Francesco Accolti.347 In the production of that piece probably a plaster cast of the medal of Robert Briconnet served as the foundation. In the plaster cast the portrait on the obverse could have been slightly altered, the legend changed to FRAN ■ ACCOLTIVS ■ ARET ■ , and the date (1455) added (incuse) below the bust. From the plaster cast thus altered a sand-casting in bronze could easily be obtained. To some extent the motto on the medal of Briconnet may be taken as suggesting the doctrine of progress by struggle. See also the remarks on this subject in the Preface to this book. 344 Referred to in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sect. 3, Memb. 1. 345 Vide A. Armand, Les Midailleurs Italiens, 2nd edition, Paris, 1883, vol. ii. pp. 51, 74, 85. 3,6 See H. de la Tour, Bevuc Numismatique, Paris, 1894, 3rd series, vol. xii. p. 327, and pi. viii. 347 Armand, loc. cit, vol. ii. p. 51. 374 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XV. Man's whole life is a mixture of pleasure and pain, a dulcamara or bittersweet, a yXvKviriitpov. (Cf. Apuleius, Florid., iv. 18.) C. W. Heckethorn (London, 1899, p. 68) writes that Thomas, Lord Erskine (1750-1823), tbe famous judge, "when dining one day at the house of Sir Ralph Payne, afterwards Lord Lavington, found himself so indisposed as to be obliged to retire after dinner to another room. When he returned to tbe company, Lady Payne asked how he found himself. Erskine took out a piece of paper and wrote on it" :— " 'Tis true I" am ill, but I need not complain; For he never knew pleasure, who never knew Payne." In regard to the idea of " polarity " with pleasure and gladness at one pole and pain and grief at tbe other, cf. Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897) :— " For thus it is God stings us into life, Provoking actual souls From bodily systems, giving us tbe poles That are His own, not merely balanced strife." Though, indeed, more or less pain and grief seem to be essential to human life and to constitute part of " man's nature" (cf. Robert Burns : " Nature's law, That man was made to mourn "), man certainly often by his conduct in life helps Nature to prevent any deficiency in the supply, and, as Burns (in the same verses on " Man was Made to Mourn ") has put it— " Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn." J. G. Fichte (1762-1814) wrote : " All death in nature is birth, and in death appears visibly the advancement of life. There is no killing principle in nature, for nature throughout is life; it is not death that kills, but the higher life, which, concealed behind the other, begins to develop itself. Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself to attain a higher form." Yet the mystery remains 1 Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) wrote : " Death is but a word to us. Our own experience alone can teach us tbe real meaning of the word." In regard to the " mystery " of pain, misery, disease, and death, it is characteristic of man's anthropomorphic conception of Deity (or Nature) to think that pain might have been spared and mortals rendered happier if things on earth had been otherwise arranged from the beginning. Nietzsche even asked : "Is man only a mistake of God, or God only a mistake of man ? " To Alpbonso the Wise (1221-1284), King of Leon and Castille, is attributed the saying: " Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe." In the same way Etienne deVignolles, surnamed " La Hire," a famous French condottiere (1390-1443), is said to have prayed: " 0 God, pray do for La Hire to-day, what Thou PART II.-XV.] DEATH AND LOVE, &C. 375 wouldst La Hire would do for Thee, if he were God, and Thou wert La Hire."34* In Maurice Maeterlinck's mystic play, PelUas et Melisande (1892), at the end of the second scene of the fourth act, tbe old King (Arkel) says: "Si j'etais Dieu, j'aurais pitie du coeur des bommes." Similarly, in George MacDonald's well-known novel, David Elginbrod (1862), the character after whom the novel is named, refers to an old epitaph at Aberdeen : — " Here lies I, Martin Elginbrod, Have mercy on my soul, Lord God, As I would have gin I were God And thou wert Martin Elginbrod." According to W. S. Walsh's Handbook of Literary Curiosities (London, 1893) there have been many epitaphs of the same kind in both Great Britain and America, but the one alluded to from a churchyard in Aberdeen is as follows :— "Here lies I, Martin Elmrod; Have mercy on my soul, gude God, As I would have gin I were God, And thou wert Martin Elmrod." Pity is indeed a worthy human sentiment, but probably the ultimate working of Nature in the universe is too perfect to make pity needed. To understand all would be to admire all, not to pardon, pity, or regret anything; though Madam de Stael's sentiment, comprendre c'est pardonner, is a true one of human sympathy. The working of Nature, it must be remembered, includes man's progress in scientific knowledge ; Nature mercifully yields up some of the secrets of her methods to man, although man is popularly supposed, Prometheus-like, to wrest them from her; thus man gradually but surely acquires partial mastery over her, as soon as he is fit to be entrusted with such god-like power. How do we know that misuse of the power, thus gained through scientific knowledge, has not in the past led to retrograde steps in civilisation— and may not in the future plunge man back into the dark ages ? In regard to man's anthropomorphic conception of Deity and Immortality cf. the end portion of Part ll. ii. Like life, love, charity, wisdom, folly, &c, dark death even has had admirers. The interpretation of death, like the interpretation of life, varies according to individual temperament and passing mood, and much may be sung by poets and others " in praise of death" (cf. under 348 Cf. Baron Ferd. Rothschild's Personal Characteristics from French History, London, 1896, p. 10. 376 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XV. Heading iv.). Thus, Walt Whitman, in his Memories of President Bincoln, hails death as follows:— " Dark mother, always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome 1 Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly." " Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death." Cf. Sir Edwin Arnold (She and He) :— " What a strange delicious amazement is death, To be without body and breathe without breath." The same poet thus addresses a statue representing the Genius of Death349 :— " For he hath righted thee, deep-injured Death, And graved thee in the glory which thou wearest; So we shall call thee with our latest breath Of friends the best, of dear consolers, dearest." In a similar way Azrael, the Mohammedan " Angel of Death," is greeted as a welcome visitor.350 Pierre de Ronsard's Hymne de la Mort was also, in a poetical kind of way, in praise of death. According to Brantome it was read (probably for consolation) by the young Frenchman, Chastelard, on the day of his execution at St. Andrews, February 22, 1562-3.351 349 Sir Edwin Arnold, Poems Narrative and Lyrical, Oxford, 1853, p. 120. 350 Pearls of Faith, by Sir Edwin Arnold, London, 1883, p. 195. 351 Chastelard, who on the mother's side was a grand-nephew of Bayard, the "Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche," was condemned to death after having been detected hiding in the bed-chamber of Mary Queen of Scots, February 12, 1562-3. PART II.-XV.] DEATH AND LOVE, &C. 377 In his Hymn to Beath Alfred Austin refers to a not always disagreeable influence of the idea of death on human life:— " I love the doubt, the dark, the fear, That still surroundeth all things here." Of course, to those who believe in a future existence, especially to those who incline to the doctrine of a gradual evolution of souls by passage through the trials of life, natural death (but rarely if ever suicide) may sometimes appear as a reward for troubles bravely borne—in fact, as the "crown of life" (Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 1742); though the latter expression is usually applied to events of life other than its termination. " Unto each man his handiwork, unto each his crown, The just fate gives ; Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own lays down, He, dying so, lives." (A. C. Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise.) A suitable device for a mortuary medal of some persons would be that of a skeleton placing a wreath on an armed knight, emblematic of virtue and valour. In connexion with this aspect of death I would quote the following passages, though I have referred to them elsewhere in the book:— "Mors, ultinam pavidos vita subducere nolles, Sed virtus te sola daret." Lucan (Phars., lib. iv. 580). "Sweet Death, so let me call thee so, thy hand Alone can bring our shipwreck'd souls to land." Joseph Beaumont (1616-1699). "But where's the passage to the skies?— Tbe road through Death's black valley lies. Nay, do not shudder at my tale; Tho' dark the shades, yet safe the vale." Charles Cotton (1630-1687). A representation of " Death crowning Life," and Edward Young's words, alluded to above (" Death is the 378 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XV. crown of life"), are both suggested by the passage in Revelation (ii. 10): " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life"—the German version of which appears on a seventeenth-century medal by Sebastian Dadler. St. John Chrysostom, in his Panegyric of the Martyrs, says : " Had they not been mortal, they could not have died. Had they not died, they would not have been martyrs; so that had there been no death, there would have been no crown. AYithout an end to life there would have been no martyrdom." A Sterbe- miinze on the death (1644) of Albert II, Duke of Saxe- Weimar-Eisenach, has the inscription, " Coronam vitae accipe." The words of Henry Vaughan (1022-101)")) are quite similar in meaning: " Dear beautious Death, the jewel of the just." With this may be compared the design of G. F. Watts's allegorical painting, "Death crowning Innocence," innocence being symbolised by an infant tenderly held in the arms of a winged figure of Death. The idea of the martyr's " celestial crown " is illus- trated further on by the description of certain memorial medals, finger-rings, &c. (See Parts III. and IV.) One of Gabriello Symeoni's emblems is a human skull crowned with a wreath and accompanied by tbe words, "Victoria limes."352 A death's-head crowned with a laurel wreath and surmounted by a winged hour-glass forms a prominent part of the device on the mortuary medal of a Dutch lady, dated 1662 (see description of the medal in Part III. under that date). A remarkable sculptured death's- head, crowned and winged, by the Lorraine sculptor of the sixteenth century, Ligier Richier, is figured in Aesculape.353 It formed part of the mausoleum, which Antoinette de Bourbon had constructed (1552) at Joinville (Haute-Marne) in memory of her husband, Claude de Lorraine, first Duke of Guise, who died in 1550.354 332 See The Heroicall Devices of M. C. Paradin, dc, English translation by P. S., London, 1591, p. 319. 353 Aesculape, Paris, supplement for February, 1913, p. 29. 354 On similar works of tbe same artist, see Paul Denis, Ligier Bichier, Paris, 1911, and Jules Guiart's article in Aesculape, Paris, January, 1913, p. 19. PART II.-XV.] DEATH AND LOVE, &C. 379 As death is the final act or incident of life, it completes it and may be said to " crown" it in the same way that "finis coronat opus" ("the end crowns tlie work," " the end crowns all," though it may not justify the means). Epictetus, when asked by the Roman Kmperor, Hadrian, why the dead were crowned with garlands, is said to have answered that it was to signify that by death they had overcome the labours, sorrows, and cares of this life. A " crown of death" is likewise spoken of, like one speaks of the " crown of love " and the " crown of life," and this reminds one of the succession fit* " triumphs " in Petrarch's Trionfi: the " Triumph of Love," the "Triumph of Chastity over Love," the " Triumph of Death over Chastity," of " Fame over Death," and so on. A modern novel, by Rose Schuster, 1912, is called, The Triple Crown, i.e. the crown of love, the crown of life, and the crown of death. E. H. Parker's Ode on President J. A. Garfield (assassinated at Washington in 1881) is sometimes quoted as follows :— "Life's race well run, Life's work well done, Life's crown well won, Then comes rest." Obviously also it may be conceived that death, like love, plays an important part in the unfolding, or evolu- tion, and gradual perfection, of the soul. From this point of view death may perhaps be regarded as " the most beautiful adventure of the soul" that is afforded l»y life. I do not know if such an idea is in any way connected with the design of Bove and Death, the painting by G. F. Watts,355 but Edward Carpenter's 355 jn Watts's painting (1877), Love and Death, Death is represented as a tall figure draped in white, forcing his way through a portal, crushing Love back amongst garlands of roses. 380 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPI< HiAM. [PART II.-XV. Drama of Bove and Death (London, 1912) argues that death may have a kind of awakening effect upon the soul similar to the generally acknowledged awakening and purifying effect of true love. Charles Frobman, the theatrical manager, who was drowned when the steamship "Lusitania" was sunk (May 7th, 1915), was reported to have, just before his own death, given this as a reason why death should not be feared. His words were (as reported by the actress, Miss Rita Jolivet): "Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life." One of Frohman's greatest theatrical successes was his production of Sir James M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1904), and at the end of one of the acts the boy-hero of the play, Peter Pan, "the boy who would never grow up," says: "To die will be an awfully big adventure." 356 Somewhat more distantly in connexion with the subject of love and death one may remember that countless beautiful women, who have long since passed away, like Francois Villon's " neiges d'antan," have been in a way immortalised by portraits and amatory verses, made of them or for them during their lives. Indeed, what better sepulchral memorials are there of good and beautiful women than portraits, epigrams, and dedications, sometimes addressed to the ladies themselves, and generally made by or for the men who loved and respected them during life ! I remember a charming medallion portrait plaquette (cast), made in 1880, by the modern French sculptor and medallist, Louis Oscar Roty, of his wife, Madame Marie Augustine Roty, bearing the following Latin inscription below the portrait : " Tuum, carissima conjux, vultum aere fixi, ut te semper ante oculos habeam juvenem semper et felicem." It is a memorial of this kind that lasts, not for life alone, but, so to speak, for ever. 336 Cf. Charles Frohman, by I. F. Marcosson and Daniel Frohman, London, 1916. XVI. Predestination and the Free Will in regard to Aspects of Death. It cannot be denied that the fatalistic idea expressed in the Italian motto of the Eussells (Dukes of Bedford, &c), Che sara sara351 ("What will be, will be"), has in practice often proved helpful and comforting to count- less persons besides Oriental soldiers and followers of Mohammed. This brings up the whole question of whether it is justifiable to support and maintain and adhere to a religious or moral doctrine, or to invent one, because the doctrine in question is useful and comforting, and of noble or beneficial influence in some particular calling or mode of life—even when one cannot absolutely believe in the truth of it. Be such a course justifiable, surely it must be admitted that Napoleon, from his military point of view, improved on the ordinary fatalistic, Che sara sara, if, as is supposed (see further on) he declared that Death might overtake tbe coward, but never the brave, until his hour was come. The passive " Kismet" attitude towards life and death, right and wrong, may, however, well be contrasted with that expressed in the oft-quoted quatrain of W. E. Henley (1849-1903)— " It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate ; I am the captain of my soul." Cf. Longfellow (The Builders) :— " We are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time." 357 This motto, or an equivalent, occurs on various medalets. I remember, for instance, having seen a medal-like "pass" of some kind, bearing the Bedford coat of arms, with the motto in question below it. 382 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xvi. In connexion with Henley's above-mentioned verses, the tenth edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations refers to some lines by James Benjamin Kenyon, ending :— " Be the proud captain still of thine own fate." Cf. also the following verses in praise of equanimity attributed to Archilochus about B.C. 714-676.358 " Toss'd on a sea of troubles, Soul, my Soul, Thyself do thou control; And to the weapons of advancing foes A stubborn breast oppose; Undaunted 'mid the hostile might Of squadrons burning for the fight. Thine be no boasting, when the victor's crown Wins thee deserved renown; Thine no dejected sorrow, when defeat Would urge a base retreat; Rejoice in joyous things—not overmuch Let grief thy bosom touch Midst evil, and still bear in mind, How changeful are the ways of humankind." There is no real contradiction between the vigorously objective attitude of W. E. Henley, &c, and the mystic, more passive, attitude, expressed by many, such as is suggested by the following stanza of Omar Khayyam:— " I sent my Soul through the Invisible Some letter of that After-life to spell, And by and by my Soul returned to me, And answered, I myself am Heaven and Hell." Death may sometimes be successfully resisted by determined action, and a plaque, already referred to, representing Death in an attitude of fear or submission before Valour (or Virtue), was perhaps intended to ex- press this idea. Napoleon, who believed in his " star" sss English version, after Hay, given by Lord Neaves, The Greek Anthology, Edinburgh, 1874, p. 105. PART Il.-Xvi.] PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 383 of destiny, is (as stated above) supposed to have said, " Death overtakes the coward, but never the brave until his hour is come "—a useful idea—more helpful than the Oriental " Kismet " attitude—for a military commander to instil into the minds of his followers, but a curious aphorism to come from one who himself indirectly caused the death of such a multitude of brave men. In one of her letters Madame de Sevigne, speaking of Marshal Turenne's death (1675), pointed out how glorious it was and how his reputation could have gained nothing had he lived longer. The cannon that killed him at that moment seemed to her to have been for that very purpose " loaded from all eternity." Lucan (Pharsalia, ii. 75) wrote : " Mors ipsa refugit Saepe virum." Cf, James Eussell Lowell:— " The brave makes danger opportunity; The waverer, faltering with the chance sublime, Dwarfs it to peril." Compare also the proud motto of Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), Eegent of the Netherlands, daughter of the German Emperor Maximilian I, and (by her mother) granddaughter of Charles the Bold of Burgundy: " Fortune—infortune—forte une." The motto of Margaret of Austria may be read on her tomb in the church at Brou. On the upper slab of tbe tomb she is sculptured lying in queenly state, crowned with a diadem and clothed in rich robes, with a greyhound sleeping at her feet. On the lower slab she is represented, by a kind of gisant figure, as a mortal woman robbed of all her state.353 This motto of the great princess belongs to the group of which those of the Rohan family of France and the Barons of Coucy (who built Coucy Castle, in Dep. Aisne, France, 1225-1230) may be accepted as the types :— " Roi ne peux, due ne veux, Rohan je suis." " Roi ne suys, Ne prince, ne due, ne comte aussy, Je suys le sire de Coucy." There are several variations of these Rohan and Coucy mottoes. 359 Cf. Christopher Hare (Marian Andrews), The High and Puissant Princess Marguerite of Austria, London, 1907, p. 336. 384 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-XV'i. Here I would refer again to Albrecht Diirer's famous copper-plate engraving (1513), which he himself called "Der Eeuter" (Fig. 37), representing the "true knight,' Fig. 37.—Diirer's " The Knight, Death and the Devil" (1513). a mounted soldier in splendid armour, who rides onwards to the end, by the way of duty, not deterred by the threats of Death, nor disturbed by the suggestions of the loath- PART Il.-xvi.] PREDESTINATION AND FREE WILL. 385 some Devil (with a pig-like snout360), who both accompany him. Death explains to the knight the meaning of an emblem of mortality (a human skull) which lies exposed before him, and points out the common end which necessarily awaits every man ; the Devil doubtless is seizing the opportunity for recommending the enjoyment of the grosser practices of hedonism before the inevitable decay of the body removes all opportunity for fleshly delights. Perhaps the fox's skin on the knight's lance signifies that he has successfully overcome the cunning temptations of the Devil. In this wonderful allegorical design by Diirer the ideal knight is not represented as the champion of chivalry in Mediaeval romance, the rescuer of beautiful and distressed princesses from "durance vile," nor as the Eenaissance "chevalier sans peur et sans reproche," but rather as the " Christian hero" (typified later on in John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress "), or, still more so, as the true " knight of duty " of the modern civilised world, irrespective of differences in creed. He is the brave soldier and morally courageous man:— " Der dem Tod ins Angesicht schauen kann, Der Soldat allein, ist der freie Mann." (Schiller, Wallensteins Bager, Elfter Auftritt.) Lionel Cust, in his fine explanation of The Engravings of Albrecht Bixrcr (London, 1894, p. G2), quotes a German poem in regard to the design in question :— " Across my path though Hell should stride, Through Death and Devil I will ride." seo There is something of the goat about this composite animal, and it may be noted that according to the strange notions of the Eastern sect called the " Manicheans," the Devil was represented by a goat. Diirer's devil has certainly no obviously enticing qualities, and it is difficult to imagine that such a devil would find many followers. 2 c 386 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.-XVI. The original German (for the reference to which I am indebted to Mr. Campbell Dodgson) is given in Fried. Christoph. Forster's Sdngerfahrt (Berlin, 1818, pp. 61-03). It is from an anonymous poem, entitled, " Der Bitter durch Tod und Teufel," which ends with the following lines:— " Lass kommen die Holle mit mir zu streiten, Ich werde durch Tod und durch Teufel reiten." Of course, many different explanations of Diirer's meaning have been offered. It has been suggested that the horseman is not a good knight, but a bad and worldly one, being warned by death, just as in the Mediaeval " Tale of the Three Living and the Three Dead " the great and powerful of this world are represented as being reminded of the inevitable end (see Part I. B.). It has also been suggested that the horseman represents Franz von Sickingen (1481-1523), the great knight of the reformation in Germany, and that the letter S. on the tablet was meant by Diirer to stand for Sickingen, and that the castle in the distance was meant for Sickingen's Castle of Ebernburg, near Kreuznach. But the features of the horseman do not resemble those of Sickingen in his known portraits. On this whole subject see Joseph Heller's Das Leben und die Werke A. Diirers, Bamberg, 1827, vol. ii. p. 503. On page 151 of tbe same work Heller describes a painting at Brussels, which has been named both "Der Ritter durch Tod und Teufel" and "Franz von Sickingen," and was probably the work of another artist, though based on Diirer's engraving in question. The painting at Brussels inspired the German poem " Der Ritter durch Tod und Teufel," which I have above referred to, and which is quoted by Heller at length (loc. cit., p. 504). I have already mentioned (Part I. B.) that tbe German author De la Motte-Fouqu£ (1777-1843) wrote his story, Sintram und seine Gefdhrten, as a kind of explanation of the same engraving. The Psychostasia scenes on Greek vases, &c, described in Part IV., have much to do with this Heading, and so, strictly speaking, have all representations of Doom (Ker, or the " Keres "), Necessity, and Inexorable Fate (Atropos and the other Moirae or Parcae). The doctrine of predestination was frequently used in the best ancient Classical Literature for the purpose of consolation, but not as an excuse for assuming a lazy, passive attitude in life. XVII. Pessimism. Aspects of Death from Standpoints of Pessimism in Eegard to Life. Thanatophilia. This aspect, which should really have followed No. iv., may be contrasted with Nos. xiv. and xv. (optimistic views). A somewhat cynical or mocking attitude towards the " eternal riddle"—the meaning of life and death—or rather towards endeavours to answer the riddle—was assumed by Heinrich Heine— " Sagt mir, was bedenkt der Mensch 1 Woher ist er gekommen? Wo geht er hin? Es murmeln die Wogen ihr ewiges Gemurmel, Es wehet der Wind, es fliegen die Wolken, Es blicken die Sterne gleichgiiltig und kalt, Und ein Narr wartet auf Ant wort." The following famous epigram by Palladas from the Greek Anthology (Anth. Grace. Palat., x. 58) is hardly a desirable development of Solon's opa re\o<; fiaicpov Biov (referred to under medals in Part III.)—■ T^s iirijigv jv/jlvos, yvpvos ff vtto yalav aireipv Kai tL pdrgv po^OHi), yvp.vov bpuiv to tcAos ; Latin versions of it have been given by Janus Pannonius (died 1472), William Lily (died 1522), and Sir Thomas More (died 1535), the last one as follows :— " Xudus ut in terrain veni, sic nudus abibo. Quia frustra sudo, funera nuda videns ?" Cf. Job i. 21 : " Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither"; also tbe First Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy vi. 7 : " We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." St. John Chrysostom (a.d. 347-407), in regard to his persecution by the Empress Eudoxia (through whose influence over her husband, Arcadius, Emperor of the East, Chrysostom was exiled in a.d. 404), made light of all the harm she could possibly do him, and amongst other things said : " Be it she confiscates my goods, naked came I unto the world and naked must I return." 2 c 2 388 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGUAM. [PART Il.-xvii. A rather happy turning of the epigrams of the Intravi nudus type is- given by Longfellow in his Tales of a Wayside Inn :— " Our ingress into the world Was naked and bare; Our progress through the world Is trouble and care; Our egress from the world Will be nobody knows where: But if we do well here We shall do well there." Longfellow's English version seems, however, to have been taken from that of John Edwin (1749-1790) :— "A man's ingress into the world is naked and bare, His progress through the world is trouble and care; And lastly, bis egress out of the world, is nobody knows where. If we do well here, we shall do well there : I can tell you no more if I preach a whole year." In a somewhat similar way Sir Rabindranath Tagore reasons: " Because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well." In regard to "man's ingress and egress" the following curious epigram of the time of King James I of England is quoted in Brand's Popular Antiquities, edition of 1849, vol. ii. p. 275:— " Nature, which headlong into life did throng us, With our feet forward to our grave doth bring us; What is less ours than this our borrowed breath? We stumble into life, we goe to death." Sir Thomas Browne in his Hydriotaphia (1658) also alluded to this custom of carrying the corpse with the feet forwards at funerals. Palladas (Anth. Graec. Palat., x. 85) refers to us mortals as being kept and reared up for Death, like a herd of swine to be slaughtered. Compare Marian Evans Cross (" George Eliot") in the Spanish Gipsy (Book ii.) :— " Death is the king of this world : 'tis his park Where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain Are music to his banquet." An epigram in the Greek Anthology, attributed to Simonides, refers pessimistically and cynically to the perpetual succession of heirs, each heir in turn rejoicing when his predecessor dies. Marcus Aurelius, however, PART Il.-xvii.] PESSIMISM. 3S9 in his "Meditations," reflects that men seldom die without others thereby becoming, or fancying themselves, the better off; and he puts this forward as a kind of consolation, to be added to other consolations, for the prospect of one's death. There may be pessimists (as there doubtless have been many) who think life cruel because they fear that the soul with all its noble aspirations must decay and die with the body. W. S. Walsh quotes the following epitaph by Professor William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879), the mathematician: " Traveller, pass not by this inscription, but stand, and hear, and learn something before you pass on. There is no boat of Hades, no boatman Charon, no dog Cerberus, but all the dead are bones and dust and nothing else." This reminds one of the late Latin epitaphs with words such as, Pulvis, cinis, nihil. Even the idea of death as a dreamless unending sleep may seem dreadful or sad, as it is represented in the idyl on the death of Bion, formerly attributed to Moschus :— Auu, rat paXd^ai pev, i7ra.v Kara, kolitov oXwvrai, 'HSc Ta ^X(opd aeXiva to r evdaXe% ovXov avgOov Yarepov av tfaovTi kcu eh eVos dXXo vovTC A/x/xc? 6 ot peydXoi Kal Kaprepoi, ol aocftol avSpes, OTnrore irpara Odvwpes, dvaKooi ev )(6ovl KoiXai voo/xcs ev paAa paKpov areppova vrjypeTov virvov. What is the object of it all, the pessimists have asked; to what can life and all its strivings lead but to decay and the silent darkness of the grave ? Thus on a seal of Chosroes I, the Great, of Persia (Part IV. ii.), there is said to have been an inscription signifying, " The way is very dark, what can I see ? One lives once only, what can I desire ? Behind me is Death, what can delight me ?" In the Eubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Edward FitzGerald's 390 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [I'ART Il.-xvii. translation, 4th edition, stanza 63) the pessimistic idea is the same, though the context is " Epicurean " :— " Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise ! One thing at least is certain—This life flies; One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies; The Flower that once has blown for ever dies." From this point of view one has to admit that" every life is a tragedy," because life always ends in death. Such an unpleasant conception of life may succeed the naive idea of the children's fairy tales which end with the words: "And they all lived happily ever afterwards." Nevertheless, with the growth of intellect and knowledge (with or without the support of religious faith) the mental outlook tends to gradually enlarge, and then man becomes inclined to admit: Life is not necessarily a tragedy, even though it necessarily ends in death; perhaps even, could one know all, life would never have the aspect of a real tragedy, and what seems to be a " life-tragedy," or a tragic ending of "life," may really be merely a tragic incident or episode in the long unending drama of a soul. Compare Psalm lxxxix. 47, 48, " Eemember how short my time is : wherefore hast Thou made all men in vain ? What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death ? Shall he deliver his soul from the grave ?" So also the following Latin verses, inscribed on a sun-dial at Monza i Italy), and elsewhere :— " Quod fuit, est, et erit, perit articulo brevis horae. Ergo quid prodest esse, fuisse, fore? Esse, fuisse, fore, heu ! tria florida sunt sine fibre, Nam simul omne perit quod fuit, est, et erit." On a large brass astrolabe and sun-dial, signed by Ieronimus Wulparia, of Florence (1577),.in the museum of Perugia,361 are two inscriptions, as follows:— " Nil nomen, nil fama juvat, nil Candida virtus: Tempus enim rapido singula dente vorat." " Hora fugit, celeri properat mors improba passu." See Mrs. Gatty's Book of Sun-Dials, enlarged edition of 1900. PART Il.-XVli.] PESSIMISM. 391 In this connexion I would quote stanzas 9 and 11 of Cray's Elcgg in a Country Churchyard:— " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Can storied urn, or animated bust, Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, Or flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?" Compare also certain passages in Shakespeare's plays— " And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour, we rot and rot: And thereby hangs a tale." (As Ton Like It, act ii., scene 7 ; see also other plays.) " To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,362 Creeps in this petty pace fr,om day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty earth [dusty death]. Out, out, brief candle ! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more : it is a tale363 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." (Macbeth, act v., scene 5.) Almost as pessimist, though less painful, is the meaning expressed by John Gay (1688-1732), in his own epitaph (inscribed on his sepulchral monument in Westminster Abbey)— "Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it." 362 Cf. Silas Weir Mitchell (Of One Who seemed to have Failed) " Death's but one more to-morrow." 3,i3 Cf. Psalm xc. 9: " We spend our years as a tale that is told." 392 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xvii. This jcu cVesprit, although it has been engraved on his tomb, must not be regarded as necessarily the true expression of Gay's attitude towards life. It probably represents merely a passing mood, and may perhaps be com- pared to that expressed in the following French verses :— " La vie est vaine : Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine ... Et puis—bon jour ! La vie est breve : Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de reve . . . Et puis—bon soir ! " Some may be or may have been pessimists because of certain tenets in the Christian or other religions, especially with regard to future " punishments and the hopelessness of the idea of everlasting damnation. Here one may quote some stanzas from William Dunbar's magnifi- cent " Lament for the Makaris [Poets]," composed about 1508 :— " Our pleasance here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory, The flesh is bruckle, the fiend is slee [sly, cunning], Timor mortis conturbat me. The state of man doth change and vary, Now sound, now sick, now blythe, now sary [sorry], Now dancing merry, now ' like to dee.' Timor mortis conturbat me. No state on earth here stands sicker [safe], As with the wind waves the wicker [reed], So waves this world's vanity. Timor mortis conturbat me." Cf. the following stanzas from the celebrated Mediaeval Latin monastic chant (supposed to be by Thomas of Celano, who died in 1253) included in the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead :— " Dies irae, dies ilia Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sibylla." " Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando Judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus ! " PART Il.-xvii.] PESSIMISM. "Judex ergo cum sedebit, Quidquid latet, apparebit: Nil inultum remanebit." " Quid sum miser tunc dicturus ? Quem patronum rogaturus, Cum vix Justus sit securus?" Some of these stanzas are sung by the choir in the cathedral scene towards the end of the first part of Goethe's Fatist. Cf. also Part II. v., on sayings such as: "Inferno nulla est redemptio," and Dante's " Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate." If there is a single infallible judgment on a man's whole life after his death, such a judgment must be extremely interesting—if not too terrifying—for the mind of the individual in question—supposing, of course, that the mind survives death and is able to know about tbe verdict and tbe steps by which it is reached. How interesting, for instance, it would be for a thoughtful physician to witness the balancing up, one against another, of his own or his friends' good and evil activities during life, the potentialities, the abilities, tbe disabilities, and the physical and mental limitations. For, the estimation of the disabilities and limitations would surely involve all sorts of questions of medical interest: questions of congenital and inherited diseases and defects, brain conditions, the supply of internal secretions from the pituitary gland and other endocrine glands, &c. It was especially the orthodox teaching of Mediaeval Christianity that (theoretically) favoured a pessimistic attitude towards the life of this world. All worldly enjoyments were regarded as essentially sinful, and as so many devil's snares surrounding man's life from cradle to grave. The life after death was everything. Saint Bernard, Abbot of CTairvaux, in spite of his strenuously objective nature, exclaimed, " Nasci miserum, vivere poena, angustia mori!" Compare his hymn, Cum sit Omnis Homo Fcnum:— " Homo dictus es ab bumo, Cito transis, quia fumo Similis efficeris. . . . 0 sors gravis! 0 sors dura ! 0 lex dira, quam natura Promulgavit miseris! Homo nascens cum moerore Vitam ducis cum dolore Et cum metu moreris." The Rythmus de Contemptu Mundi, which has been 394 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-Xvii. attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux,364 contains the following stanzas:— " Homo miser, cogita; mors omnes compescit, Quis est ab initio, qui morti non cessit? Quando moriturus est, omnis homo nescit: Hie qui vivit hodie, cras forte putrescit." " Qui de morte cogitat, miror quod laetatur ; Cum sic genus hominum morti deputatur, Quo post mortem transeat homo, nesciatur : Unde quidam sapiens ita de se fatur: Dum de morte cogito, contristor et ploro, Verum est quod moriar, et tempus ignoro, Ultimum quod nescio, cui jungar choro: Ut cum Sanctis mereat jungi, Deum oro." " Quam breve festum est, haec mundi gloria! Ut umbra hominis, sunt ejus gaudia, Quae semper subtrahunt aeterna praemia Et ducunt homines ad dura devia." " O esca vermium ! 0 massa pulveris 1 0 roris vanitas, cur sic extolleris ? Ignorans penitus, utrum cras vixeris ! Fac bonum omnibus, quamdiu poteris." 3M In the famous Latin poem, Be Contemptu Mundi, by Bernard of Morlaix (or " of Cluny "), a Benedictine monk of the twelfth century, the following lines occur :— " Hie breve vivitur, hie breve plangitur, hie breve fletur; Non breve vivere, non breve plangere, retribuetur." These lines are in England well known, owing to J. M. Neale's English hymn, "Brief life is here our portion," and another part of the poem is still popular in the form of Neale's hymn, "Jerusalem the golden." Cf. "Nasci, laborare, mori." Some naturally maintained that death was better than life, " Melior mors vita" (a motto used by the Dutch prelate, J. van Neercassel, who died in 1686). The following verses (chiefly " Leonine " hexameters) are from a Latin poem of the twelfth century, attributed to Bernard of Morlaix, but included by J. Mabillon 364 See J. Mabillon's collection of the works of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. 365 Some of the stanzas of this Latin poem are printed, under the heading, De Mundi Vanitate, amongst the Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, collected and edited by Thomas Wright, published by the Camden Society, London, 1841, pp. 147, 148. part n.-xvii.] pessimism. 395 amongst the works of St, Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (I have followed the text given by Mabillon) :— " Vox divina sonat quod nemo spem sibi ponat In rebus mundi, quae causam dant pereundi. Quisquis amat Christum, mundum non diligit istum Sed quasi foetores spernens illius amores, Estimat obscoenum quod mundus credit amoenum." " Vita brevis, velut umbra levis sic annihilatur, Sic vadit, subitoque cadit, dum stare putatur." "Fallitur insipiens vitae praesentis amore: Sed sapiens noscit quanto sit plena dolore. Quidquid formosum mundus gerit et pretiosum, Floris habet morem, cui dat natura colorem, Mox ut siccatur totus color annihilatur." Cf. tbe Mediaeval "Leonine" hexameters:— "Die, homo, vas cinerum, quid confert flos facierum? Copia quid rerum? Mors ultima meta dierum." I have selected the following stanzas from a Latin poem (of the twelfth century ?) on the Worldly Life— "Vita Mundi"—as edited from the manuscript by Edelestand du Meril, in his work, Poesies populaires latines du Mo yen Age.366 By one authority the poem has been attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux :— " Heu ! heu ! mundi Vita, Quare me delectas ita? Cum non possis mecum stare, Quid me cogis te amare?" " Vita mundi, res morbosa, Magis fragilis quam rosa, Cum sis tota lacrymosa, Cur es mihi graciosa ? " 366 Edelestand du Meril, Poe'sies populaires latines du Moyen Age, Paris, 1847, p. 108. Compare the verses, " de contemptu mundano," which I have quoted in Part I. A., from a manuscript poem, dated 1267, published by Edelestand du Meril, op. cit, p. 125. 396 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xvii. "Vita mundi, res acerba, Vita levis et superba, Cum sis nimis iracunda Cur me petis f uribunda ? " " Vita mundi, res immunda, Solis impiis jocunda, Nutrimentum vitiorum, Quid habes in me decorum ?" "Vita mundi, res amara, Vita brevis atque rara, Cum sis tota plena dolo, Cur in te vivere volo?" " Ego te nunquam amabo Et in te nunquam sperabo ; Contra te semper pugnabo ; Ad te nunquam propinquabo." " Si volebam jejunare, Me dicebas aegrotare, Et monebas manducare, Nisi vellem pejorare." " Ad hoc regnum me vocare, Juste Judex, tu dignare, Quern expecto, quem requiro Ad quem anxius suspiro." Owing to the remarkable lilt of the above verses, one can imagine them being roared out like a modern Moody and Sankey or a Salvation Army hymn. The wonderful lilt of some of the Latin Mediaeval hymns by Bernard of Morlaix and others may reflect the spirit of the armies of monks and Crusaders who thronged to the Holy Land. In " Jerusalem the Golden " Bernard of Morlaix held out to the Mediaeval world something to be aimed at beyond the earthly Jerusalem. The latter was, indeed, captured by the Crusaders, who were the real "Salvation Army " of Mediaeval times. A genuine Latin war-hymn chorus is that attributed to Berthier of Orleans367:— " Lignum crucis Signum ducis Sequitur exercitus; Quod non cessit Sed praecessit In vi Sancti Spiritus." 307 See J. M. Ludlow, The Age of the Crusades, Edinburgb.,1897, p. 2. The religious poets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were indeed the great masters of the Mediaeval Latin rhyming verse—St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Bernard of Morlaix, St. Thomas Aquinas ("Doctor Angelicus "), Thomas of Celano, Jacopone (da Todi), Adam de Saint- Victor, &c. part u.-xvii.] PESSIMISM. 397 With all these verses de contemptu mundi may be compared portions of various other Latin poems and prose writings relating to " scorn of the world." The shorter one of two such poems by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), called " the second Augustine," as printed in Migne's Patrologiac Cursus Completus, commences :— " Quid probitas, quid nobilitas, nisi mors animarum ? Unde superbit homo, cum constet quod moriatur ? Nam caro mortalis, et quisquis ei famulatur Morte perit duplici, quia post obitum cruciatur. Quid prodest homini, si vivat saecula centum, Cum moriens vitam transisse putet quasi ventum 1" In Anselm's longer Carmen de Contemptu Mundi the following passages are characteristic :— " Xon tonsura facit monachum, non horrida vestis; Sed virtus animi, perpetuusque rigor. Mens humilis, mundi contemptus, vita pudica, Sanctaque sobrietas : haec faciunt monachum. Haec vos in coelum, monachi, quadriga levabit : Haec post hanc vitam praemia summa dabit. Nil tonsura juvat, juvat aut vilissima vestis, Si lupus es, quamvis esse videris ovis." " Magnum nomen habes, clara est tibi fama per orbem, Laudat te mundus ; sed moriere tamen." " Fumus et umbra levis tota est haec gloria mundi." In the following vivid description he almost overdraws the ills that human flesh is heir to; but we must remember that very much less was known in Anselm's days than now in regard to the medical and surgical relief of aches and pains of all kinds. Nowadays pain can frequently be removed by ordinary rational methods which formerly lasted very long or was only escaped from by death. Xuw we have the various anodyne coal-tar derivatives. 398 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-Xvii. Surgical anaesthesia—the " death of pain "—and surgical asepsis and antisepsis—the "death of microbes"—often enables the modern healing art to ward off death and " kill" the cause of pain. "Si nunc aspicias animalia caetera quaeque ; Invenies tantis subdita nulla malis. Nos capitis laterumque dolor, febrisque fatigat : Totum hominem tollit lepra, chiragra inanus, Dira podagra pedes ; oculos ophthalmia caecat : Obsidet arctati pectoris asthma vias. Laesa suos claudit lithia vesica meatus : Viscera torquentur, parsque pudenda, colon. Dens dolet, aut cervix; os torpet; lingua ligatur. Splen tumet; aegrotat pulmo, laborat hepar. Cor marcet; renes patiuntur ; solvitur alvus ; Brachia nil possunt; languida crura jacent." Compare tbe whole trend of Anselm's verses to the following epigram in the Greek Anthology by Palladas, an epigrammatist said to have been admired by Erasmus of Eotterdam. The English version is given by Lord Neaves (The Greek Anthology, Edinburgh, 1874, p. 107) :— " The Body is a torture to tbe soul; A hell, a fate, a load, a stern control, That weighs it to the ground with many woes, Nor e'er allows it to enjoy repose. But from the Body, as from Death, set free, It flies to God and Immortality." In like manner, Pope Innocent III (died 1216), in his prose writing, De Contemptu Mundi (Migne's edition), pictures (with some humour) the supposed evils of old age. In fact, he gives us a kind of caricature of its infirmities: " Si quis autem ad senectutem processerit, statim cor ejus affligitur, et caput concutitur, languet spiritus et fetet anhelitus, facies rugatur, et statura curvatur, caligant oculi, et vacillant articuli, nares effluunt, et crines deffluunt, tremit tactus, et deperit actus, dentes putrescunt, et aures surdescunt. Senex facile provocatur, part n.-xvii.] pessimism. 399 difficile revocatur j cito credit, et tarde discredit, tenax et cupidus, tristis et querulus, velox ad loquendum, tardus ad audiendum, sed non tardus ad iram: laudat antiquos, spernit modernos; vituperat praesens, commendat prae- teritum, suspirat et anxiatur, t'orpet et infirmatur. Audi Horatium poetam: ' Multa senem circumveniunt incom- moda.' Porro nee senes contra juvenem glorientur, nee insolescant juvenes contra senem, quia quod sumus iste fuit. erimus quandoque quod hie est." Compare especially Juvenal's famous description of the evils of old age in his tenth satire. Yet, though Terence (Pliormio, act iv., scene 1) was perhaps partially right (before Cicero wrote De Senectute) in saying that " Senectus ipsa est morbus " (cf. Galeni de Sanitate tuendd, liber primus, caput v.), old age may nevertheless be "serene and bright," as Wordsworth wished it to be in his poem, " To a Young Lady":— " But an old age, serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave." With the passage from thirteenth century Italy the following one from seventeenth century England may well be compared. It is from section i. of the first chapter of Jeremy Taylor's Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651): "Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals,368 the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person entered very far into the regions and possession of death : and we have many more of the same signification ; grey hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath, stiff limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appetite. Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion, which death fed on all night, when we lay in his lap, and slept in his outer chambers. The very spirits of a man " Ut mortem citius venire credas, Scito jam capitis periisse partem." (Petronii Arbitri, Satyricon, cap. cix.) 400 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xvii. prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh, and everv meal is a rescue from one death, and lays up for another ; and while wre think a thought, we die; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity: we form our words with the breath of our nostrils, we have the less to live upon for every word we speak." In this way, after Jeremy Taylor, a memento mori significance may be attached to almost every physical phenomenon and almost every sensory impression in life. St. Paul speaks of " daily dying," and in regard to poetical and devotional memento mori comparisons of every night's rest to a " daily dying," cf. Part II. iv. In regard to the whole subject cf. also Midnight Meditation, by Henry King (1592-1669), Bishop of Chichester:— " Each drooping season and each flower doth cry, Pool ! as I fade and wither, thou must die. The beating of thy pulse (when thou art well) Is just the tolling of thy passing bell: Night is thy hearse, whose sable canopy Covers alike deceased day and thee. And all those weeping dews which nightly fall, Are but the tears shed for thy funeral." With King's lines H. P. Dodd (The Epigrammatists, London, 1870; p. 222) compares the following epigram, entitled Fatum Supremum:— " All buildings are but monuments of death, All clothes but winding sheets for our last knell, All dainty fattings for the worms beneath, All curious music, but our passing bell: Thus death is nobly waited on, for why ? All that we have is but death's livery." Cf. Hannah More (King Hezekiah):— " How short is human life! tbe very breath, Which frames my words, accelerates my death." Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1228), amongst other works, wrote a Latin poem on Contempt of the World. Another De Contemptu Mundi is referred to in the Dictionary of National Biography (London), as the work of Alexander Xeckam or Xecham (1157-1217), Abbot of Cirencester, the author of Be Baudibus Divinae Sapientiae, and De Naturis Rerum PART Il.-xvii.] PESSIMISM. 401 (see Alexandri Neckam de Naturis Rerum, edited by Thomas Wright, London, 1863). In Petrarch's Latin dialogues, De Contemptu Mundi, are many interesting quotations, including, in the first dialogue, the celebrated passage from "Juvenal" {Sat, x. 172), doubtless (directly or indirectly) well known to Shakespeare and Elizabethan dramatists :— " Mors sola fatetur, Quantula sint hominum corpuscula." In the third dialogue he makes Saint Augustine quote from his (Petrarch's) Latin epic poem Africa, the passages regarding a great man's "second death" (that is, when his tomb and monument decay and fall to pieces), and his " third death " (that is, when his writings are destroyed or forgotten) :— " Mox ruet et bustum, titulusque in marmore sectus Occidet, hinc mortem patieris, nate, secundam. . Libris autem morientibus, ipse Occumbes etiam: sic mors tibi tertia restat." The idea of a sepulchral monument being outlived by the memory (the reverse is what often actually happens) of the dead is expressed in Shakespeare's lines:— "Tbe memory of him for whom this stands, Shall outlive marble and defacers' bands." Milton's epitaph on Shakespeare— " What needs my Shakespeare for bis honour'd bones The labour of an age in piled stones; Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid ? "— is very different in sentiment from the well-known epitaph actually inscribed (cf. the end of Part II. x.) on Shakespeare's tomb in the Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-on-Avon:— " Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares these stones, And curst be be that moves my bones." This denunciation against anyone who disturbes his bones is doubtless not by Shakespeare himself, and is not peculiar to his tomb. The 2 D ■402 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xvii. sentiment is rather that of antique Pagan Roman times, and in this connexion T. J. Pettigrew (Chronicles of the Tombs, London, 1857, p. 194) quotes the following Roman sepulchral inscription from the tomb of C. Tullius Barnaeus: C. TVLIVS . C. L. BARNAEVS OLLA EIVS SI QVI(S) OBVIOLARIT AD INFEROS NON RECIPIATVR. Pettigrew refers also to an early Christian inscription recorded by Charles Maitland, commencing, MALE PEREAT INSEl'VLTVS, and signifying: " If anyone violate this tomb, let him perish miserably, lie unburied, and not arise, but have his lot with Judas." Pettigrew likewise quotes the following two sepulchral Latin inscriptions from the tomb of the Prankish King, Childeric I, who died in 481 a.d. : Tempore nullo volo hinc tollantur ossa Hilperici (on the stone coffin), and (inside the stone coffin), Precor ego Ilpericus non auferantur hinc ossa mea. The tomb of Childeric I, when opened in 1654, was found to contain a golden signet-ring and other valuable objects (see Part II. xix.). In regard to the violation of tombs for the sake of treasure compare several of the epitaphs by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, called "the Theo- logian" (4th century a.d.), in the Greek Anthology (cf. Part II. xix.). After all, Petrarch's poetical allegory of a great man's second and third deaths (the idea of which is quite in keeping with the general sentiment of the successive " triumphs " of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, &c, in his Italian poem, Trionfi, so popular in renaissance times) was scarcely more far-fetched than was Archbishop Anselm's (just quoted) idea of a man's "second death," when, after his real death, his flesh is " tortured " (" cruciatur ") through being " eaten by worms." A Mediaeval religious aim was indeed to purify the soul not only by physical methods, namely, by bard manual labour and ascetic mortification of the body, but also by psychical methods, e.g. by endeavouring to drain to the dregs the manifold cup of sympathetic mental suffering. Thus, in the beautiful poem by Jacopone (Jacopo da Todi, who died in 1306), commencing, " Stabat Mater dolorosa," we have— " Eia, Mater, fons amoris, Me sentire vim doloris Fac, ut tecum lugeam." Compare Richard Cbenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin (1807-1886): "Yet suffering is a holy thing; Without it what were we?" Anselm's fancied posthumous horrors may be com- pared to the popular dread (notably in the England of PART Il.-xvii.] PESSIMISM. 403 the eighteenth century) of having one's body "anatomized" in the dissecting-room or cut open for necropsy purposes. This carries one back to the days of the "resurrectionists" and " body-snatching " (cf. the epitaphs, &c, in Part II. x., relating to this subject). Nowhere is this feeling better illustrated than in Hogarth's "Eeward of Cruelty," already referred to (Part II. v.). Clearly, in such a caricature the anatomists and surgeons were held out to youthful hooligans as bogies to children, namely, as additional instruments of (post-mortem !) punishment for the crimes committed by murderers, highwaymen, &c. In this connexion it is worth mentioning that the respect of human beings for the dead bodies of their fellows and their elaborate funeral and sepulchral customs have been attributed more or less to a horror of the idea of post-mortem conditions of the body (cf. Part II. x.). Thus Jelliffe,369 in a review of an article by G. Stanley Hall, on "Thanatophobia and Immortality,"370 writes: "We really know very little of the fate of the dead body. Our thanatophobia has prevented the dwelling in imagination upon the changes that must occur, much less has it allowed any true scientific investigation which may, if we ever overcome this, throw valuable light upon the process of evolution by a study of physical devolution, or upon our knowledge of tbe disease germs in their relation to a dead host.371 It is excessive shrinking from the post-mortem conditions, Hall thinks, that has contributed largely to the manifold and elaborate burial customs, which are so many cover phenomena to cover up the unbearable thoughts rather than to preserve the body to be again at some future time the habitation of the soul." 369 Jelliffe, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, New York, 1917, vol. xlv. p. 273. 370 G. Stanley Hall, Amer. Journ. Psychology, 1915, vol. xxvi. p. 550. 1,1 A good deal of medical and scientific work has been done on these subjects, for instance, in regard to the fate of both saprophytic and pathogenic microbic parasites in the dead bodies of their hosts, particularly as to the action of gas-producing anaerobic bacteria. The flora and fauna of dead bodies at different stages of decomposition and disintegration have been studied, notably by Megnin. The latter, for instance, pointed out (at the Academie des Sciences, Paris) that the so-called "worms" inhabiting decaying corpses were not really worms but the larvae of beetles and insects, derived from eggs laid on the dead bodies. 2 D 2 404 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART II.—xvii. Some persons, unsupported by religious faith, are pessimists because of unhappy circumstances in their present life, and because of the misery which they see around them. Of course the author of verses expressing such feelings need not himself be a pessimist. Francis Thompson writes:— " Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan ; For we are born in others' pain And perish in our own." To some extent this recalls the style of an epigram translated by Dr. Samuel Johnson372 from the French of Isaac de Benserade :— " In bed we laugh, in bed we cry And born in bed, in bed we die; The near approach a bed may show Of human bliss to human woe." R. W. Buchanan, in Baldur the Beautiful, has the following verses:— " We wake in a dream, and we ache in a dream And we break in a dream, and die !" P. B. Shelley, in various poems, analyzed many of the aspects of death (" How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother Sleep," Queen Mab, i.), including the idea of death as the end of a painful life, not relieved by hope. He wrote:— " The babe is at peace within the womb, The corpse is at rest within the tomb, We begin in what we end." In one of his Fragments, dated 1820, is the following :— " First our pleasures die, and then Our hopes, and then our fears : and, when These are dead, the debt is due, Dust claims dust—and we die too. 372 Quoted in Dodd's Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 245. part n.-xvii.] pessimism. 405 All things that we love and cherish, Like ourselves must fade and perish. Such is our rude mortal lot: Love itself would, did they not." These lines by Shelley seem to be a poetical version of ideas expressed by Bichat, the great French physiologist,373 in regard to death from old age. According to Bichat, "Life is the sum total of functions which resist death." Cf. A. Dastre's Life and Death, translated by W. J. Greenstreet, London, 1911, p. 28. In this book Dastre gives a review of Bichat's and various physiological and philosophical views of modern times regarding life and death. So, Bichat says, animal life comes to cease gradually; so each of the ties which enchain us to the pleasure of living are broken little by little, the pleasure escapes us unawares, and when at length a man has become oblivious of the cost, then death strikes him. This is not really a pessimistic idea at all, and Sir W. S. Savory,374 from whom I have taken this passage, adds, " Is there not something inexpressibly gentle 375 in this gradual severance of the ties between the conscious man and the world around.him by the decay of the senses?" Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696) observed that "a long sickness seems to have been placed between life and death, in order that death itself may become a relief both to those who die and to those who are left." Montaigne wrote : " Observe in all the ordinary changes and declinations we undergo, how nature hides from us the sight of our loss and decay. What remains to an old man of the vigour of his youth 373 Bichat, Becherches physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort, 1800. 374 Sir W. S. Savory, On Life and Death, London, 1863, p. 182. 375 In regard to the relation of love to death, cf. Part I. B. and Part II. xv. 406 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART Il.-xvii. and of past days ? I do not believe we should be able to endure such a change if it came upon us all at once; but nature leads us by the hand little by little down a gentle and imperceptible slope, step by step, and so lowers us into that wretched state, and accustoms us to it. So that we feel no shock when youth dies in us, though this is in essence and reality a harder death than the final dissolu- tion of a feeble body, which is nothing more than the death of old age."376 Cf. James Thomson (1700-1748), the author of "The Seasons," in his lines on the death (1731) of the Scotch painter, William Aikman:— " As those we love decay, we die in part; String after string is severed from the heart, Till loosened life, at last, but breathing clay, Without one pang is glad to fall away." If living were regarded as merely weariness, empty vanity, misery, a painful dream, or a " fitful fever," a . purposeless carrying of a heavy burden almost too heavy to be borne, then death would have to be looked forward to as the only curer, the only giver of peace or rest. A pessimistic attitude towards life is well expressed in the verses of Theognis of Megara (sixth century B.C.):— ElavTcov p.ev pg <£vvai Itti^($ovioio-iv dpicrrov, MrfS' co-i8eIv avyas o^eos geXiov, 0 It is perhaps from the funeral banquet—the feast in honour of the dead (waica^s, the blest or happy ones)—or from food offered to the dead, that the words macaroni and macaroon are derived. But this etymology is disputed by some authorities, as having been based on quite insufficient evidence. 424 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN AUT AND EPIGRAM. [PAUT II. xviii. brooches, &c, have inscriptions intended to comfort the survivors, such as: " Not lost, but gone before," and "Heaven has in store what thou hast lost." Some coins of Philip, the last Duke of Brunswick of the old Gruben- hagen line, bear the consolatory inscription, " Got gibt, Got nimbt"—presumably in reference to the deaths, in 1595, of his wife and only brother. But I have not seen it suggested on any mourning or memorial medals, jewellery, &c, that too long mourning for the dead is a useless waste of life, and therefore wrong Cf. Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 21, "Thou shalt not do him good, but hurt thyself" ; one of William Blake's illustrations to Edward Young's Night Thoughts might have also served as an illustration to this passage in Ecclesiasticus. What might be called the " hopeless type " of grief and mourning for the dead is represented by various works of art, for instance, by a modern painting, entitled "A Hopeless Dawn," by Frank Bramley, E.A. (1888), now in the National Gallery of British Art (Tate Gallery, London), and, in epigrams, by Sir Henry Wotton's well-known epitaph on Sir Albertus Morton's wife:— " He first deceased; she for a little tried To live without him; liked it not, and died." In a letter of condolence on the death of Montaigne, the essayist, written by the Flemish scholar, Justus Lipsius, to Marie de Gournay (a kind of "adopted daughter " to Montaigne), Lipsius added : " Eideat ille nos, si sciat dolere," meaning that Montaigne would laugh at them if he knew they were grieving for him. Similar expressions and ideas are quoted from Christian and non-Christian sources in other parts of this book. Many references to ancient authors in regard to philosophic consolation for the death of friends, &c., are part Ii.-xviii.] GPJEF. 425 given in Part I. A. of this book, and many more philosophic consolatory arguments of all times are adduced in Eobert Burton's famous Anatomy of Melancholy (part 2, sect. 3, M. 5). Nevertheless, in the Sinngedichte, by the seven- teenth century German poet, Friedrich von Logau,391 we read:— "Ich fiirchte nicht den Tod, der mich zu nehmen kiimmt; Ich fiirchte mehr den Tod, der mir die Meinen nimmt." And so, indeed, there will always be some to whom the following stanza from "The Grave," by Henry Vaughan, "the Silurist" (1622-1695), is applicable:— " But vainly there they seek their soul's relief, And of th' obdurate Grave its prey implore; Till Death himself shall medicine their grief, Closing their eyes by those they wept before." In regard to the so-called "untimely" or "premature " death of friends and relatives, Mr. William Wale has kindly drawn my attention to the following passage, translated from Cicero: " Some men make a womanish complaint that it is a great misfortune to die before one's time. I would ask what time ? Is it that of Nature ? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money; only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that one receives it." In the " Meditations" of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, various consolatory reflexions on the subject of early or " untimely " death are included. As to one of the worst forms of grief and pain, the following passage (Eobert Browning, A Beath in the Edited by G. Eitner, Leipzig—F. A. Brockhaus—1870, No. 90. 420 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPKHIAM. [ PART II.- X viii. Desert), for reference to which I am likewise indebted to Mr. W. Wale, may be cited:— " For T say this is death and the sole death, - When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest." Fig. 39.—" Sorrow," by W. Dadd, 1854. part n.-xviii.j (jrief. 427 The accompanying design (one of a series), intended to represent " Sorrow," has a somewhat unusual interest of its own, as it was the work of William Dadd (1854), when an inmate of Bethlem Hospital (Mental Diseases), London (see Fig. 39). I am indebted to Dr. W. H. B. Stoddart for permission to reproduce it. In other parts of the book (Part IV.) I have described various ringer-rings, jewels, &c, intended to be worn as signs to all tbe world of mourning for the loss of relatives, friends, patrons or rulers—as mementos for the wearer to call back memories of departed loved ones, and to remind him that he must sooner or later die himself, and that he should so order his life as to be ready to die worthily, like those whom he has loved and honoured who have preceded him across the houndary. It is not necessary that sucb a token should be associated only with the idea of mourning; it may carry with it the idea of honour and pride in dutifulness and patriotism. Sucb tokens and badges need not therefore have a gloomy or sombre appearance. Iu the Great European War some English ladies who had lost sons, husbands or brothers, in battle objected to tbe wearing of ordinary mourning, but suggested the use of a purple band on tbe left arm as a token of the patriotic death of their relatives. Similarly, in Germany, an association was formed, proposing" to substitute for ordinary mourning a little scarfpin for women with the inscription: " Stolz gab ich ein teueres Haupt furs Vaterland" (" Proudly gave I a beloved one for the Fatherland ").IM 3m See Times, London, January 30th, 1915, p. 7. XIX., XX. The Attributes and Bomp of Death. Funerals. Excessive Fear of Death (Thanatophobia). The fancied terrors of death have been naturally more frequently illustrated by engravings, drawings, and paintings than by medals, engraved gems, &c. (see also under Heading v.). The idea of representing the decaying body as being occupied by long worms, snakes, toads, &c. (i.e. as being " eaten by worms," according to a phrase still in use in some countries), was doubtless chielly derived from Ecclesiasticus (x. 11), "For when a man is dead, he shall inherit creeping things, beasts, and worms." An engraving of about 1480, by the " Meister I. A. M. von Zwolle " (the " Meister mit der Weberschutze "), represents Moses with the tables of the ten commandments in an upper compartment, and a skeleton-like corpse, being "eaten by worms," in a lower compartment. This design is evidently meant to illustrate another particular passage in Ecclesiasticus (xxviii. 6), " Remember corruption and death, and abide in the commandments." Snakes were preferred to worms in order that the artist might magnify the horror of his subject. In regard to the spontaneous generation of worms and snakes from decaying corpses, an interesting passage is that quoted by Jules Guiart from Pliny tbe Younger (Hist. Nat, lib. x. cap. 66): " Anguem ex medulla hominis spinale gigni, accepimus a multis. Pleraque occulta et caeca origine proveniunt, etiam in quadrupedum genere." Guiart thinks that the Mediaeval representation of decaying corpses being "eaten by worms" was preferred by the artists of the time as being more horror-inspiring (and therefore having a more powerfully memento mori admonitory effect) than the representation of dry skeletons. This is extremely probable, and, moreover, the artist's 430 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [FT. II.- xix.,.\X. deficient anatomical (osteological) knowledge was somewhat hidden by the ragged skin which covered the skeleton and partially concealed such mistakes as those of the Meister von Zwolle, who, in the above- mentioned design, placed tbe shoulder-blades of the skeleton-like figure in front of tbe thorax instead of on the back. Even when Death was represented by a skeleton or a shrivelled figure of skin and bones (the German Hautskelett) in life-like attitude, the snakes and toads were often not omitted. Thus, in a German fifteenth- century woodcut (by an unknown artist) of "Death in the Jaws of Hell,"393 Death, who is represented by a 303 Eeproduced in tbe Catalogue of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts in the British Museum, by Campbell Dodgson, 1903, vol. i. pi. 2. In Revelation vi. 8, Death is said to be followed by Hell (or Hades), and in tbe so-called "Shepherds' Calendar" (Le Compost et kalendrier des bergiers), printed by Guiot Marchant, at Paris, in 1493, there is a French woodcut (page g, vi) representing Death riding in front of the open jaws of Hell, according to this passage of the Apocalypse. This passage was, I think, the indirect origin of the idea of representing Death as being not merely in front of, but as actually standing in, or coming out of, the open jaws of Hell. On this subject, however, I venture to quote from a letter by Mr. George G. Loane in tbe Times Literary Supplement (London, November 29th, 1917, p. 583). He says that Professor J. P. Postgate queries whether tbe phrase, " the jaws of Death," be not based on an inaccurate rendering of Virgil's fauces Orci (the throat of hell): " Primis in faucibus Orci." (Cf. also Apuleius, Metamorph.: " E mediis Orci faucibus ad hunc evasi modum.") Mr. Loane continues: " Perhaps both are based on the ancient and popular conception of death as a devourer; it would not be the first time that a poet's metaphor coincided with a popular belief. The belief appears in the early conception of Cerberus, the corpse-eater, as not only the guardian but the depository of tbe dead; and it is significant that Perrault, needing a name for the man-eating monster of nursery tradition, fastened on an Italian form of this very word Orcus, and so we got our ' ogre.' Orcus is a person as well as a place, and Virgil's fauces cunningly suits either sense. The English phrase [' tbe jaws of Hell'] seems to occur first in Sackville's ' Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates.' He describes a hideous bole which ' with ugly mouth and griesly jaws doth gape,' and proceeds : ' And first within the porch and jaws of hell.' Obviously he had Virgil in mind, but the picture pre- sented is surely suggested by Mediaeval representations of hell as the gaping mouth of a lion or dragon. A well-known cut in the ' Speculum Humanae Salvationis,' entitled Casus Luciferi, sbows the dejection of PART II-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 431 shrivelled figure of skin and bones (in the mouth of a monster who is vomiting up flames), is accompanied by a snake, and has a toad in place of the conventional fig-leaf (see Fig. 40). So also, in the fifteenth-century engraving of " Death warning a Youth," by the " Meister des Amsterdamer Kabinets" (already referred to), the life-like shrivelled figure representing Death is accom- panied by a toad and snake. In Part I. C. I have referred at some length to the horror-inspiring aspect of memento mori religious art, and to the ghastly spectacle of decay and putrefaction revealed in pictures by Valdes Leal, &c. A small panel- painting in the possession of Dr. Pietro Capparoni of Eome (which he has kindly allowed me to illustrate) seems to rival all others in this respect (see Fig. 41). It represents a man's head in a state of putrefaction and being " eaten by worms" and coleoptera. The head rests on a closed book;394 by the side is a winged hour- glass ; and above is suspended a small iron lamp, such Lucifer and his horrid crew into the mouth of a tusked monster. Still earlier ' the jaws of the whale were the accepted symbol of the mouth of hell. They stand for that in tbe tenth-century pictures which adorn the manuscript of Caedmon' (Professor H. Morley). Jonah's whale has long been an emblem of death." Mr. H. C. Prideaux (Times Literary Supplement, London, De- cember 13th, 1917, p. 620) suggests as a more striking phrase than Virgil's fauces Orci the words used by Lucretius (De Berum Naturd, i. 852), " Leti sub dentibus ipsis " ; and he adds that Munro's note is as follows : " Faucibus is a more common metaphor: Lambinus quotes Arnobius II, 32, non esse animas longe ab hiatibus mortis et faucibus constitutas: but Lucretius agrees better with our use of ' jaws of death.' " It may be noted that the "jaws of hell," represented as the open jaws of a huge whale-like monster, constituted an important part of the stage furniture in some Mediaeval (and later) mystery or miracle plays. 304 The allegorical closed book of the dead in contradistinction from the allegorical open book of tbe living. 432 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT.II.-xix., XX. Fig. 40.—" Death in the Jaws of Hell." From a fifteenth-century German woodcut in the British Museum. The accompanying German verses express the levelling of all social distinctions by Death. With this design may be compared a fifteenth-century French woodcut (included in the so-called " Shepherds' Calendar "— Le compost et kalendrier des bergiers, printed by Guiot Marchant, at Paris, in 1493, page g, vi.—see British Museum specimen), represent- ing Death (the Hautskelett type) on horseback, holding a dart and a coffin, riding before the open jaws of a monster (hell). I'AIJT 1I.-XIX., XX. POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 433 as might be used to illuminate a dismal vault. In the upper right corner is the inscription fi-qm Ecclesiasticus 5§9 ■Ml ■^-W^ ° 1 !•! -■<* *•■' • '•■'!#av^ :S^n. : %■.. 'J '•■*• • •//'" J^*Sf*n 1 > (' '••■■■ =: - 4 i* - -P-' %: :| Fig. 41.—A Memento mori panel-picture, representing decay and putrefaction. xii. 1, "(Mors) amara habenti pacem in substautiis suis." The picture does not seem to me a very early 2 F 434 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ FT. II. xix., XX. one. In this connexion one may well remember that it is the imaginative anticipation of death rather than death itself that may be " the grisly terror" (Milton). Death itself may be a " prince of peace." Cf. the often- quoted lines of Edward Young (Night Thoughts, 1742)- "The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave ; The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm ; These are the bugbears of a winter's eve, The terrors of the living, not the dead." " The fantastic horrors with which the mind of the average sensual man has surrounded the grave" are395 expressed in a concentrated manner by Claudio's outburst in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (act iii., scene 1):— " Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds And blown with restless violence roundabout The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts Imagine howling !—'tis too horrible ! The weariest and most loathed worldly life, That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death." A stately kind of fear of death is expressed by the Scottish poet, William Dunbar (about 1465-1530), in his " spacious " elegy, " The Lament for the Makaris [Eoets]," ■'»" As the reviewer of this book in the British Medical Journal for April 24th, 1915 (p. 725), pointed out. He likewise referred to the description of the last agony in Cardinal Newman's Dream of Gerontius. PART II.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 435 and it seems that in 1508 Dunbar had cause to fear that his own health was failing. Following are some of the stanzas :— " I that in health was and gladness, Am troubled now with great sickness, Enfceblfd with infirmity. Timor mortis conturbat me. Our pleasance here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory, The flesh is bruckle, the fiend is slee [sly, cunning]. Timor mortis conturbat me. The state of man doth change and vary, Now sound, now sick, now blythe, now sary [sorry], Now dancing merry, now ' like to dee.' Timor mortis conturbat me. Unto the Death go all estates, Princes, Prelates, and Potestates Both rich and poor of all degree. Timor mortis conturbat me." These magnificent verses by Dunbar may be compared in their power and pathos with tbe famous Mediaeval Latin dirge by Thomas of Celano, Dies irae, dies ilia, and with James Shirley's well-known English dirge (1659) commencing, The glories of our blood and state. Dunbar's " Testament of Maister Andro Kennedy " (a good specimen of one kind of " macaronic " verse), of which the following lines are a sample, may be contrasted with his above-quoted " Lament " :— "I wish na priestis for me sing, Dies ilia, dies irae, Nar yet na bellis for me ring, Sicut semper solet fieri." John Henry, Cardinal Xewman, in his Dream of (Jerontius, makes the dying man give a wonderful " intellectual " description of the fancied last agony :— " That sense of ruin which is worse than pain, That masterful negation and collapse Of all that makes me man . . . ****** As though Down; down for ever I was falling through The solid framework of created things.-' 2 F 2 436 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIORAM. [PT. Il.-xix., XX. The horror of the idea of death felt by the ordinary sensual man is also expressed in John Webster's fine play, The White Bevil (first printed in 1612), when the Duke of Brachiano, dying of poison, exclaims :— " On pain of death, let no man name death to me: It is a word infinitely terrible." This reminds one of the euphemistic avoidance of the word by the ancient Komans, and others. In regard to horror of the idea of death, see also the passages quoted further on (Part II. xix., xx.), from Shakespeare's plays, &c. The attributes and pomp of death may frighten more than death itself. Cf. Bacon's Essays, " Of Death," and his reference to a supposed passage on the terror of the pomp of death in the writings of "an ancient philosopher " : " Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa." Yet the " pomp of death," in the form of a funeral or funera] procession (pompe funebre), has been appreciated by great rulers (the Emperor Charles V, &c.); it is a spectacle still dearly loved by a certain class of the community, and in the hearts of many servant-girls and others is only rivalled by the pomp of weddings.396 Educated modern Europeans would mostly not be particularly astonished to hear that some man (or woman) of their acquaintance, whose death had been announced, had left a request that his body should be cremated and his ashes then scattered to the winds. Indeed, the immense importance attached to burial and funeral rites by the Ancient Greeks and Eomans can hardly be 396 It is not so very long ago that, in England as well as in other European countries, public executions of criminals were attended by an eager throng of sight-seers, such as crowd to see cricket or football matches, horse-races and prize-figbts, or (in Spain) bull-fights. PART Il.-xix., XX.] POMP ANT) FEAR OF DEATH. 437 realized nowadays. Thus, it was considered a man's supremely " pious " duty to see to the burial of relatives, friends, and companions in arms. It was not considered proper conduct to leave any dead body, even of a stranger, or part of a body, without burial, or at least an attempt to cover it with earth. Amongst the Eomans anyone finding an unburied body was morally bound to cast earth at least three times on it. Cf. Horace, Od., i. 28. 36 : " Injecto ter pulvere curras." It was thought that in the absence of funeral rites the dead man's soul wandered restlessly upon the earth. Cf. Tertullian, Be Animd, 56 : and Virgil, Acn., vi. 325: "Haec omnis, quam cernis, inops inhumataque turba est." Virgil makes the figure of Palinurus, one of the unhappy crowd, beg Aeneas to search for his unburied body and charitably cast earth over it. In spite of the importance universally attached amongst the ancients to the performance of the " necessary" burial and funeral rites the presence or absence of unnecessary splendour of funeral pomp was sometimes viewed in quite another light. Thus, Theognis of Megara, in the sixth century B.C., wrote (English version by John Hookham Frere):— "A couch of thorns, or an embroidered bed, Are matters of indifference to the dead." And though the ancients, as we see, were in general far from believing that " He lacks not much that lacks a grave," yet Virgil, in his famous description of the sack of Troy, makes the aged Anchises (for the sake of his son Aeneas and the future of his race), by a decision of supreme self-abnegation, brave the danger of remaining unburied (Aeneid, book ii. line 646) : " Eacilis jactura 438 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AM) EPIGRAM. [PT. II.-xix., XX. sepulchri est." (As to the enlightened indifference of some ancients on the subject of burial, see also further on.) The following story, illustrating the popular feeling on the subject amongst the ancients, is an English version, by William Hay, of an epigram by Carphyllides in the Greek Anthology:— " While from the strand his line a fisher threw, Shoreward a shipwrecked human head be drew. His moistened eyes soft drops of pity shed, While gazing on the bald and trunkless head. No spade be bad; but while his active hands Scraped a small grave among the yielding sands, A store of gold, there bid, be found. Yes ! yes! Heaven will the just man's pious actions bless." The same feeling on the subject is further illustrated by Sophocles in his Antigone, where Antigone disregards 'all consequences in her determination to bury the dead body of her brother Polynices, which had been left unburied by tbe command of Creon, King of Thebes. An exactly similar idea is that in the Ajax of Sophocles, and in the Supplices of Euripides, and in many passages in Homer's Iliad, especially where Priam, the aged King of Troy, comes as a suppliant to Achilles to beg the body of bis son, Hector, for burial. (Achilles had insultingly fastened the corpse of Hector to his chariot and had thus dragged it, trailing on the ground, in sight of the Trojans, into the Greek camp.) After the naval battle of Arginusae (b.c 406) the Athenians condemned ten of their victorious leaders to death for having allowed seamen of sinking ships to drown unrescued, thus depriving them of a grave. Allied to the horror of the idea of the body after death being left without burial was a fear of dying in a foreign country, which has been satirized by the saying of Anaxagoras that "all places are equi-distant from Hades." An epitaph by Tymnes (Anthol. Graeca, vii. 477) says that though the deceased was buried at Eleutherna instead of beside the Nile, it made no difference—" the road from everywhere was the same to Hades." An anonymous epigram in the Greek Anthology satirically PART Il.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 439 alludes to the easy way to Hades,397 the straight highway we must all follow:— •' Straight the descent to Hades, whence so e'er, From Athens or from Meroe, you fare: Nor grieve to die when far from home; you'll find To Hades everywhere a favouring wind." Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher (The Custom of the Country, act. ii., scene 2): " Death has so many doors to let out life." The idea of Eompey's corpse lying (for a time) unburied on the Kgyptian shore formed the subject of a fine Latin epigram by the Italian poet, Francesco Molza (died 1544).398 Of this John Fiske quoted the following English paraphrase : — 1 We grieve not, Pompey, that to thee No earthly tomb was given ; All lands subdued, nought else was free To shelter thee but Heaven ! " Molza was probably inspired by Lucan's words (Phar- salia, vii. line 819) : " Coelo tegitur qui non habet urnam," which have been paraphrased in English by Sir Thomas Browne (Religio Medici) as follows :— " He that unburied lies wants not his hearse, For unto him a tomb's the Universe." Socrates, according to Plato, told Criton that it did not matter to him what was done with his body when he was dead; and this enlightened opinion may have indirectly suggested the hexameter line of Maecenas, which is 397 English version given by Lord Neaves, Greek Anthology, 1874. 388 For the Latin epigrammatists and poets of the European Renaissance, in Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, see the various series of Delitiae, collected by R. Gherus, published at the commencement of the seventeenth century. For Latin epigrams and poems by German writers see Matthias Borbonius, Delititiac Poetarum Germanorum, Frankfurt, 1612 ; and other collections. 440 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT.I1. xix., XX. quoted by Seneca (Epist. Mor., xcii. 35, that is to say. Lib. xiv. 4, 35) :— " Nee tumulum euro; sepelit natura relictos." In reality, the whole world (orbis terrarvm, in its various senses) forms the tomb of every one, both yreat and small, but Lord Morley beautifully refers to this subject only in regard to the great ones: " Though lie [Byron] may have no place in our own Minster, he assuredly belongs to the band of far-shining men, of whom Pericles declared the whole world to be the tomb."3" According to an epigram, by Addoeus, in the Creek Anthology, the whole world was said to constitute the funeral monument of Alexander the Creat. In the Greek Anthology also are somewhat similar epigrams on Themistocles. One (by Geminus) commences: " Give me no grave but Greece "; and another (by Philippus the Anthologist) begins:— " Trace on my tomb the mountains and the sea, And let the all-seeing Sun a witness be."400 To somewhat the same group of exaggerated, but effective, complimentary epigrams belongs the epitaph by Cardinal Bernbo on Raphael:— " Hie ille est Raphael, metuit quo sospite vinci Rerum magna parens, et moriente, mori." Sir Sidney Lee401 notes that the "identical conceit" was used in Shakespeare's epitaph in the church at Stratfr.rd-on- Avon :— "Shakespeare, with whom quick nature died"; 399 John Morley, Viscount Morley, Critical Miscellanies, London, 1886, vol. i. p. 251. 400 Lord Neaves, The Greek Anthology, Edinburgh, 1874, pp. 28, 29. 401 Sir Sidney Lee, The Annual Shakespeare Lecture, 1915. PART Il.-xix., X.X.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 441 and the great English dramatist was thus placed " in that category of creative artists, to which Bembo had assigned Raphael." To the same class of verses for tombs or cenotaphs belong John Prince's lines on Sir Francis Drake (died 1596), the great English circumnavigator :— " The waves became his winding-sheet, The waters were his tomb: But for his fame the ocean sea Was not sufficient room." Of very similar style is also Beza's Latin epigram on Holbein's halfdength portrait of the famous Erasmus.40'2 The following English translation of it is quoted by H. P. Dodd i03 :— " One half this canvass shows of that great sage, Whom worlds proclaim the wonder of the age ; Why not the whole? Cease, reader, thy surprise, Him the whole earth's not able to comprise." (Cf. the epigrams on physicians in an ultradaudatory style, referred to in Part II. under Heading x.) Ancient funeral and sepulchral rites and customs are well illustrated by certain Egyptian painted papyri, sarcophagi, sepulchral tablets, stelae, and tombs, by Greek and Etruscan painted vases, by certain wall-paintings from Etruscan tombs, and by reliefs and painted scenes on ancient sarcophagi, stelae and other sepulchral monuments of various periods (see the elaborate article under the heading "Funus," in Daremberg, Saglio, and Pottier's Dietionnaire des Antiquites, Paris, 1896, vol. ii. pp. 1367- 1409). In regard to tombs, funeral rites, &c, see also Percy Gardner's Sculptured Tombs of Hellas (London, 1896), and the notes and illustrations given by Sir J. B. Sandys, A Companion to Latin Studies, 1"- Printed in Abraham Wright's Delitiae Delitiarum, Oxford, 1637, p. 15. 4 "J H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 135. 442 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND KPKIKAM. | IT. II. xix , XX. 1913, pp. 179-184, and by Mrs. Arthur Strong, The Apotheosis and After Life, London, 1915. Many Roman tombs, and various antiquities connected with funeral rites, are illustrated in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'Antiquite expliqure, Paris, vol. v. part i., and Supplem. vol. v. Funerals, funeral processions, and sepulchral monu- ments are, moreover, illustrated by minor works of art. such as prints and medals, of many periods. The miniature sarcophagi, the sepulchral urns, the Egyptian Canopic vessels, the small stelae, the memorial tablets, the Etruscan and ancient Italian funeral masks, and the Roman altar-like funeral urns, in the various English and foreign museums, bear of course on the subject. The Etruscan and ancient Italian hut-urns, Canopic urns, and funeral masks (of terra-cotta or bronze) are especially curious. Seu the British Museum Guide to the Exhibition illustrating Greek and Roman Life, London, 1908, pp. 228, 230, and figures 237-239. To some extent Eoman mortuary or consecratio coins, struck to commemorate the deification, apotheosis or immortality of deceased emperors and empresses, come under this heading. Amongst such consecratio types are: a large funeral pile or mausoleum; and a funeral carpentum drawn by mules or elephants. Under the same heading, and to the same extent, come the German mortuary Thaler and other coins (" Sterbemiinzen/' " Sterbethaler," Begrabnissthaler, &c), commemorating the death and burial of German sovereigns and princes. Then there are the numismatic and other small repre- sentations of tombs and famous mausoleums. Even the medalets made in various countries and at various times for distribution at funerals might find a place here. One of tbe most curious suggestions in regard to sepulchral monuments is Jeremy Bentham's proposal to make what he calls " auto-icons." An unpublished fragment (1831-1832) by Bentham, in the British Museum, explains how every man, if embalmed, might be his own statue. There is a kind of "auto-icon" of Bentham himself PART Il.-Xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 44S preserved in the anatomical museum of University College, London, consisting of his skeleton (without tbe head) dressed up, by the help of padding, intclothes that he wore during life. The face is represented by a wax mask, and the sitting attitude of the figure is very life-like ; but for making such a figure it was quite unnecessary to have employed the actual skeleton at all. Embalming has, indeed, been occasionally resorted to with more or less success to make an "auto-icon." Thus, in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, is the embalmed body of the first wife of Martin van Butchell (1735-1812), wbicb that eccentric quack is said to have kept in his parlour till he married his second wife. The embalming in question was the work of William Hunter and W. (.'. Cruikshank, in 1775. A French visitor to London, Faujas Saint-Fond, who, about 1790, examined the collection of John Sheldon (1752-1808)1 the anatomist, has recorded a romantic story concerning the body of a beautiful young woman, which was embalmed (about 1775) by Sheldon. This body is now likewise in the museum (presented to it by Mrs. Sheldon) of the Eoyal College of Surgeons, London, and the story in question is quoted by D'Arcy Power."* According to it the woman herself, when dying of consumption, was said to have asked Sheldon to embalm her body and keep it near him. In a French town I have seen an excellent nineteenth century example of the "auto-icon." In that case it was the wonderfully life-like, embalmed body of the father, retained in a place of honour in his old home by the son who inherited the house from him. If the making of " auto-icons " of this kind became fashionable thev would soon begin to overflow into the museums and old curiosity shops; and those of famous personages of the modern world would share the museum honours with the mummified bodies of tbe Pharaohs and nobility of ancient Egypt, &c. The subject reminds me of a passage inOuida's (Louise De la Bamee's) novel, Ghandos (1866) : "Immortality is dull work—a hideous statue that gets black as soot in no time .... a tombstone for the canes of the curious to poke at ... . and a partial preservation shared in common with mummies, auks' eggs, snakes in bottles, and deformities in spirits of wine :—that's posthumous fame." In connexion with the " Pomp of Death," a reference is not out of place to the tinsel-like or plated character of the jewellery, and of the inferior quality of the " furniture " and offerings of various kinds used for funereal and sepulchral purposes in Greek and Eoman times. Of course, many sepulchral objects, including the leaden ,04 In the Physician and Surgeon, London, July 26th, T900, page 1050. 444 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT. H.-xix., XX. antique finger-rings, and the large relatively modern ecclesiastical plated rings, may be regarded as ','tokens" only. It seems probable that the silvered terra-cottii ware described by A. Kliigmann,405 of which several examples, from tombs in Central Italy, are now in the British Museum, were made exclusively to be used as "furniture" for tombs.406 An oenochoe and an amphora in the British Museum are mere outer shells made to look like vessels, but with large apertures at the base, so that they could never have held any liquid. Aristophanes, in a passage407 in his Ecclesiazusae (line 996), refers to an artist "who paints lecythi for the dead," in an evidently disdainful and satirical manner. In the tomb in which the Etruscan sarcophagus of a lady, "Seianti Thanunia, wife of Tlesna" (second century B.C.), was found, were some silver vases, a silver mirror, &c, which are now, together with the sarcophagus, in the British Museum. They are extremely thin, as if they were made for " tomb furniture," and not for actual use. Many similar examples could be cited pointing to the special manufacture of " tomb furniture" by the ancients. It should be remembered that offerings at graves and sepulchral " furniture" were probably not thought of as for direct use, but rather as symbols or tokens of food and objects of comfort and delight which it was hoped that the dead would obtain in their after-life by a kind of " sympathetic magic" (cf. Part II. ii.). 405 A. Kliigmann, Annali dell' Instituto di' Corrispondenza Archeo- logica, 1871, vol. 43, p. 5. 406 See F. P. Weber, "Exhibition of an Antique Phiale of Terra- cotta, supposed to have been originally silvered to imitate Metal," Proc. Soc. Ant Lond. 1895, second series, vol. xv. p. 305. 407 To wbich my attention was kindly drawn by Mr. E. J. Forsdyke. PART II.-xix.,XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DF.ATH. 445 Mrs. Arthur Strong40" writes : "In the beginning, at any rate, the tomb is not furnished, as is popularly supposed, with objects known to the dead while yet alive or beloved by them—a late and sentimental notion. The real function of these objects, whether the doll of the child or the armour oE the warrior, is rather to obtain for the dead, by a sort of sympathetic magic, the things which may induce them to stay in another world." Possibly some of the numerous plated and other spurious specimens, now regarded as contemporary forgeries of antique coins, may have at the time been regularly utilized, even if not expressly manufactured, for funereal and sepulchral purposes, or for votive offerings at shrines, to be cast into sacred wells, &c. It has been remarked by a numismatist, Mr. J. Allan tells me, that in finds of Ptoman denarii which have been dropped as votive offerings into wells, &c, the proportion of the plated pieces is surprisingly large. The Chinese use facsimiles of Mexican dollars—made of pasteboard or papier-mache, covered with lacquer—for funeral purposes.409 It appears that, according to modern Confucianism, such " token-money," and imitation Mexican dollars, specially made for the purpose, may be burnt as an offering to the souls of ancestors, the idea being that such token-money can be thus transferred to and give pleasure to the ghosts of those who have died. Such imitation coins form part of the funeral furniture of the house where a coffin of the deceased is placed in the City of the Dead at Canton. In earlier times in China actual coins were buried with the dead; for instance, the very early Chinese knife-like coins are found amongst the 408 Mrs. Arthur Strong, op. cit, pp. 126, 127. 40D Cf. Rev. E. Rogers, Proceedings of the Boyal Numismatic Society, of London, page 11, bound up with the Numismatic Chronicle, London, 1911, fourth series, vol. xi. 446 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [PT. Il.-xi.W, XX. contents of tombs (information obtained through the kindness of Mr. G. F. Hill). In regard, however, to real treasures of great value deposited in tombs, see the account of jewels, &c, found in 1544, in the tomb of Maria, the child-wife of the Emperor Honorius and daughter of his all-powerful advisery Stilicho; and the golden signet-ring and other objects found in 1654 in the tomb of the Prankish King Childeric I, who died in 481 a.d.410 The original object of depositing such treasures in tombs before the establish- ment of Christianity had apparently been the idea of propitiating the Manes of the deceased. Similarly, it cannot be said that the objects found in the famous Oseberg tumulus were in any way " sepulchral shams." They are now exhibited in the " Oseberg Hall" of the Historical Museum of the University of Christiania. The tumulus in question, near Tonsberg, on the west side of the Christiania Eiord, was excavated about 1903. It was a "ship-tomb " of the Northmen of the ninth century, the burial place of a queen of Vestfold. In the beautiful " Oseberg" ship, with her, was buried a bondswoman, together with horses, oxen and dogs offered to the deceased queen, a wagon, sledges, wooden beds, a chair, two chests containing various articles, a loom and an apparatus for " broad weaving," fabrics (many with interesting patterns and figures), and domestic and kitchen outfit, the whole constituting a complete equipment for future life in the next world. The carving on some of the wooden articles and on parts of the ship is very fine, and characteristic of the Viking Age. 410 Cf. C. W. King, on " Tomb Treasures," in The Gnostics and their Bemains, second edition, London, 1837, pp. 191-194. For the inscrip- tions from the tomb of Childeric asking that his bones may not be disturbed see Part II. xvii. PAKT II.- xix., XX.J POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 447 The burying of objects of value with the dead has doubtless encouraged the desecration and plundering of tombs in ancient days, as in modern times. Saint Gregory the Theologian (of Nazianzus), in the fourth century of the Christian Era, wrote many epigrams on the subject, including one which is translated as follows by W. R. Paton :411 " Let the monuments of the dead be dead too, and let him who erects a magnificent tomb to the dust meet with this fate. For that man would never have pillaged my tomb if he had not expected to get gold from the dead." The excavation or opening of ancient tombs for antiquarian and historical purposes is, of course, a matter quite different from the robbing of fresh graves by thieves attracted merely by the hope of getting treasure. The subject of relative fear or fearlessness of death has already been referred to in Part I., and further back in Part IL, under the present and various preceding headings (especially Heading v.). There are many moderns who, like Falstaff (Shakespeare's Henry IV, part ii., act ii., scene 4) and the Duke of Brachiano (John Webster's play, The White Devil, 1612), dislike any talk or thought which reminds them of the subject of death. Isabella, in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (act iii., scene 1), says: "The sense of death is most in apprehen- sion." Casca, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, says, " Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life, cuts off so many years of fearing death." Such making light of the idea of political or semi-political assassina- tions may be compared with the following anonymous epigram412 on the murder of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, by John Felton (1628): — " Some say the Duke was gracious, virtuous, good, And basely Felton did to spill bis blood; If that be true, what did he then amiss In sending him the sooner to his bliss ? Pale death is pleasing to a good man's eye, And none but bad men are afraid to die. Left he this kingdom to a passage better ? Why, then, Felton hath made the Duke his debtor." 411 W. R. Paton, The Greek Anthology, Loeb Classical Library, 1917, vol. ii. p. 481. 4,2 Quoted by H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 236. 448 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPKiHAM. [PT. II. xix., XX. Again, in Shakespeare's Julias Caesar (aet ii., scene 2 i, Caesar says :— " Cowards die many times before their deaths ; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come, when it will come." To many earnest and serious and brave men, however, it is not in any way consoling to be reminded : " A man can die only once, and, if he is a wise man, it should be a matter of indifference to him whether death comes a little earlier or a little later." There is a Russian proverb, " One cannot die twice." Feeble (in Shakespeare's King Henry IV, part ii., act iii., scene 2), when he found he could not avoid being called out to tbe war, tried to console himself by saying : "By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death . . ." Cf. the quotations given in Part II. iv., on dying only once. Nowadays, however, even more than of old, a man often feels that his span of active life, however long, must yet be all too short for the work he would like to do and the objects he would hope to achieve. Such a man might dwell with some bitterness on the eternal truth of Hippocrates' aphorism, Vita brevis, ars longa, and he might even regret that Nature had not been kind enough to permit him to die more than once so that he could make use of more than one life to accomplish his life's object. The object need not be tbe advancement of science, knowledge, civilisation, or altruistic schemes of universal charity, enlightened government, the abolition of warfare, and a golden age; it may be simply one of personal love, duty or patriotism. Addison (Cato, act iv., scene 4) makes bis character say: " What a pity is it that we can die but once to save our country ! " Thus also, in a letter published during the Great European War, a lady wrote that she "would gladly die a thousand deaths," could she thereby bring back peace and happiness to the world. And in various works of fiction we are all familiar with romantic expressions of the following type: " Had I a hundred lives, a hundred times I would die to save you," or, "I would gladly give them all to save you." Indeed, the idea of dying only once, implying, as it does, having only one life, is, as is pointed out elsewhere in this book, rather the cause of a pessimistic than a consolatory aspect of life. So, on the seal, long ago, of Chosroes I ("the Great") of Persia (see Part IV. ii.) part of the inscription was: " One lives once only, wbat can I desire ? Behind me is Death, what can delight me ? " Walter Savage Landor wrote :— " Death stands above me, whispering low I know not what into my ear: Of his strange language all I know Is, there is not a word of fear." I'ART Il.-xix., XX.J POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 449 A Greek epigram by Lucilius is thus translated by W. Cowper413:— " Far happier are the dead, methinks, than they Who look for death, and fear it every day." Lord Neaves (The Greek Anthology, Edinburgh, 1874, p. 114) gives another English version :— " I mourn not those who lose their vital breath; But those who, living, live in fear of death." Sir Thomas More414 wrote a Latin version of the same epigram:— " Non ego quos rapuit mors defleo: defleo vivos Quos urunt longo fata futura metu." In regard to death bringing an end to all fear, doubt, &c, cf. the following lines of the eighteenth century:— " Past is the fear of future doubt, The sun is from the dial gone, The sands are sunk, the glass is out, The folly of the farce is done." Those who have an exaggerated (morbid), almost continual dread of the inevitable end, may be said to pass their time :— " . . . in one continued strife, 'Twixt fear of death and love of life." Thinking much of death should not be confused with fearing death. Though excessive (morbid) dread of death ("thanatophobia") must partially spoil life and may perhaps make life wretched, frequent thinking of death need certainly not have the same effect. Montaigne, and many others who meditated much on death, were certainly not prevented by dread of death from enjoying and making a more or less good use of life. It may be noted, however, as has been stated by philosophers and psychologists, that most normal persons do not think much on their own death, but rather, they look on death as something concerning their neighbours, friends and others, not themselves. When a man in apparent bodily health is obsessed by a fear of death, be is perhaps psychologically in a morbid condition of vague anxiety, allied to " agoraphobia," " claustrophobia," &c, the anxiety " crystallising out " in the form of the greatest "phobia " of all, namely, the fear of death. Such a condition may doubtless have a bodily basis, of a nutritional 413 Quoted in Dodd's Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 50. ,u Sir Thomas More, Epigrammata . . . Thomae Mori, printed by J. Frobenius at Basel, 1520, p. 34. 2 G 450 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [l'T.II. xix.,XX. kind or connected with disturbance of the " internal secretions" (endocrine organs). In regard to this subject the Rev. C. J. Mead-Allen has kindly drawn my attention to Edward Young's Night Thoughts (1742, Night i., line 424): "All men think all men mortal but themselves." In this connexion he likewise quotes Maxim 154 of Francesco Guicciardini's (1483-1540) Piu Consigli (Paris, 1576): " The older a man doth grow the more is death irksome, to him; and more and more . . . doth he live as if he were certain never to die." Cf. also the interesting paper on the medical-psychological aspects of the fear of death, &c, read by Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones before the Medical Society of London (March 12, 1917), and the discussion which followed.415 The above quotation from Young's Night Thoughts sometimes applies to sick persons as well as to those who (to themselves) appear to be in ordinary health. On this subject James Fordyce (1720-1796) has a curious epigram416:— " ' My neighbour Thornton cannot live a day,' Cried honest Jones then in a deep decay. ' Jones cannot live a day,' cried Thornton, broke With cruel gout, though still he loved a joke. To think himself might die each one was loth: Before the day expired, Death seized them both." The Aesopian saying on the subject may also be referred to : BeXnov Oaveiv onra^ rj Bia f3iov rpep,eiv (It is better to die once for all than to live in constant terror). A similar thought was expressed by Julius Caesar, according to Plutarch's Rife of Julius Caesar (Ivii.): BeXnov icTTiv aira^ dirodavelv r) del irpoahoicav (It is better to die once for all than to live in continual expectation of death). This is paraphrased in the passage quoted above from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (act ii., scene 2). Martial's epigram on the suicide of " Fannius " (Epig., ii. 80)— " Hostem cum fugeret se Fannius ipse peremit. Hie, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori ?"— in u The Psychology of Fear," Transactions of the Medical Society of London, 1917, vol. 40, pp. 120-154. 416 Quoted in Dodd's Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 419. PART Il.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 451 is thus translated by William Hay (1G95-1755) :— " Himself he slew when he the foe would fly: What madness this, for fear of death to die !" Martial's epigram evidently inspired the following anonymous lines on the death (by suicide one must suppose) of a hypochondriac :— " Death by a conduct strange and new, Proved here th' effect, and motive too: Ned met the blow he meant to fly. And died because—he feared to die."41' Seneca (Epist, 69) spoke of the folly of dying from the fear of death (" Stultitia est timore mortis mori"), and Eobert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), quoted as a " true saying," " Timor mortis morte pejor." This is really one of the Scntentiae of Publius Syrus : " The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself" (Maxim 511 of Darius Lyman's translation). This particular point is well illustrated by one of Thomas Eowlandson's coloured caricatures (1792), entitled " The Hypochondriac." The miserable patient, seated in a chair, is a prey to fears. He sees a hearse and a skeleton (Death) threatening to spear him, whilst a 417 One may suppose that " Fannius " and " Ned "—whether real or imaginary characters—before they killed themselves, reasoned: "Rather an end with terror than terror without end." Words to that effect from a German poem by Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860)— " Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende "—were used as a text by Admiral Carl Holweg (the " naval Bernhardi") in his book, published in Germany in February 1917, with the title " Our Right to the Submarine War "—a book which was intended to explain the reasons for the blockade of England by means of ruthless submarine warfare, and which was, in fact, the naval analogue of General Friedrich A. J. von Bernhardi's military book on " Germany and the Next War " (published a few years before the outbreak of the Great European War), 2 G 2 452 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT.II.-xix., XX. ghastly figure personifying Suicide offers him a pistol or a rope to kill himself with. This reminds one of the lines by Francis Quarles (1592-1644), quoted by H. P. Dodd 418 :— " But to make a trade of trying Drugs and doses, always pruning, Is to die for fear of dying; He's untuned that's always tuning." Dodd,419 in the same connexion, quotes the following lines from the poem " Of Old Age," by Sir John Denham (1615-1669) : — " Such madness, as for fear of death to die, Is, to be poor for fear of poverty." Francis Bacon (in his second essay on death, already referred to) allows that the pomp and circumstance attending deaths make the idea of death terrible: "groanes and convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping and blackes (i.e. hired mourners ?) and obsequies, and the like." Montaigne wrote: " I verily believe it is the frightful ceremonies and apparatus with which we surround it that terrify us more than the thing itself; the entire change in our manner of life; the wailing of mothers, wives and children ; the visits of startled and afflicted friends; a number of servants standing round us pale and weeping; daylight shut out of our chamber, and tapers lighted; our bedside besieged by physicians and preachers; in short, every possible ghastliness and horror gathered round us;—why, we seem dead and buried already . . . Happy is the death that leaves us no leisure for such ceremonies and preparations." Again, he declared: " I can regard death with indifference, when I look at it in the general as the end of life. I can vaunt over it in the gross, but it beats me in detail. The tears of a servant, the disposition of my wardrobe, the touch of a well-known hand, a commonplace word of consolation, melts me and breaks me down."420 Montaigne in his writings dealt much with the subject of death, and his allusions to, and discussions on, the subject are not by any means limited to his essays on age, and tbe various aspects of death : " Of Age " ; "That to Philosophise is to Learn to die " ; " Of Judging of the Death of Another "; &c. See the standard English translation of his " Essays," by Charles Cotton (originally published in 1685), revised by Hazlitt and Wight. 418 H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 84. 419 H. P. Dodd, loc. cit. 420 W. Lucas Collins, Montaigne, 1879, pp. 126, 128. PART Il.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 453 Bacon, however, also reminds one that the fear of death is not strong enough to prevent it being mastered by various human passions, including revenge, love, and honour. « Eevenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it; griefe flieth to it; feare pre- occupateth it." Men have, of course, often risked, or even lost, their lives in defending what rightfully belongs to them or what they have stolen from others. Manly resistance to robbers is generally admired, though it may sometimes be folly. Certainly, in the "good old times" of Mediaeval Europe, many had to be ready to forcibly defend their property, when the rule often was the " right of war," qui potest capere capiat (cf. Rabelais, Pantagrucl, chap. 26), or as Wordsworth put it (" Rob Roy's Grave "):— " The simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can." Actual avarice may sometimes be greater than the fear of death. Cf. the satirical epigram by Nicarchus, in the Greek Anthology, translated as follows421 :— " So Pheidon weeps, poor miser,— Not because death is near; But because he bought a coffin, And paid for it too dear." H. P. Dodd 422 quotes two somewhat similar epigrams. In regard to Love " slighting Death," cf. Sir Philip Sidney (1554- 1586) :— " Dost thou ever think to enter Th' Elysian fields, that dar'st not venture In Charon's barge ? A lover's mind Must use to sail with every wind." Dryden expressed only the same idea in his oft-quoted line : " None but the brave deserves the fair." Similarly, Dr. John Donne (1573-1631) belittles the terror-inspiring power of death :— " Death! be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so : For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death !...... Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, ........Why swell'st thou then?" 421 Notes and Queries, London, 5th series, 1874, vol. i. p. 226. 422 H. P. Dodd, Epigrammatists, second edition, London, 1875, p. 587. 454 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT.II.-xix., XX. In antithesis to La Eochefoucauld's remark (quoted in the Preface) that man can no more look steadily at death than at the sun, we have the following from Schiller's Wallensteins Rager (Elfter Auftritt) :— " Der dem Tod ins Angesicht schauen kann, Der Soldat allein, ist der freie Mann." Wordsworth's " Happy Warrior " is one— " Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray." 4-3 Martial's famous description of " the Happy life " (Martial, x. 47) ends with the line :— " Summum nee metuas diem, nee optes." Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (executed in 1547), ended his poem on " the Happy Life," according to Martial, with the following lines :— "Contented with thine own estate, Ne wish for death, ne fear his might." Another English version (quoted by Lord Neaves) ends:— "To look on life with placid eye, And neither fear nor wish to die." The version by Sir Eichard Fanshawe (1608-1666) ends:— " Wish only what thou art, to be; Death neither wish, nor fear to see." Cf. John Milton (1608-1674), Paradise Bost, book xi. line 553 :— "Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st Live well: how long or short permit to heaven." Here I would again refer to Albrecht Diirer's famous engraving of 1513, generally called " The Knight, Death, 423 Cf. G. F. Watts's well-known painting (now in Munich) of the " Happy Warrior." PART Il.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 455 and the Devil," representing the " true knight," who rides onwards to the end, by the way of duty, not deterred by the threats of Death nor disturbed by the suggestions of the swinish Devil, though conscious of them, like the author of the Apocalypse: " And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed " (Revelation vi. 8). In regard to complete or relative fearlessness of death I would again quote Virgil's famous lines (Georg., ii. 490) :— " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ; Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!" With this may be compared the words with which Virgil, accompanying Dante to Hades (Dante's Inferno, canto vii.), addresses Plutus : " Be silent, accursed wolf! the fury inward on thyself prey, and consume thee! " Then there is the brave attitude and pious wish not to escape from life without paying to the full all life's debts to Nature, as expressed in Eobert Browning's Prospice:— "Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face..... I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, And bade me creep past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old ; Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold." In regard to a Hamlet-like424 meditation on the 424 Cf. Hamlet's oft-quoted soliloquy in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act iii., Scene 1, commencing:— " To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them ? To die: to sleep : . . ." 456 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [l'T. II.-X1X., XX. motives for life and for death—the reasons in favour of, and against, continuing to live—the fear of death weighed against the fear or weariness or pain of life—the following passages425 might, amongst others, be quoted:— " I wish to die, yet dare not death endure, Detest the medicine, yet desire the cure ! Oh ! that I'd courage but to meet my fate, That short dark passage to a future state." John Dryden, 1631-1700. " All mankind is one of These two cowards ; either to wish to die When he should live; or live when he should die." Sir Robert Howard (brother-in-law of Dryden), 1626-1698, The Blind Lady. " Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death." Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tiro Voices. " Death in itself is nothing; but we fear To be we know not what, we know not where." John Dryden, Aurengzebe (1675), Act ii., Scene 1. These lines of Dryden remind one of tbe commencement of the- already quoted passage from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. (Act iii., Scene 1):— " Ay, but do die, and go we know not where." In regard to the fear of death, much depends on a man's philosophical and religious ideas on life and death, but very much depends also on his age, his aims and aspirations, his surroundings, his means and opportunities for (and power of) enjoyment, his sensibility towards pain and grief, and, lastly not least, his present mental and bodily state of health. Ealph Waldo Emerson's exclama- tion—" Give me health and a day, and I will make For which I am indebted to Mr. William Wale. PART H.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 457 the pomp of kings and emperors look ridiculous"— may be compared with Martial's well-known hendeca- syllabic line, "Non est vivere sed valere vita." Montaigne pointed out that during a period of pain or sickness the idea of death might lose its customary terrors, and J. de La Bruyere observed that " a long sickness seems to have been placed between life and death, in order that death itself may become a relief both to those who die and those who are left." 426 The above quoted line from Martial (Epig., vi. 70. 15) was- adopted as a motto by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London (afterwards merged into the Royal Society of Medicine) ; but, like many aphorisms, it is neither true in the literal sense, nor altogether true in the sense whicb was originally intended, namely,, "Real life is the being in health, not merely the being alive." How far, in this latter sense, it is a true saying depends, of course, on what is meant by " health " and " real life." Some persons are satisfied with life, and make it not only enjoyable to themselves, but even useful to others, though they can hardly be said to possess "health." To such persons, indeed, it seems as if, owing to their physical deficiency, more of the stream of vital energy has been directed into intellectual channels, thus increasing their powers of observation, their love of Nature, their sympathy with others, and their highest mental enjoyments of life. Thus Sir William Osier 427 writes : "How true it is that ill-health, the bridle of Theages, Plato calls it, may concentrate a man's resources, and bring out qualities of work, the fruits of the spirit, that may be missed in the hurly-burly of the work- a-day world." Under Heading iv., on " Death as the end of Pain and Misery," I alluded to the English finger-ring inscrip- tion—" Breath paine, Death gaine "—and to the great fresco painting (fourteenth century) of the " Triumph of Death " in the Campo Santo of Pisa, where the poor and 425 W. Lucas Collins, Montaigne, 1879, p. 125. 427 Sir William Osier, Lancet, London, November 27th, 1915, p. 1224. 458 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT. Il.-xix., XX. wretched are represented praying to die, but invoking death in vain :— "Death shuns the naked throat and proffered breast; He flies when called to be a welcome guest." Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701). The same idea is expressed oh the fifteenth-century fresco of the "Triumph of Death" in the Palazzo Sclafani at Palermo. There Death is represented triumphing over pope, kings, and the great of the world. With his darts he has just struck down a lady and a youth in the midst of social festivities, but the poor and wretched implore him in vain to release them from their misery. With these and other ideas and designs already referred to (Heading iv.), the following Latin inscriptions on sun-dials might be compared: " Afflictis lentae, celeres gaudentibus horae"; and -' Felicibus brevis, miseris vita longa " (cf. also Ecclesiasticus xii. 1, 2). It is, however, by no means true that aged infirm persons and weary labourers, although they may be tired of life, always welcome the approach of death. Amongst ancient writings, Aesop's fable of "Death and the Woodman" may be remembered in this connexion, and so may the passage in Homer's Odyssey (book xi.), where the shade of Achilles in the nether world tells Ulysses that it were better to be a poor labourer's hireling amongst the living than a king amongst the dead. Similarly, some verses by Maecenas, quoted by Seneca, seem to show that in his relative old age the bountiful patron of Virgil, Horace and Propertius, preferred life to death, racked though he was with all conceivable (gouty ?) aches and pains. « FART Il.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 459 William Cowper translates the words of the shade of Achilles in the above-quoted passage from the Odyssey, as follows :— " I had rather live, The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread Of some man scantily himself sustained, Than sovereign empire bold o'er all the Shades." In one of Lucian's " Dialogues of the Dead " Achilles, conversing with Antilochus in the gloomy nether regions, repeats this passage from the Homeric poem. In Measure for Measure (Act iii., Scene 1) Shakespeare puts a somewhat similar sentiment into the mouth of Claudio:— "The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death." Compare also La Fontaine's fable, Ba Mort et le Mourant;42* in his Ba Mort et le Bucheron*29 he writes:— " Plutot souffrir que mourir C'est la device des hommes." Cf. Shakespeare, King Rear, Act v., Scene 3 :— " That we the pain of death would hourly die, Rather than die at once! " In regard to the subject of old age and death, the Rev. C. J. Mead-Allen has kindly drawn my attention to the 154th maxim of Francesco Guicciardini's (1483- 1540) Piu Consigli (published in Paris in 1576, after 428 Lady Ritchie (Anne Isabella Thackeray), in her Madame de Sivigni (1881, p. 59), quotes Jules Andrieu, to the effect that La Fontaine's fable, Le CurC et la Mort, is a version in verse of one of Madame de Sevigne's letters, and that Madame de Sevigne's celebrated account of the death of the French statesman Louvois (1641-1691) is a version in prose of La Pontaine's fable, La Mort et le Mourant. It was Madame de Sevigne's letter of February 26th, 1672, to her daughter, that told of the Cur6 (at the funeral of the grandfather of Marshal de Boufflers) being killed by the fall of the coffin from the funeral-car : "Boufflers," she wrote, " has killed a man after he was dead himself." 429 Boileau also wrote a fable of " Death and the Woodman." % 460 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIORAM. [PT. Il.-xix., XX. Guicciardini's death 430) : " The older a man doth grow the more is death irksome to him; and more and more doth he live as if he were certain never to die." J. S. Le Fanu, in a beautiful passage of one of his best- known novels, likens the unwillingness of the old persons to die and their clinging to a sometimes even pninful life to the unwillingness of tired-out children to say Good night and go to bed; and on the same subject ore may call to mind the lightly written introductory chapter of Claude Tillier's ever-popular novel, Mon Oitclc Benjamin. Thomas Moore's lines (Odes of Anacreon) were, I suppose, not meant to refer only to the aged— "Still as death approaches nearer, The joys of life are sweeter, dearer." In a certain sense one may admit (Eev. Thomas Adams) that " death stands behind the young man's back, before the old man's face"; and doubtless many persons, when well-advanced in years, have expressed their regret at having to relinquish a life, the true beauties and joys of which they feel that they are only commencing to rightly appreciate. The aged Greek philosopher, Theophrastus, is said to have died com- plaining that human life ended just when the insight into its problems was beginning. The Athenian legislator, Solon, is said on his death-bed, when he saw two men in the room discussing some question, to have asked them to speak closer to him so that he might hear what they were saying, his desire for knowledge and interest in life remaining with him even when he was dying.4"1 430 The first publication was, however, at Antwerp, in 1525, that is to say, fifteen years before the author's death. 431 See "A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight, &c," by Andreas Laurentius, translated by Richard Surphlet, London, 1599, p. 192. PART II.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 461 A great deal has been written by ancient and modern authors in various languages and in various parts of the world to remedy unreasonable fear, and to offer consolation for the idea of one's own approaching death and for the death of one's friends (see Part I., and Headings i., ii., iv., xv., and xviii. of Part II.). Fortunately (as already mentioned), the near approach of natural death is generally by no means so terrible to the dying individual himself432 as it is still popularly supposed to be, and as it often is to his loving friends at the death bed. Cf. Lord Byron (Prisoner of Chilton, stanza 8):— " O God! it is a fearful thing To see the human soul take wing In any shape, in'any mood." All physicians, nurses, and others whose duties have necessitated their frequent presence at death scenes, more or less strongly corroborate this statement; and to support it I need only refer, amongst others, to the writings and sayings of Sir Henry Halford,433 Sir Benjamin Brodie,434 432 Here I may repeat that Anaxagoras (b.c 500-428) said that every place is equi-distant from Hades. The following anonymous epigram (English version given by Lord Neaves) from the Greek Anthology expresses satirically the easiness of the straight highway which we must all follow :— " Straight the descent to Hades, whencesoe'er, From Athens or from Meroe, you fare: Nor grieve to die when far from home; you'll find To Hades everywhere a favouring wind." Cf. Beaumont and Fletcher (The Custom of the Country, act ii., scene 2): " Death hath so many doors to let out life." 433 Halford, Essays and Orations, first edition, London, 1831; third edition, 1842. In the first edition (p. 79) Halford wrote : " Of the great number to whom it has been my painful professional duty to have administered in the last hours of their lives, I have sometimes felt surprised that so few have appeared reluctant to go to ' the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.' " 434 Works of Sir B. C. Brodie, collected by Charles Hawkins, London, 1865, vol. i. p. 184: "Really, according to my observation, the mere act of dying is seldom, in any sense of the word, a very painful process." 462 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT. Il.-xix., XX. Sir William Gull,435 Sir W. S. Savory,436 Dr. William Munk,437 Sir William Osier,438 Sir J. F. Goodhart,439 Professor Hermann Xotlmagel,440 and Professor C. A. Ewald,441 as well as to Colonel T. H. Lewin's work, Life and Death.4i2 433 Gull, quoted in The Boad to a Healthy Old Age: Essays Lay and Medical, by T. B. Scott, London, 1914, p. 22. Dr. Scott himself writes: "The so-called agony of death is, in my experience, a chimera." 436 Savory, On Life and Death, London, 1863, p. 178. 437 Munk (Euthanasia, London, 1887) confirms what has been said by Halford, Brodie, and Savory. 438 Osier, Science and Immortality, London, 1904, p. 36. 439 Goodhart, quoted by Dr. R. W. McKenna, The Adventure of Death, London, 1916, p. 72. Dr. MacKenna also gives information in regard to the absence of fear of death and terror and pain in most dying persons. This indifference towards the idea of death is felt not only by persons who are actually dying, but often by those who are merely severely ill. Cf. Dr. Seymour Taylor's account of his own feelings during a bad attack of influenza, Clinical Journal, London, 1917, vol. 46, p. 126. 440 Nothnagel, Das Sterben, second edition, Vienna, 1908, p. 52. Professor Nothnagel's own last illness, in 1905, was apparently attended by much distress, but in "angina pectoris," from which he suffered, the ending is sometimes so sudden, that in reference to it, Sir W. Osier (in one of his writings) has quoted Newman's lines on the sudden death of his mother :— " One moment here, the next she trod The viewless mansions of her God." Nothnagel kept a diary of his last hours, and another medical sufferer from "angina pectoris," Dr. G. H. R. Dabbs (died 1913), did so also. In the popular mind the idea of sudden death is still terrible, something to pray God to be delivered from (vide the Church of England Litany). The popular wish in regard to " dear ones " may still very naturally be expressed in Wordsworth's lines :— " But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy Grave." 141 Ewald, Ucbcr Altern und Sterben, 1913, p. 30. 442 Lewin, Life and Death, being an Authentic Account of the Deaths of One Hundred Celebrated Men and Women, London, 1910. PART Il.-xix., XX.] POMP AND FEAR OF DEATH. 463 A great deal is given about the deaths of famous persons in Oscar Bloch's Om D^den (Copenhagen, 1903). See also James Rae, The Deaths of the Kings of England (London, 1913); and Cabanes, Les Morts MysUrieuses de VHistoire (Paris, first edition, 1901; second edition, two series, undated). In regard to the near approach of death being by no means so terrible to the actual dying as it has been popularly supposed to be, cf. the corroborating remarks of the Rev. C. J. Mead-Allen (Chaplain of Claybury Asylum) in the discussion on Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones's paper on " Tbe Psychology of Fear " (which I have already referred to), at the Medical Society of London, March 12th, 1917. This paper and. the discussion on it may well be consulted in regard to the medical psychological aspects of the fear of death (Transactions of the Medical Society of London, 1917, vol. xl. pp. 120-154). In regard to the psychology of normal and abnormal (exaggerated) fear of death (" thanatophobia") see also G. Stanley Hall, " Thanatophobia and Immortality," American Journal of Psychology, 1915, vol. xxvi. p. 550. The physician and anatomist, William Hunter (1718-1783), said on his death-bed to his friend, Charles Combe (the writer on numismatics, &c, 1743-1817): "If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die." 443 William Hunter's brother, however, the famous surgeon, John Hunter, died of " angina pectoris," like so many other members of the medical and surgical profession have done. How different is all such testimony from many ideas about " last hours" (Mourir n'est rien, c'cst notre derniere heure !) and from those suggested by the illustrations of the religious "guide-book," Ars Moriendi (which has been already referred to in Part I. B.), and other orthodox teaching of the Mediaeval Christian Church ! The idea of " dying well" (according to Christian or other teachings) has doubtless been occasionally illustrated in very different ways, when persons in sound health have (wrongly) supposed that they by mistake have just swallowed some deadly poison for which no antidote or treatment is efficacious. As all medals relating to funerals and sepulchral ceremonies to some extent belong here, those on cremation mentioned in connexion with Heading x., should likewise find a place under tbe present Heading. Here belong also medals commemorating reinterments, such as the medal by N. G. A. Brenet on the transportation, in 1840, of the remains of the Emperor Napoleon I from Saint Helena to France.444 I have not, however, thought it advisable to overburden Part III. with a description of all such medals or of most of the 443 Cf. S. F. Simmons, An Account of the Life and Writings of the late William Hunter, 1783. 444 Cf. F. P. Weber, Medals and Medallions of the Nineteenth Century relating to England by Foreign Artists, London, 1894, p. 13. 464 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PT.II.-xix., XX. countless medals of various periods and various countries relating to funerals. There are, of course, innumerable writings dealing with funerals and funeral customs amongst various peoples in various parts of the world—archaeological questions, primitive meanings, &c. In regard to Great Britain much information of this kind is contained in Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, revised by Sir Henry Ellis, edition of 1849, vol. ii. pp. 202-314. XXI. Grotesque Art. Skulls, Animated Skeletons, &c, in Grotesque Art. Many objects of Chinese and Japanese art should (cf. the Japanese ivories and " netsukes " mentioned in Part IV., subdivision ii.) be included under this heading, the representations of skeletons, &c, serving the purpose of grotesqueness without apparently being intended to possess any memento mori or other special significance. Examples of this group are furnished also by the art of many other countries, especially of relatively modern times (eighteenth century and later) (cf. Part I. D., and Part IV., subdivi- sion ii.). Skulls and skeletons tend to lose their horror in grotesque art, and a skull carved smoothly on the top of a post is as convenient to rest a hand on as the bald head in bronze of a celebrated pathologist of the latter part of the nineteenth century, which I have seen serving the same purpose as the top of a stair-post at the entrance to the house of one of his artistic friends. The death's- heads and skeletons, with or without snakes, carved in ivory, bone, or other materials (probably mostly made in Japan), to form handles (especially for walking-sticks), may he specially referred to in this connexion. As I have already mentioned (under Heading v.), it is probable that in old morality plays of the " Dance of Death" type, the actors, in tight-fitting black dress with a white skeleton painted on it (like the "jockeys of death" in modern circus performances), often gave a rather boisterous serio-comic element to the performance. Similarly, in modern London, I have come across a poster- 2 H 466 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIOliAM. [PT.II-Xxi. advertisement of a company of music-hall comedians, in which there was a picture of the performers dancing as they used to, of their present dancing, and of how they would dance in the future. In the last picture they were represented as skeletons. Whether an imitation-skeleton dance was really provided on the stage I did not ascertain. The element of grotesque amusement in many of the skeleton-designs in modern art corresponds to a similar tendency in literature, as evidenced by the ghost stories of the Ingoldsby Legends (E. H. Barham) and Tarn O'Shantrr (Robert Burns, 1791). Cf. also the final stanza of Ferd. Eaimund's amusing Hobel - Lied (quoted under Heading xvii.), which might quite well accompany a modern grotesque " Dance of Death" scene, almost stripped of terror by its homely (genre) good humour. However, just as in modern literature, some of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe are truly ghastly, so in modern art some of the designs of Antoine Wiertz and Felicien Piops inspire real horror. In regard to Chinese and Japanese " horrors " (whether grotesque or not), a callous or unfeeling attitude towards human pain and suffering might be (though often wrongly ?) suspected. Some of the Japanese designs m question may, indeed, be of European origin, suggested by old " dance of death'' subjects or memento mori emblems. One Japanese ivory which I have seen represents a human skeleton fighting with toads, as if the artist had in mind the Mediaeval European horror of the idea of one's body after death being attacked by " creeping things," and as if with grotesque humour he had represented a posthv mors resentment of this " heritage " of " creeping things, beasts, and worms." Other designs in question seem to have no connexion with Europe. Thus, in the Wellcome PART Il.-xxi.] GROTESQUE ART. 467 Medical Historical Museum, in London, is a relatively modern little wooden carving from Japan, representing a man endeavouring to defend himself against a repulsive and ferocious-looking " daemon " (of death ?), who has horns on his head and claws on his feet and hands. In regard to Japanese " netsukes," carved in ivory, bone, boxwood, &c, representing human skulls or skeletons, or grotesque fierce-looking masks, it is possible that originally they may have been regarded as " protective amulets," helping to ward off evil spirits and ghosts from their owners, or, rather, from those who wore them in their clothing or carried them about—in the same way that amulets and " charms " against the " evil eye " have been (by the ignorant and superstitious in Europe) supposed to act. 2 II 2 PART III, COINS, MEDALS, AND MEDAL-LIKE TOKENS RELATING TO DEATH AND TO THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS DEATH. Most of these pieces fall under one of the following classes:— (A) Personal or other medals, bearing memento mori devices, as, for instance, those of Erasmus of Rotterdam. (B) Ordinary commemorative medals, mostly of well- known individuals, issued on their death (sometimes on their assassination or execution). Some of these, like certain sepulchral monuments445 of Church dignitaries and other persons of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven- teenth centuries, and like certain mourning finger-rings (described in Part IV.), have been designed to serve as a memento mori to the living as well as a memorial of the dead. (C) Memorial medalets made, like some memorial and mourning finger-rings, to be distributed "in memoriam " at funerals. Some of these, like some of those of the preceding class, have been designed so to serve the double purpose of a memorial of the dead and a memento mori to the living. (D) Various pieces bearing memento moid devices, used as tickets, passes, or badges, in connexion with funeral celebrations, medical guilds (Delft and Middelburg), medical gardens (Amsterdam), &c. According to Bergsoe,446 445 The sepulchral monument of Archbishop Chichele (died 1443) and similar monuments, especially of the gisant class, have been considered in Part I. C. 4IG Bergs0e, Danske Medailler og Jetons, Copenhagen, 1893, p. 141. 470 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. certain death's-head medalets were at one time uswl by medical students of the Copenhagen University as badges on their caps. In Holbein's picture, known as "The Ambassadors" (1535), in the National Gallery, London, one of the two young men, Jean de Dinteville, Lord of Polisy, is represented wearing a little death's-head of silver or white enamel mounted on gold as a jewel in his black bonnet. This was perhaps an outward sign of the wearer's mental attitude, indicated likewise by the (" hidden ") skull at his feet. Needless to say, the death's- heads worn as cap-badges by some regiments in the German and English armies have a very different significance. (E) Medals bearing memento moid devices designed to have a "moral" significance, and to be used as gifts or rewards on special occasions, like the so-called " Moralische Pfenninge " of the town of Basel. These may be compared to memento mori finger-rings and jewels used for devotional purposes, &c. In regard to the persons represented on the medals, the selection I have made cannot be regarded as a " collection of medals of famous men and women," for almost unknown individuals are commemorated side by side with those whose names are still household words amongst the educated classes of the whole world. The same may be said of almost every collection of portraits,447 and in the case of some medallions, just as in the case of 447 In regard, for instance, to collections of medals of " famous " physicians and naturalists, Billroth (1829-1894), tbe great surgeon, once remarked to Dr. J. Brettauer of Trieste (who died in 1905), that the medals in such collections are chiefly, not of distinguished and well- known, but of forgotten, obscure, or absolutely unknown physicians and naturalists. Dr. Brettauer told me this, or something to the same effect, when he was showing me his magnificent collection of medals relating to medicine and allied subjects, which he bequeathed to the University of Vienna. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 471 many beautifully painted or sculptured portraits, the very name of the person represented has been irretrievably lost. In the present work I have not attempted to describe every medal, coin, medallic token, or badge bearing a device or inscription relating to death, but those that I have selected include characteristic examples of various periods. The order followed is mainly chronological, and (as already stated at the commencement of Part II.) the Koman numerals in brackets refer to the aspects of, or attitudes towards, death (according to my classification in Part II.) which I think the devices or inscriptions on the medals illustrate. (X.) (Ireek coins illustrating a medical and hygienic attitude towards preventible death in the fifth century B.C. The following silver coins of Selinus in Sicily date from about 466-415 B.C., and commemorate the freeing of Selinus from a pestilence of some kind (malaria?) by the drainage of the neighbouring marshlands. Fig. 42.— Tetradrachm of Selinus. Ob v.—Apollo and Artemis standing side by side in a slowly moving quadriga, the former discharging arrows from his bow. Bev.—The river-god Selinus, naked, with short horns, holding patera and lustral branch, sacrificing at an altar of Asklepios (Aesculapius), in front of which is a cock. Behind him on a pedestal is the figure of a bull, and in the field above is a selinon leaf. Inscription: 2EAINONTION. (Fig. 42.) Silver tetradrachm. Catalogue of the Greek Coins in the Britisli Museum—Sicily, London, 1878, p. 140. 4/2 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND l'.l'KIRAM. [PART III. B. V. Head (Historia Xumorum, Oxford, 1SS7, p. 14S) says of this piece: " Apollo is here regarded as the healing god (a\e£UaKo<;) who, with his radiant arrows, slays the pestilence as he slew the Python. Artemis stands behind him in her capacity of dXziOvia or o-owStVa, for the plajruc had fallen heavily on the women too : wo-re Kal ras yii0 and works of art (especially Italian of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) representing the suicide of Lucretia as an example of female virtue, a curious Latin epigram, attributed to Beza, is printed in Abraham Wright's Delitiae Delitiarum (Oxford, 1637, p. 14). It has been translated as follows by Dr. George Turnbull (vide H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, 1870, p. 134) :— " If Tarquin's wrong, Lucretia, pleased your soul, Death was but justice for a crime so foul; But if by strength alone his will be had, To die for his misdoings proves you mad : Then be no more tbe matron's boast and pride, You lived a wanton, or a fool you died." John Elsum, in his collection of epigrams on paintings (published in 1700), has one upon a picture of Lucretia stabbing herself, by the Venetian painter, Giorgione; 450 A long book might be written on pictures and works of art by famous artists (including Diirer amongst the non-Italian ones) repre- senting the suicide of the Roman Lucretia. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 487 it ends with a compliment to the painter (vide Dodd, loc. eit.) :— " The heroine would die, but you prevent, 0 Georgion! her murderous intent. You have so painted her, that we conceive, She in thy fable will for ever live." The following medal is conveniently arranged here, though a little out of its order in chronological sequence. (XI.) Medal of Giulia Astallia, a "Lucretia" of the fifteenth century. Obv.—Portrait of a girl in peasant's dress. Inscription: DIVA ■ IVLIA • ASTALLIA. Rev.—Phoenix on burning funeral pyre looking towards the sun. Inscription: VNICVM • FOR(titudinis) • ET • PVD(icitiae) . EXEMPLVM. Diameter, 2-5 inches ; cast in bronze. A. Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 83, No. 3. This medal (the idea of the obverse inscription of which is evidently derived from the "consecratio" coins, com- memorating the deification of Roman empresses) is probably by a medallist of Mantua of the end of the fifteenth century. It was attributed by J. Friedlaender to Bartolo Talpa. The Giulia Astallia portrayed on the medal as a " unique example of courage and chastity," has been supposed to be the Giulia of one of Bandello's tales, who, though of peasant parentage, rivalled the Roman Lucretia in chastity (The Novels of Matteo Bandello, Bishop of Agen, done into English by John Payne, London, 1890, vol. i. p. 118, Novel 7). The medallic portrait may, however, be an imaginary one, made many years after the girl's death. The phoenix (" the Arabian bird") on the reverse signifies "an unique example," or paragon, for, according to the Oriental myth, there was only one phoenix in existence at a time. Compare Shakespeare's Cymbeline : " She is alone the Arabian bird." Compare also the following passage in The Heroicall Devises of M. C. Paradin, dc. (English translation by P. S., London, 1591, p. 349): " Bone, a most famous and noble woman of Savoy, and raoother to John Galeaz, Duke of Milan, after her husbandes deceasse, 4$8 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. caused a coine to bee made (which the people there doe call a testone) upon the one side whereof was a phenixe pourtraied with these wordes : Sola facta solum Deum sequor. Signifying therby, that as the Phenix is alone herselfe in the world, so she beeing made a widow by the death of her busband, voweth her selfe to live for ever with God alone." This silver testone of Bona of Savoy, as Regent of Milan (147G-1480), bears her profile portrait to right on the obverse, and on the reverse the phoenix over a lighted funeral pyre, with the inscription as above stated. Tbe piece, like other Milanese coins of the period, is supposed to be the work of Caradosso, one of the greatest medallic artists of the Italian Renaissance. In regard to her veiled portrait on the obverse, he may have been influenced, a little by the veiled portrait of Queen Philistis (wife of Hieron II of Syracuse, 275-216 b.c) on silver coins of Syracuse, or by Egyptian silver coins with the veiled portrait of Queen Berenice II (third century B.C.). (I.) Medals of Erasmus in 1519 and 1531, with his memento mori device. Obv.—Bust of Erasmus in profile to left. In the field : ER. ROT. ("Erasmus of Rotterdam"). Legend: IMAGO . AD . VIVA . EFPIGIE . EXPRESSA . THN ■ KPEITTX1 • TA STrrPAMMATA • AEIHEI ("His image modelled to the living features. His writings will represent it better"). Below tbe bust is tbe date 1519. Eev.—A man's head to left on a cubical boundary stone inscribed, TERMINVS. In tbe field: CONCEDO NVLLI ("I yield to none "). Legend : OPA • TEA02 • MAKPOT • BIOT • MORS VLTIMA LINEA RERVM ("Keep in view the end of a long life. Death is the final goal of all"). (Fig. 51.) Diameter, 4-15 inches ; in bronze or lead; cast. Julien Simonis, L'Art du MedaiUeur en Belgique, Bruxelles, 1900, PL ii. No. 3. In regard to tbe reverse legend of this medal it should be recalled that, according to tbe story narrated by Plutarcb in his Life of Solon, opa reAos fiaKpov fSiov was tbe substance of the advice given by Solon to Croesus, King of Lydia, as the latter afterwards, when defeated and a prisoner, explained to bis conqueror, Cyrus. According to Xenophon's Cyropaedeia, Cyrus himself endeavoured to follow Solon's advice, and, in spite of another of Solon's sayings (" Call no man blessed before his deatb "), was able, when his own end came, to claim to be called fortunate. "Opa r4\os is tbe ordinary Greek equivalent of the Latin " Respice finem "; and like VvSiOi aeavrov, it is included amongst the wise sayings of tbe seven wise men of Greece. There are two very similar but smaller medals, both cast. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 480 One (an obverse only) bears the same date 1519 (diameter, 175 inches; Siinonis, op. cit., PL ii. No. 4) as the large medal, and has the inscription, ERASMVS • ROTERO ■ Pig. 51 (reduced).—Medal of Erasmus (1519). From a specimen formerly in the author's collection. around the portrait of Erasmus. The other, the smallest of the three, is dated 1531 (diameter, 135 inches; Simonis, op. cit., PL ii. No. 5), and very much resembles the largest 490 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [l»AKT III. medal in type and legends, but the features of Erasmus are slightly more sharply cut. The large medal has been attributed to Diirer, and it is Fig. 52.—Engraving of Erasmus by Diirer. Reduced from an example in the British Museum. interesting that Diirer's signed engraving of Erasmus (see Fig. 52), dated 1526, bears a very similar inscription to that on the obverse of the medal. On Diirer's engraving, howev-er, PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 491 the head of Erasmus is not quite in profile, and his features are much more sharply expressed than on the medal. More- over, the portrait on the medal is now supposed to be after a lost original by Quentin Metsys. Erasmus himself wrote that Quentin Metsys made a portrait of him, cast in metal. According to Julien Simonis (op. cit., pp. 80-88), one of the above-described medals was the work of the medallist Jean Second, who probably modelled it from a medallion by Quentin Metsys now lost. I do not see why the obverse of the large medal should not be the work of Quentin Metsys himself. The largest and the smallest of these medals of Erasmus are likewise figured in the Museum Mazzuchellianum, Venice, 1761, vol. i. PL 45 and PL 46. In that work it is explained that the " Terminus " (terminal head) on the reverse is an allusion, not to the great value of the writings of Erasmus, as some have supposed, but to death, the common goal of all, i.e. as the medal itself tells us, " mors ultima linea rerum " (Horace, Hpist., book i. 16, line 79). A man's head on a cubical stone inscribed, TERMINVS, with the legend, CONCEDO NVLLI or CEDO NVLLI, was the favourite device of Erasmus. In the Museum of Basel is an original sketch, which I have seen, showing a rendering of this device, by Holbein,451 and there is likewise a tine woodcut by Holbein, designed for a title-page to the works of Erasmus, representing Erasmus standing under a highly decorative Renaissance arch, with his right hand resting on the head of a terminal figure (or "Hermes"), on which is the inscription, TERMINVS. On a seal, which Erasmus had specially engraved for himself, the man's head on the boundary stone was represented facing, not (as on the medals) in profile, and the legend was CEDO NVLLI, not (as on the medals) CONCEDO NVLLI. V ith this seal, which I shall illustrate later on, he sealed his last will, dated at Basel, in the house of Jerome Frobenius, 12th February, 1536; and an enlarged copy of the "TERMINVS" on this ,il No. 122 of the sketches in the Basel Museum. Cf. the design for a painting on glass, figured by E. Hiss, Dessins d'Ornements de Hans Holbein, Paris, 1886, Plate iv. 492 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIC RAM. [PART 111. seal was placed by his heirs over the tablet where he was buried in the Cathedral of Basel.45'2 The seal in question is figured by J. J. Jortin, together with an antique intaglio representing a terminal bust (or "Hermes"), without any inscription, from which Erasmus apparently derived his idea of adopting a terminal figure, as his. memento mori device. See J. Jortin, Life of Erasmus, London, 1808, vol. iii. (specimens of the handwriting of Erasmus, No. 1). In Part IV. I shall again refer to this seal of Erasmus. The "Terminus" device of Erasmus might be regarded as a '; masked," "disguised," or "softened" memento mori, analogous to the elongated death's-head which is represented on Holbein's famous picture (to which I have already alluded) painted in 1533, known as "The Ambassadors," in the London National Gallery. (I.) Memento mori medal of Pietro Balanzano, of Venice (fifteenth century or early sixteenth century). Obv.—Head in high relief to left. Inscription : PETRO BALANZANO. Rev—A human skull. Inscription: NVLA EST REDENCIO (that is equivalent to "There is no escape from death"— or else it is for "Inferno nulla est redemptio," meaning, " There is no escape for those in hell"). Diameter, 2-3 inches ; cast. A bronze Italian medal of tbe fifteenth or early sixteenth century, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. ii. p. 128; and vol. iii. (1887), p. 205. Tbe specimen figured in the auction sale catalogue of the Lanna Collection (Berlin, 1911, p. 11, No. 115, and Plate 10) has the number 204266 in relief below tbe head on the obverse. (I., IL, XI.) Death of Dr. Wenzel Beyer (or Payer or Bayer) of Karlsbad, in Bohemia, 1526 (see Fig. 53). Obv.—Portrait of Beyer in profile to left, at the age of 38 years, with inscription: WENCES BEYER, &c. Rev.—In a bare landscape with one tree, a steaming chasm, into which a horseman (Marcus Curtius?) is about to plunge, In the foreground, a book, upon which a skull; loose bones 452 Cf. R. B. Drummond, Erasmus, his Life and Character, London, 1873. 1ART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 493 lying about. In some specimens the date, 1526, occurs on the field. Inscription: IAM PORTVM INVENI SPES ET FORTVNA, VALETE. Diameter, 2-2 inches; cast in silver. C. A. Rudolphi, Numismata Virorum de Bebus Medicis, dc, Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 93. Marcus Curtius, the Roman legendary hero, when he heard that the chasm in the forum could only be filled by throwing Rome's greatest treasure into it, mounted his horse Fig. 53.—Medal on the death of Dr. Wenzel Beyer, of Karlsbad, in 1526. (After Bergmann.) and leaped into the abyss, declaring that Rome possessed no greater treasure than a brave and gallant citizen. In regard to the reverse inscription on this medal it may be noted that tbe usual quotation (which was inscribed by the first Lord Brougham on his villa at Cannes) is— " Inveni portum ; Spes et Fortuna, valete ! Sat me lusistis, ludite nunc alios." (" I have found the haven ; Hope and Fortune, farewell! You have made sport enough of me, now make sport of others.") Cf. also the various versions mentioned in Part I. A. One commencing, "Jam portum inveni," was given by Sir Thomas More. (I., IT., XI.) Death of Dr. Wenzel Bever. 1526 (see Fig. 54). Obv.—Nearly full-face portrait, with name, &c. Rev.—On stony ground, a bier, with a decaying corpse on it. Above this is an inscription in four lines : CVM PARITER OMNIBVS MORIENDVM NON TARDE SED GLARE 494 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AN I" EPIGRAM. [PART III. MORI OPTANDVM ("Since all alike must die, it is desirable to die not tardily, but illustriously"). In the field is the date 1526. Diameter, 2-0 inches; cast in silver. C. A. Rudolphi, op. cit, p. 93. Dr. Wenzel Bever was the author of the first medical treatise on the thermal waters of Karlsbad, in Mohemia. Tract at us dc Thermis Caroli IV, dc, Leipzig, 1521. In that book he wrote : " I have said that this water must be drunk. As, however, till now it has seldom been used for drinking, but more for bathing, what I have said will appear to many as something new." It seems, therefore, that he was prac- tically the first physician to recommend the internal use Fig. 54.—Medal on the death of Dr. Wenzel Beyer, of Karlsbad, in 1526. (After Bergmann.) of the Karlsbad waters. Beyer wras born in 14SS at Elbogen, near Karlsbad, and hence on the title-page of his book his name appears as Venceslaus Payer " de Cubito," that is to say, of Elbogen. He died on 11th December, 1526. Specimens of these medals are in the Imperial Collection at Vienna. They are described also by Karl Domanig, in Die Deutsche Medaille (Vienna, 1907, pp. 37, 38), but their designs are discussed in considerably greater detail by Joseph Bergmann, in his Medadlen auf beriihute und ausgezeichnete Manner des Oesterreichischen Kaiserstaates (Vienna, 1844, pp. 85-88, and Plate viii. Nos. 31, 32), and by Dr. J. de Carro, in a Karlsbad almanack, published at Prague in 1841, to which Dr. Paul Mayer has kindly drawn my attention. Nothing seems to be known with certainty as to the cause of Beyer's death, and PART III.J COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 495 Bergmann, in regard to the medallic evidence, aptly quotes Ovid (Fast., iv. 709)— " Factum abiit, rnonumenta manent." The reverse design of the larger medal, apparently referring to the old Roman legend of Curtius, seems hardly appropriate for an ordinary death. It is possible (see Bergmann's sug- gestions, loc. cit.) that his death was the result of (or at the time supposed to be the result of) an injury or disease acquired when examining the source of the great hot spring ("Sprudel") at Karlsbad. At the present day, close to the " Sprudel," along the sides of the river Tepl, clouds of steam arise from the ground itself. The rocky ground on which the bier stands (in the smaller medal) probably represents the bed of the Tepl. Beyer's patron, Count Stephan Schlick, to whom he dedicated his treatise on the thermal springs, was hereditary Lord of Elbogen, and doubtless owned Karlsbad itself. Therefore Beyer's book (alluded to on the reverse type of the larger medal), by increasing the use of the thermal waters, was probably of some financial service to the Schlick family, who apparently had these commemorative medals made. Like most other German medals of the time, they were, of course, not struck, but cast and chased, and were doubtless the work of some goldsmith patronized by the Schlick family, who must have had much to do with gold- smiths and die-engravers. The family had been granted the right of coining money by the Emperor Sigismund, in the early part of the fifteenth century, and about 1519 Count Scephan Schlick and his brothers, who owned the valuable silver-mines of Joachimsthal (Bohemia), began to strike the large silver coins called " Joachimsthaler," or, in short. simply " Thaler." From these " Schlick " Thaler other large silver coins of Europe and America have been named thalers, or dollars. Count Stephan Schlick himself was one of those who perished with their sovereign, King Louis II of Hungary (and Bohemia), in the disastrous battle against the Turks (under Soliman II) at Mohacs, on 29th August, 1526. There are medals of Count Stephan Schlick by the medallists and engravers Ludwig Neufarer and Michael Hohenauer, and in 1557 the latter engraver was working for the Joachimsthal Mint, which belonged to the Schlick family. 496 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (II.) Medal of Tommaso Moro of Venice, Prefect of Verona 1527. Obv.—Bust to right. Inscription: THOMAS MAVRVS VENI'.TVS VERONAE PRAEFECTVS. Rev.—Phoenix in flames, an emblem of tbe resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. Inscription: MORIENS. REVIVISCO. -MDXXVIL- 10. MARIA. POMEDELVS. VERON. F. Diameter, 2-0 inches. Bronze medal by Pomedello of Verona. Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 128, No. 11. (II.) A phoenix, with the word REVIXIT, occurs likewise on the reverse of a medal of Cardinal Cristofero Madruzzo, Prince-Bishop of Trento (died in 1578), by Lorenzo Parmigiano (Armand, op. cit., vol. i. p. 278, No. 1). (I.) Medal of Hans Kerrn (German, sixteenth century). Mr. W. T. Ready has kindly told me of a small silver cast medal which he has met with of a certain Hans Kerrn. On the obverse is Kerrn's portrait. On the reverse is Death (in the form of a skeleton) holding an hour-glass and driving before him a child attached by a chain. The inscription on the reverse is: MI ... IN GLEICH IVNG ODER ALD, SO HAD VNS DER DOT IN SEINER GWALD. I cannot find a description of this piece in any book on German medals. It is apparently German work of the sixteenth century (about 1530). (II.) A Thaler-like medal (1532) of Francis, Duke of Brunswick (Middle Luneburg line—Giffhorn) has on the reverse the inscription from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans xiv. 8: DOMINI SVMVS SIVE VIVIMVS SIVE MORIMVR.. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 3595.) (V.) The murder of Alessandro de' Medici, the first Duke of Florence, 1537. Alessandro de' Medici was assassinated, in the name of PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 49^ liberty, by his kinsman Lorenzo de' Medici, called " Lorenzino," on the night of 5th to 6th January, 1537. The following medal (which is not very rare, and for some information about which I am indebted to Mr. W. Wroth) is described by A. Armand, Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, vol. ii. p. 151, No. 3. Obv.—Bare head of Lorenzino, to right. Inscription: LAVREN- TIVS MEDICES. Bev. — Cap of liberty (the Roman "pileus") between two daggers. Below: VIII • ID • IAN (6th January). Diameter, 1-5 inches; bronze. (See Fig. 55.) Fig. 55.—Medal of " Lorenzino " de' Medici. The reverse device is adopted from the reverse of the Roman denarius of Brutus (which I have already referred to) commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 n.c, but the date under the cap of liberty on the Italian medal is, of course, different. After the murder Lorenzino fled to Venice, where Filippo Strozzi (called "the younger ") greeted him as the " Tuscan Brutus." Alessandro had supposed Lorenzino to be his friend, and the murder was an act of horrible treachery. The medal, which is of the size of a Roman large bronze coin or bronze medallion, was doubtless made at the time or slightly later. Lorenzino was himself tracked down and assassinated in 1548. (I., II.) One of the finely cast and chased silver religious medals by Hans Reinhard the elder, of Leipzig (1536), bearing a representation of the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve and the Serpent at the Tree of Knowledge) on the obverse, and. 2 K 498 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND El'K.RAM. [PART III. the Crucifixion of Christ on the reverse, belongs to some extent to the memento mori class. The obverse inscription is : ET • SICVT • IN • DAM • OM\ES . MORIVNTVR . &c. This magnificent medal was made by order of the Elector John Frederic, "the Magnanimous," of Saxony. (See W Iv Tentzel, Sa.vonia Numismatiea, Linea Ernestina, 1714, PL viii. Fig. 1.) (I.) German plaque, of about 1530-1540. There is a circular plaque (1*8 inches in diameter) of white metal, possibly the reverse for a medal, representing a Fig. 56.—Plaque by Lorenz Rosenbaum. From an original in the British Museum. lady, in the costume of the time, seated in the interior of a room, offering the breast to a baby ; on the table is a death's- head and on the window-sill an hour-glass. It is of good workmanship, and signed L.R., apparently by Lorenz Rosenbaum, a goldsmith and a medallist of Schaffhausen. There are specimens in both the British Museum (see Fig. 56) and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The design is taken from a well-known engraving (already alluded to in Part I. D. : see Fig. 23) by Barthel Beham (1502-1540), which, though it may be intended to represent the Madonna and Child, seems likewise to suggest thoughts of the beginning and the inevitable end of life. Anyhow, two other engravings by B. Beham, representing human skulls (in one of these PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 499 engravings there are three, in the other four skulls) and a baby with an hour-glass were certainly meant to suggest such thoughts and illustrate the line of Manilius: " Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet"; or, as Sir Michael Foster has expressed it, "The first cry of the newdy born child is its first step towards the grave." (II. or III.) Here we may for convenience mention a uniface portrait medal by Lorenz Rosenbaum, dated 1531, the portrait (bare head to right) being apparently that of the artist himself. The inscription is VT • MORTVVS • VIVEREM----VIVO • HIC • MORITVRVS. Signed l.e. 1531. The medal, which is cast in lead (diameter, Fig. 57.—Reverse of medal of Johann Friess, 1540. T75 inches), is described and figured by E. Merzbacher, "Beitrage zur Kritik der Deutschen Kunstmedaillen," Mitthcilungen der Bayerischen Numismatischen Gesellschaft, Munchen, 1900, vol. 19, p. 8, and PL i. Fig. 4. I am indebted for this reference to Mr. L. Forrer. Lorenz Rosen- baum, probably a son of the goldsmith Conrad Rosenbaum, was born at Schaffhausen, but from 1539 to 1546 worked as a goldsmith in Augsburg. The meaning of the legend is either : " Vivo hie moriturus," " I live here about to die," i.e. "This is my portrait before death " ; " Ut mortuus viverem," " (I made this portrait) that I might live after death "—or else : " I live here (on earth) about to die (i.e. prepared for death) so that I may live after death "; but in the latter case one 2 K 2 500 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. would have expected " vivam" instead of " viverem." Cf. the mottoes : " Vive ut vivas," and " Vive ut postea vivas." (I.) Memento mori medal of Johann Friess, 1540. Obv.—Clothed bust of a man, with a long beard, to left. Inscription : IMAGO • IOANNIS • FRISII • .ETA • SV • 36 • 1540. Bev.—A figure of Death, on the right, holds up an hour-glass to a wealthy-looking man (nobleman), standing on the left. Diameter, 1*5 inches; silver. (See Fig. 57.) (I.) The reverse of a medal, dated 1542, by the German medallist, Friedrich Hagenauer, consists of the motto, BEDENCK DAS END, together with the date in question. It is figured by Georg Habich, Jahrbuch der konigl. Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, Berlin, 1907, vol. xxviii. p. 259. (XVIII.) A medal of Ferdinand (afterwards the German Emperor Ferdinand I), brother of the Emperor Charles V, struck in 1547, on the death of his wife, Anna of Hungary, has on the reverse the letter A over a death's-head and a bone, with the inscription, WIER KLAGENS GOTT (" We bewail it to God "). Figured by Karl Domanig, Die Deutsche MedaiUe, Wien, 1907, Plate 79, No. 699 Fig. 58.—Memorial medal of Queen Dorothea of Denmark, 1560. (II. and XIV.) Memorial medal of Queen Dorothea of Denmark (mother of Frederick II), (1560). Obv.—Profile head of Queen Dorothea to right. Inscription: DOROTE REG1NA DANIE MDLX. Rev. —Hour-glass over skull and crossed bones. Inscription: BEDENCK DAS ENDT VND DIEjSTVNDE. (Fig. 58.) PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 501 Diameter, 1-1 inches; silver gilt. Danske Mynter og Medailler i den Kongelige Samling, Copenhagen, 1791, p. 212, No. 4, PL xii. No. 5. The meaning of the reverse inscription, which is similar to some inscriptions engraved on old-fashioned sun-dials, is doubtless that of Thomas a Kempis in De Imitatione Christi, Book I. chap. xxv. 11: "Memento semper finis, et quia perditum non redit tempus." (I.) Medal of Onophrius (Onofrio) Korn (1562). Obv.—His bust, to left, with inscription. Bev.—Male figure, holding hour-glass, leaning on an altar or tomb (on which is a death's-head) inscribed: RESPICE FINEM. The whole reverse device is in an architectural " setting." This medal, by a German artist signing himself S. W., is figured by A. Erman, Deutsche Medailleure, Berlin, 1884, PL vii. No. 3. (XI.) Medal of Goffredo Franco (about 1565). Obv.—Bust to left. Inscription: IOFREDVS FRANCVS. Artist's signature, P. P. R. Rev.—A nude man standing on a pedestal in the middle of the sea, holding a rod in bis left hand, his right foot resting on a skull. Inscription: POTIVS. MORI. QVAM. ANIMO. IMMVTARI (" Rather death than change one's mind "). Diameter, 2#2 inches. A medal by Pietro Paolo Galeotti, called " Romano." Armand, Les M&dailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 229, No. 7. (XI.) The same reverse type and legend occur on a medal of Alberto Litta, dated 1565, attributed to the same artist (Galeotti), though not bearing any signature (Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, Paris, vol. iii. (1887), p. 112). (V., XI.) Execution of Count Egmont and Count Hoorn, 1568. A medal by Martin Holtzhey, struck in 1748 in con- nexion with the Jubilee Festivities commemorating the Peace of AVestphalia (Peace of Miinster) in 1648, refers to Count Lamoral Egmont and Philip Count von Hoorn (who were beheaded at Brussels in 156s, after condemnation by the Duke of Alva's "Council of Blood"), as "martyrs" for Dutch liberty. 502 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (I. and VIII.) Medal of Sebastian Ziih, of Augsburg, 1572. Obv.—His clothed bust to right, with bare head and pointed beard. Inscription: SEBASTIAN . ZAH . ANNO . AET . XXXXV . 1572. (Artist's signature) AN. AB. Rev.—A man in rich costume, with a beggar accosting him. Inscription: RESPICE FINEM. Diameter, l-6 inches; cast. By Antonio Abondio, the younger (1538-1591). Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 274, No. 34; Karl Domanig, Die Deutsche Medaille, Wien, 1907, No. 832. (XI.) " Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Night" (1572). The medal of Pope Gregory XIII, commemorating this event, bears the signature of the medallist, Federi^o Bonzagna, called " Parmigiano." Obv.—Bust of the Pope, to left, in cape and skull-cap. Legend: GREGORIVS • XIII • PONT • MAX . AN • I- Below the bust, artist's signature, F. P. Rev.—Destroying angel to right, holding sword and cross ; men and women dead, wounded, and flying before her. Legend: VGONOTTORVM • STRAGES • 1572. Diameter, l-25 inches; struck; silver, bronze gilt. A. Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 226, No. 37. Many restruck examples and later copies exist; the modern English copies, of a some- what larger size, being those most unlike the originals. The Massacre of the Huguenots is commemorated in the same spirit by Vasari's fresco in the Sala Regia of the Vatican at Rome, though the inscription under the painting has been obliterated. (XI.) Some French medals of Charles IX (of which many restruck specimens exist) refer to the same event.453 453 King Charles IX, of France, died in 1574; He bad pulmonary tuberculosis, which was apparently complicated by purpura at the end—see the article by Brouardel and Gilles de la Tourette in Les grands seines historiques du XVI siecle, Paris, 1886. See also Cabanes, Les morts mystirieuses de l'histoire; and A. Corlieu, La mort des Rois de France. Tbe sole authority for the alleged " red sweating" of the king is T. A. D'Aubigne's L'histoire universelle (1616-1620). The king PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 503 According to Mazerolle, they are probably the work of the Paris medal-engraver, Alexandre Olivier. Obv.—Laurelled bust of King Charles IX, to left. Inscription : CAROLYS • IX • D • G • FRANCORVM REX INVIC • 1572. Rev.—The king, holding sword and sceptre, seated on a throne; at his feet are lying dead bodies, severed beads and weapons. Inscription: VIRTV3 . IN . REBELLES. Diameter, 1-5 inches. There are modern restruck specimens in the British Museum Collection. Tresor de Numismatique, Medailles Francaises, Premiere Partie, Paris, 1836, PL xix. 4. Obv.—The king seated, as on the reverse of the last piece, witb the same inscription. Rev.—The French arms surmounted by a crown, between two pillars. Inscription: PIETAS EXCITAVIT IVSTITIAM. In exergue: 24 . AVGVSTI . 1572. Diameter, 1*5 inches. There is a fine original silver-gilt struck specimen in the British Museum collection. Obv.—Laurelled bust of the king, and inscription, as on the first of these medals. Rev.—The French arms, &c, as on the reverse of the last medal. Diameter, 1-5 inches; illustrated in the TrCsor de Numismatique, loc. cit., PL xix. 3. Obv.—Laurelled bust of the king, to right. Inscription : CAROLVS ■ IX ■ D • G- FRANCOR • REX. Rev.—Hercules, holding club and torch, attacking the Lernean Hydra. Inscription: NE FERRVM TEMNAT SIMVL IGNIB(VS) OBSTO. In exergue, 1572. Diameter, 2-0 inches; illustrated in the Tresor de Numismatique, loc. cit., PL xix. 5. There is a modern restruck specimen in bronze in the British Museum collection. certainly bad visual hallucinations connected apparently with the recollection of the dreadful Massacre of tbe Huguenots, whicb he is said to have witnessed from a window. I once saw a patient suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis and purpura, wbo saw things red on account of haemorrhage at the centre of the left retina (macular region), bulging into the vitreous. I have wondered whether a similar " erythropsia " was in any way connected with the hallucinations of Charles IX, but that is, of course, very unlikely to have been the case. 504 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (I.) Medal of Gabrielle Fiamma, of Venice, Bishop of Chioggia in 1584. Obv.—His bust to right; in front, a human skull. Inscription : MEMINISSE IVVABIT. Rev.—Inscription in twenty-five lines. Diameter, 3-2 inches ; a bronze cast medal of the second half of the sixteenth century, by Andrea Cambi, called " II Bombarda," of Cremona. Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. ii. p. 227; and vol. iii. (1887), p. 96. The skull on the obverse may be intended as a memento mori device, but the obverse inscription refers apparently to Fiamma's passing safely through trials and difficulties of life : " Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit "—" Perhaps some day it will be pleasant to remember even these happenings" (Virgil, Aen., lib. i. 203). The hexameter line, Dulce est praeteriti quondam meminisse laboris, occurs on a silver coin of Gratz in Styria. (Madai. Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 4897.) (I., II.) Dr. H. R. Storer kindly tells me of a little German medal of 1585, having an hour-glass and skull on the obverse ; the reverse inscription is : DER MENSCH IN PARADIS, &c. (Bronze, one inch in diameter.) (I., II.) The so-called " Brillen-Thaler "(" eye-glass Thaler") were issued 1586-1587 at Goslar by Julius, Duke of Brunswick (of the middle Wolfenbiittel line). They show on one side a so-called " wild man " (like the heraldic "wild men") carrying a light in his hand, and, slung over his arm, are a death's-head, an hour-glass, and a pair of eye-glasses. The letters accompanying this type, namely, W.H.D.A.L.V.B.D.S.S.N.H.V.K.Yv ., are supposed to signify: Was hilft dem Armen (or dem Alten) Licht und Brill, der sich selbst nicht hbren (or helfen) und kennen will f A similar motto occurs on a Dutch seventeenth-century picture by Jan Steen, in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam. Above the head of PART III.J COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 505 an old roisterer is the representation of an owl with candles and eye- glasses, and the inscription— " Wat baeter Kaers of Bril, Als den Uil niet sien wil ? " (" Of what use are candles or eye-glasses when the owl will not see ? ") Anyone who has watched the tedious process of testing the eyes of unintelligent persons (for glasses) in a hospital out-patient room migbt be tempted to paraphrase the motto of the Brillen-Thaler, and exclaim— " Was hilft dem Armen Licbt und Brill, Der selbst seine Sinne nicht brauchen will?" A mortuary Thaler (" Sterbethaler ") commemorating the duke's death in 1589, has the "wild man" with hour-glass and eye-glasses slung over his arm, leaning on a tablet (on which is a skull) inscribed, VIXIT • AN • LX, &c. The inscription surrounding the type is, LVCTV PVBLICO. On the Brillen-Thaler appear likewise the letters I.M.C.M. or M.I.CM., possibly signifying, Ln medio cursu metuo, or Medio in cursu metuo. It may here be noted that eye-glasses are pictured likewise on gold so-called "eye-glass ducats" struck in, 1647 by Christian IV, King of Denmark, with an inscription, VIDE MIRA DOMI(NI), and on a Swedish jetton or counter, with an inscription signifying, " He who has good luck needs no eye-glasses." (II.) A medal (1590) of the French jurist Hugues Doneau, or latinized, Hugo Donellus (1527-1591), who is said to have known the " Corpus Juris" by heart, gives his portrait in his G4th year on the obverse, and on the reverse the inscription (after St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans xiv. 8): SIVE VIVIMUS SIVE MORIMUR DOMINI SUMUS. DOMINO VIVENDUM ET MORIENDUM. Diameter, 2"0 by 1*5 inches, oval. Described by Anthony Durand, Medailles et Jetons des Numismates, Geneve, 1865, p. 246. (^VI.) A Dutch medal of 1590, commemorating the taking of Breda in that year by the Dutch (under Prince Maurice of Nassau) from the Spaniards, has on the reverse a scene showing how the town was taken, with the inscription: 506 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART IIL PARATI VINCERE AVT MORI . 4 . MARTIT. In the exergue : INVICTI ANIMI PR(aemium). (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 4682.) (II.) Two mortuary Thaler (1591) on the death of the Elector Christian I of Saxony, bear the motto: HA YD TIMET MORTEM QVI VITAM SPERAT. The medallist's signature on both of them is hb, for Hans Biener. (Madai, Vollst, Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 515, 2955.) (II.) A German silver medal (1593) of Tobias Panzer, Recorder (Ratschreiber) of Nurnberg, has on the obverse his portrait at the age of 65 years. On the reverse is a phoenix rising from the flames, with the inscription: OMNIVM RERVM VICISSITVDO (cf. Terence, Eunuchus, ii. 2, 45) and the date. The obverse is signed M.c, which, according to Adolf Erman (Deutsche Medailleure, Berlin, 1884, p. 60, Plate vi. Fig. 6), probably stands for Melchior Carl, a silversmith of Nurnberg. (XVIII.) Some coins struck by Philip, the last Duke of Brunswick of the old Grubenhagen line, bear the inscrip- tion : GOT . GIBT . GOT . NIMBT—presumably in reference to the deaths, in 1595, of his wife and only brother. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 1080 and 3559-3561.) (X.) The series of so-called " Pestthaler" or " YVitten- berger Pestthaler " of the sixteenth century have the design of the brazen serpent of Moses on the obverse, and a repre- sentation of Christ's Crucifixion on the reverse. They were doubtless sometimes used as amulets or talismans against the plague and other fatal epidemic diseases. There are various types and various sizes (half-thaler and quarter-thaler sizes). Many of them, as the mint-marks 454 seem to show, 454 Some of these mint-marks are the same as those used on the large silver coins struck from 1519 onwards by the Counts Schlick at Joachimsthal. These " Joachimsthaler " were the original pieces from whicb the words "thaler," " daler," and "dollar" are derived. See also Max Donebauer, Sammlung Bohmischer Miinzen und Medaillen. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 507 were probably really struck at the silver-mining town of Joachimsthal in Bohemia. For a description including all medals and coins of similar (sometimes more elaborate) design, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (many bearing dates, such as 1525, 1527, 1528, 1531, 1538, 1551, 1557, 1619), see L. Pfeifler and C. Ruland, Pestilentia in Nummis, Tubingen, 18S2, pp. 75-87. These authors likewise give a good deal of information about other coin-like or medal-like amulets, or supposed preservative " charms " (" Pest-Pfennige," itc.) against plague, cholera, and other deadly epidemic diseases. (I.) Some thin " bracteate " German coins of the sixteenth century, issued by the bishopric of Halberstadt, have been mistakenly termed " Sargpfennige" ("Coffin-pennies"), because they were supposed to bear the device of a death's-head and crossed bones on a shield. In reality this device on the shield was originally meant to represent the bust of St. Stephen, the patron saint of the bishopric of Halberstadt, but on some specimens the workmanship is so bad that the bust of the saint resembles a death's-head with crossed bones below it. (Vide H. Halke, Handworterbuch der Miinzkunde, Berlin, 1909, p. 310.) (XI.) Medal of Faustina Sforza, wife of the Marquis of Caravaggio Muzio (second half of the sixteenth century). Obv.—Bust to right. Inscription: FAVSTINA • SFORTIA • MARCH • CARAVAGII. Rev.—An ermine-like animal pursued by a huntsman and a dog. Inscription: MORI POTIVS QVAM FOEDARI ("Better to die than be defiled "; " Rather death than dishonour"). Artist's signature in incuse letters: PETRVS . PAVLVS . ROM. Diameter, 3*0 inches. Medal by Pietro Paolo Galeotti, called " Romano." Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, second edition, Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 234, No. 35. The reverse design on this medal refers to the power of some of the " mustelidae " (e.g. the skunk) to save their lives 508 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. by ejecting a fluid of intolerable odour, which compels their pursuers to abandon the chase. The meaning of the reverse is therefore, "It is preferable to die than to dishonour one's self by committing a disgraceful action"; " Honesta mors turpi vita potior" (Tacitus, Vita Agricolae, xxxiii.). Cf. the mottoes mentioned in Part II. xi. (I., II.) A memento mori reverse for a mortuary medal, or " Sterbedenkmiinze" by the Silesian medallist, Tobias AVolff (second half of the sixteenth century), is figured in A. Erman's Deutsche Medailleure, Berlin, 1834, p. 69. A naked child, Fig. 59.—Reverse design by Tobias Wolff, German, sixteenth century. holding a flower, seated by a human skull and bones; in the background, a tree with a withered leafless branch and a vigorous branch rich in leaves. Inscription: SIT NOMEX DOMINI BENEDICTVM. (See Fig. 59.) This design, which bear's the artist's signature, TXA occurs as a reverse with a later obverse dated 1619, bearing the portrait of Gottfried Woyssel, a Silesian physician (C. A. Rudolphi. Numismata Virorum de Bebus Medicis, dc, Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. Ill, No. 296). The design obviously illustrates the frequently quoted line of Manilius : " Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet." It also illustrates the eternal succession of new life springing from the old. The inscription is, of course, equivalent to one of resignation: " Let the will of God be done." PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 509 (I.) German sixteenth-century " moral'"' medal by Ludwig Neufarer. Obv.—Boy resting with his right arm on a death's-head; in the background a town. In the exergue inscription in three lines: TEMPVS • EDAX . RERY(m) . TV • QVE . INVIDIO(sa) • VETV(stas). Rev.—Representation of Solon before enthroned Croesus. Inscrip- tion : ERS (sic) ■ ERIT • SVBITO • QVI • MODO • CROESVS • ERAT . 0 • SOLOM • SOLOM. Diameter, 1*6 inches ; struck in silver. (Max Donebauer, Sammlung Bohmischer Milnzen und Medaillen, Prag, 1888- 1890, vol. 2, No. 4300.) On a similar smaller medal (diameter, 1-0 inch) the obverse inscription is, TEMPVS • EDAX . RERV(m), and the reverse inscription is, OSSITAS (sic) • ERIT - SVBITO • QVI • MODO • CROESVS • ERAT. (Max Donebauer, loc. cit., No.- 4301.) The inscriptions on these medals were evidently derived from the hexameter and pentameter lines— " Tempus edax rerum, tuque, invidiosa vetustas." " Pulvis [? or Mortis] erit subito quomodo Croesus erat." Compare Ovid, Metam., xv. 234— " Tempus edax rerum, tuque, invidiosa vetustas, Omnia destruitis, vitiataque dentibus aevi Paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte." The word ossitas, substituted by the medallist for pidvis or mortis, meant, I suppose, a skeleton, or Knochenmann. According to the story narrated by Plutarcb in bis Life of Solon, the substance of the advice given by Solon to Croesus, King of Lydia, was: " Keep in mind the end of a long life—account no man happy before his death." When later on Croesus was taken prisoner by Cyrus, and was about to be burned on the funeral pyre, he was heard three times to call out the name of Solon. Cyrus asked for an explanation, and when Croesus told him the words of Solon, be countermanded tbe order for execution, and made Croesus bis friend. (II.) A German silver religious medal of the sixteenth century (Fig. 60) shows on the obverse the Prophet Jonah being vomited up alive by the whale, and on the reverse Christ's resurrection and the final triumph over death. In 510 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. the foreground Christ stands with one foot on the head of a monster of some kind (by comparison with the obverse the monster seems to be a kind of miniature whale); behind Christ is a prostrate human skeleton, emblematic of the defeat of Deatb ; in the background is the tomb, with two sleeping watchers. The Latin inscription signifies : " Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians xv. 57). The medal is described in Max Donebauer's Samndung Bomiseher Miinzrn und Medaillen, Prag, 1888-1890, vol. 2, No. 4412. Compare the medal of Jonah and the Resurrection, by the Meister G. W., dated 1537 (Donebauer, loc. cit, No. 4304). Fig. 60.—German sixteenth-century religious medal, representing Christ's triumpb over death. The Mediaeval representations of the " Triumph of Death," as expressed in the various " Dance of Death" series, are sometimes followed by a design of the same kind as that on the reverse of Fig. 60, representing Christ's Final Triumph over death, that is to say, the " death of Death "—" The Last enemy that shall be destroyed is death " (1 Corinthians xv. 26). Cf. the treatment of this subject in the Todten Dantz, by Rudolph and Conrad Meyer of Zurich (Zurich, 1650). Compare also the following. (II.) A German religious medal has on the obverse the Latin hexameter line: NON MORIAR VIVAM SPES E(st) MIHI MAGNA SEPVL(crum); and on the reverse PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 511 it has the pentameter line: E TVMBA IN COELOS TE DVCE CHRISTE FERAR, The obverse and reverse designs signify the resurrection and triumph over Death. On the reverse is the resurrection of Christ; two watchers are asleep by the tomb; below is a death's-head. There is no date. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 5216.) (I., II.) A German sixteenth-century "moral" medal (silver) has on the obverse a representation of Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge. On the reverse is a seated woman with hour-glass, death's-head, and a light, and the inscription, SICH • MENS • BDENCK • DAS . ENDE, which means, " Man, think of the end." (Auction catalogue by Otto Helbing Nachfolger, Munich, December, 1913, Xo. 4284.) In regard to the reverse compare the following medal, described by Max Donebauer (Samndung Bbhmischer Miinzen und Mcdaillen, Prag, 1888-1890, vol. 2, Xo. 4361):— Obv.— The holy women standing under the cross. Inscription : ET • EGO • SI • EXALTVS • FVERO, Ac. Rev.—Under a tree, a female figure, seated, resting her right arm on an hour-glass. On the left stands a lamb with its head on the woman's lap. In the background a town with towers and open gate. Inscription: SICH • MENS ■ BDENCK • DAS • ENDE. Diameter, 1 • 25 inches; silver. (I.) In the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin is a six- teenth-century Italian oval plaquette representing a draped bust of a skeleton to right, with the legend: MEMOR • ESTO- QVOXIAM • MORS- NON • TAR DAT (Beschrei- bung der Bildwerke der Christlichen Epochen, second edition, vol. ii. (Italian bronzes), Berlin, 1904, Plate 73, No. 1383). (I.) Untimely death (sixteenth century). Obv.—Bearded bust of a man in the prime of life to left. Inscrip- tion : MAXINVS A PVRNO. Rev.—On the left is Deatb (as a skeleton bolding scythe), upright, to right, facing a group of three persons (on the right), one of whom is in an attitude of expostulation. Inscription: INTEMPESTIVA VENIS ("You come untimely—too soon"). The inscription is evidently the expostulation addressed to Deatb. Diameter, 2*1 inches ; cast in bronze. 512 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. I am indebted to Mr. Harold Mattingley for kindly drawing my attention to this apparently unpublished medal, of which the only example I know of is in the British Museum, and seems to be an after-easting from original work of the sixteenth century. The style of the obverse portrait reminds one of the medals by Leone Leoni, but I find no mention of any exactly similar medal in Eugene Plon's work, Leone Leoni et Pompeo Leoni, Paris, 1887. It seems to me quite certain that the medal is "faked" in the following sense: The medal is a sand-casting (French?), for the obverse of which the obverse of a genuine sixteenth-century medal has Fig. 61.—Untimely Death. Medal in the British Museum. been used, namely, of the medal of Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle by Leone Leoni, figured in Eugene Plon's work just mentioned, Plate xxxii. Fig. 3 ; but the inscription has been altered. For the reverse a circular plaque (of white metal?) has, I think, been used, somewhat comparable in workmanship to the next one described (see Fig. 62), and the hole where the original plaque was pierced can still be distinctly made out on the upper part, after the letter 8 of VENIS (see Fig. 61). The same reverse occurs apparently on a medal of Annibale d'Este, attributed to Pastorino of Siena (A. Armand, Les Medailleurs Ltaliens, 2nd edition, Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 195, No. 42), and on a medal of Alfonso d'Este Tassoni (Armand, op. cit., 1887, vol. iii. p. 245), like- PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 513 wise supposed to be by Pastorino. It would be interesting to ascertain whether the obverses of these two medals are likewise "faked." The legend, MAXINVS A FVRXT0 (du Four or Dufour), seems to have been inscribed on the obverse-mould of the present medal, specially to excite the interest of French collectors. (II., VII., XVI.) Plaque representing Death yielding to Valour (or Virtue). In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford there is a sixteenth- century plaque of white metal (circular; diameter, 2-8 inches) with figures of Death and Valour (or Virtue) in very low relief. Death (on the left) is represented by a skeleton, crowned and holding a scythe, standing in an attitude of fear or submission before a fully armed Minerva-like female figure approaching (on the right). Above the skeleton is the word MORS; above the armed figure, VIRTVS. Death may here represent destruction and ruin in an enterprise, or merely imminent defeat and death in warfare, which can sometimes be prevented by courage. (" Mors ipsa refugit Saepe virum "—Lucan, Pharsalia, lib. ii. 75.) The device may, however, be an allegorical representation of death being " swallowed up in victory" (St. Paul), that is to say, in a sense, being overcome by virtue. Compare the Roman Catholic antiphon already referred to : " O mors, ero mors tua : morsus tuus ero, inferne." " Vivit post funera Virtus " is a Latin saying which occurs on various " Sterbethaler " and mortuary medals ; it has also been adopted as a motto by several families, and is inscribed on the monument of Dr. Caius (died 1573) in Caius College Chapel, Cambridge. A German medalet, dated 1611, bears the following inscription on the reverse: ALLES WAS AVF ERDN IST VERGEHT, LOB EHR VND TYGEND EWIG BSTEHT. The medallist's signature is h.r.f. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, Xo. 5231). In Rouen. Cathedral, on the sepulchral monu- ment (1525) of Cardinal Georges d'Amboise (died 1510), Archbishop of Rouen and Minister of King Louis XII of France, is an inscription ending with— "Mortuus en jaceo, morte extinguuntur honores, At virtus mortis nescia morte viret." 2 L 514 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. For permission to illustrate this plaque, I am indebted to Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Bell, of the Ashmolean Museum, who kindly sent me a cast (see Fig. 62). A Flemish sixteenth- century tapestry of curious design, at Berlin, may also be referred to in this connexion. It represents the triumph of Valour, and is figured in the great work, Petrarque . . . son Influence sur les Artistes, by the Prince d'Essling and Eugene Miintz, Paris, 1902, p. 263. Fig. 62.—Death and Virtue, on a sixteenth-century plaque. The following German jettons or casting-counters (German, " Rechenpfennige "), for casting accounts, &c, bear " morality' devices or inscriptions relating to death. They are of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (I. and II.) Counter by Hans Krauwinckel, of Nurnberg. Obv.—Deatb seizing a lady dressed in rich " Elizabethan " attire. Inscription: MORS VLTIMA. Rev.—A tree. Inscription: EST ARBORI SPES ; SI PRiECISA FVERIT, RVRSVM VIRESCTT. F. P. Barnard, The Casting-Counter and the Counting- Board, Oxford, 1916, p. 218, No. 61, and Plate xxxii. No. 61. The obverse legend is from Horace, Epist, i. 16,79 : " Mors ultima linea rerum est." The reverse legend is adapted from the Vulgate version of Job xiv. 7: " For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again." PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 515 The two chief families of Nurnberg counter-makers were the Krauwinckels and the Laufers. Hans Krauwinckel, who worked about 1580-1610, was doubtless the most prolific of all. His counters are often found, with a fine " patina " on them, in the soil of England and, I believe, all parts of Europe; this bears witness to the truth of the rhyming lines inscribed on one of them :— " Hans Krauwinckel bin ich bekont, In Frankreich und auch in Niderlont." (I. and II.) Counter by Hans Laufer, of Nurnberg. Obv.—The infant Christ (?), &c Inscription: ARBEIT VND TVGENT MACHT EDEL. Rev.—Skeleton (Death) in a Churchyard. Inscription- DEN • KVMPT • DER • DODT . GIBT • DEN • LON. J. Neumann, Kupfer-Milnzen, Prag, 1868, vol. v. p. 426 No. 32331. (I. and II.) Counter by Hans Laufer, of Nurnberg. Obv.—Adam and Eve, &c. Inscription: OMNES MORIVNTYR IN ADAM. ' Rev.—The crucified Christ. Inscription : SANATI SVM CVIVS LIVORE. In exergue: IN CHRISTO OMNES VIVFICABVNTVR. J. Neumann, loc. cit, p. 426, No. 32332. (I. and II.) Counter by Mathaeus Laufer, of Nurnberg. Obv.—Adam and Eve, &c. Inscription: OMNES MORIVNTVR IN ADAM. 1625. Rev.—The crucified Christ. Inscription: CVIVS LIVORE SANATI SVM. In exergue : IN . CHRISTO . OMNES . VIYIFICABVNTVR. J. Neumann, loc. cit, p. 433, No. 32385. (I. and II.) Counters by Andreas Alnpeck, mint-master at Freyberg, Kingdom of Saxony (1546-1556). Several varieties are described having a reverse inscrip- tion, such as: NICHTES • GEWISSERS • DAN ■ DER • TOD; with an obverse inscription, sucb as:. VOR • ALLEN • DINGEN • LIBE • GOT. J. Neumann, loc. cit, p. 463, Nos. 32656 to 32664. 2 L 2 516 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (IX.) The motto, Dulce est pro patria mori, occurs on a medal (1605) of Stephen II, Bottskai, Prince of Transylvania (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1603), and on a mortuary Thaler (1676) commemorating the death (from a gunshot wound at the capture of Philippsburg, in Baden) of Augustus Frederick, eldest son of Antony Ulric, Duke of Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel (Madai, op. cit, No. 3641). (II.) A medal of Adolph Occo III (1524-1606), a physician (and numismatist) of Augsburg, doubtless a friend of the princely and artdoving Fuggers (Augsburg) of his clay, has the following inscription on the reverse: VITA All HI CHRISTVS MORS ERIT IPSA LVCRVM (" To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain"—St. Paul's Epist. to the Philippians i. 21). Cf. C. A. Rudolphi, Numismata Virorum de Rebus Medicis, dc., Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 110. There are two varieties. Another medal (dated 1552) of the same physician (see Fig. 143, after Camille Picque, llcvne Beige de Numismatique, 1899, vol. 55, p. 44 and PL iii.) has a skeleton and the following inscriptions on the reverse : ABSORPTA EST MORS IN VICTORIAM (" Death is swallowed up in victory"—St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians xv. 54); and IPSE IVBET MORTIS TE MEMINISSE DEVS ("God Himself commands you to remember death")—Martial, Epigram, lib. ii. No. 59.455 (Compare Psalm xc. 12.) Dr. Storer has told me of several other medals of the three physicians, Adolph Occo I (1447- 1503), Adolph Occo II (1495-1572), and Adolph Occo III, especially, two medals of Adolph Occo II, with a skeleton on the reverse and the inscription, DIXI PVTREDINI, &c. (Job xvii. 14 : "I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister"). See also the article by R. Forrer in Archiv der Medaillen und- Plakettenkunde, Halle-a-S., 1914, vol. i. p. 27. One of the third Occo (about 1552?) has on the reverse a skeleton, with 455 "Frange toros, pete vina, rosas cape, tinguere nardo: Ipse jubet mortis te meminisse deus." By " deus " Martial of course meant the deified Roman Emperor. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 517 an inscription in Greek. The skeleton is leaning in a pensive attitude on an altar (or rather cippus), on which is an hour- glass. The design of this, as also of the other skeletons on the Occo medals, was suggested by Jan von Calcar's woodcut (cf. Part I. D. and Fig. 144) in Vesalius's great anatomical work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Basel, 1543, p. 164. (II.) Memorial medal of Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham (1618?), the founders of Wadham College, Oxford. Obv.—Bust of Nicholas Wadham, three-quarters, to right, head bare, in ruff and plain cloak. Inscription: WHEN CHRIST WHO IS OVR LIFE SHAL APPEARE. Rev.—Bust of Dorothy Wadham, three-quarters, to left, in damasked gown, stiff ruff, and broad-brimmed hat. Inscription: WE SHAL APPEARE WITH HIM IN GLORY. A narrow wreath, united by a skull at each side and at each end, forms a border on both sides. Oval medal, consisting of two plates or shells soldered together. Diameter, 2'15 x 1*8 inches. Medallic Illustrations, London, 1885, vol. i. p. 220, No. 73. Nicholas Wadham, of a family settled at Merrifield, in Somersetshire, died in 1609, at the age of 77 years. Dorothy Wadham, his wife, died in 1618, at the age of 84 years. She was a daughter of Sir William Petre, Principal Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth. The first stone of Wadham College was laid on July 31, 1610. In regard to the legend on this medal, cf. St. John xi. 25, 26 (the passage which has been adopted for the commencement of the Church of England Burial Service) ; also the motto : " Mors Christi, mors mortis mihi." (I., XIX.) Some " Sterbemiinzen," or rather " Begriibniss- miinzen" (1618), commemorating the death and burial of Anna Maria, of Brandenburg, the widow of Barnim XI, Duke of Pomerania, represent on the reverse the Pomeranian griffin with ten heraldic shields of arms on its wings, holding a sword in its right claw, and in its left claw a shield with a death's-head on it. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 1424 and 1425.) The Thaler of this type is figured in O. Helbing's sale catalogue, Munich, December, 1913, Plate xiv. No. 2059. 518 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (I.) Some Pomeranian mortuary coins (silver) of 161s have the obverse device of a rose-bush and serpent, with inscription: VT ROSA RODIMVR OMNES ("Like the rose, we are all eaten up "). (V., XI.) Execution of John van Olden Barneveldt, Grand Pensionary of Holland (1619). There are three different medals commemorating the death of Barneveldt, each of which bears his portrait and name on the obverse, and an inscription on the reverse, referring to his high character and the injustice of his execution. These medals are described and figured in G. van Loon's llistoire metallique des Pays-Bas, French edition, 1732, vol. ii. pp. 109-111. (II., IV.) Some mortuary pieces commemorating the death (1619) of Francis II, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, have on the reverse the inscription, "Mors mihi quies, vita bellum." (Madai, Vollst, Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 1311 and 3799.) (I.) A "Sterbethaler" (1621) of Rudolph, Prince of Anhalt, the founder of the Zerbst line, bears the motto, MEMENTO MORI. This inscription likewise occurs on some earlier coins issued during his reign. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 1010, 1011.) (I., II.) Some memorial pieces (1622) of John, Duke of Holstein, have a death's-head and bones on the obverse, with the inscription: VIVE MEMOR LETHI. Below are the letters g.g.g.m.f., which some have supposed to stand for the saying, Gottes Giite Giebt Mir Friede. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 1288, 1289.) (II., XVIII.) A mortuary thaler (1623), commemorating the death of Clara Maria, the first wife of Augustus junior, Duke of Brunswick-Wolffenbuttel (new line), has on the obverse a long Latin inscription, signifying that the Duke Augustus junior, with tears, had the medal made to the memory of his wife (conjugis suavissimae memoriae cum lachrymis PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 519 fieri fecit). On a tablet on the reverse is the inscription: VIXI , DUM . VIXI . BENE . IAM . MEA . PERACTA. MUX . VESTR A . AGETUR . FABULA . VALETE . ET . VIVITE. UT. VIXI. BENE. (K. G. von Schulthess Rechberg, Thaler-Cabinet, Miinchen, 1867, vol. iii. part ii. p. 43, No. 6*21.) (I.) A medal of Johann Udalrich, Prince of Eggenberg zu Ehrenhausen, by Sebastian Dadler (1631), has his portrait on the obverse. On the reverse is a lily, and above it the inscription: HOMINES . SVMVS . ITA. Cf. Job xiv. 2, " He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." (II., III., XI.) Death of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, at the Battle of Liitzen, 1632. Obv.—The dead body of the king in armour. His soul is being carried by two angels upwards to heaven. From the radiant Hebrew name Jehovah, above, come the following words: EUGE SERVE FIDELIS ! Over a battle-scene in the distance: VEL MORTUUM FUGIUNT. The whole design is within a wreath of leaves, outside which is the inscription: GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS MAGNUS. Rev.—The king seated on a triumphal car, the right half of his body in armour, the left half represented as a skeleton. In the right hand he holds a sword, and in tbe left hand (that of a skeleton) be holds a book (the Bible). Religion and Justice crown him with laurel. The car, drawn by winged horses, is rolling over monsters, one of which wears the Papal triple crown. Above tbe king, in two lines : ET VITA ET MORTE TRIUMPHO. The whole design is enclosed in a wreath of leaves; outside which is the inscription: DUX GLORIOS(us) PRINC(eps) PIUS HEROS INVICT(us) VICTOR INCOMPARAB(ilis) TRIUMPH(ator) FELIX & GERM(aniae) LIBERA- TOR 1633. There are similar smaller pieces. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 221 and 2630. Scbulthess- Rechberg, Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 2042 and 2043.) (II., III., XI.) A memorial double-thaler on the death (1632) of Gustavus Adolphus, struck in 1634 at Erfurt, under the direction of the Erfurt Miinzmeister, Weissmantel (whose mark it bears), represents the king in a triumphal 520 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. car on the obverse. On the reverse the body of the king is represented lying in armour and crowned, whilst two angels are carrying his soul to heaven. From the radiant Hebrew name Jehovah, above, come the words: EVdl] SER(ve) FIDELIS. Shields are arranged around the main type, with the inscriptions: (1) MONVMENTUM REGIVM, den 6 . Novemb. 1632; (2) IN ANGVSTIIS INTRAVIT; (3) PIETATE(m) AMAVIT ; (4) HOSTES PROSTRAVIT ; (5) REGNVM DILATAVIT; (6) SVECOS EXALTAV1T; (7) OPPRESSOS LIBERAVLT; (8) M< >RIENS TRIVMPH- AVIT. Around the whole design is the pentameter verse : VITA MIHI CHRIST(us) MORS MEA DVLCE LVCRVM (cf. St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians i. 21). (Schulthess- Rechberg, Thaler-Cabinet, No. 2048.) Very similar to the first piece (with the half-skeleton figure in a triumphal car) is a large medal by Sebastian Dadler. There is also a similar commemorative medal by Dadler issued in 1634, and there are likewise several medals and medalets commemorating the same event, with a celestial crown or some similar device on the reverse. (II., III.) The inscription, Vivit post funera virtus, occurs on various German coins and Sterbethaler : of Ludwig der Treue, Landgraf of Hesse (1626) ; of Anna Maria, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1634); of Reuss (1619, &c.); of John Adolph, Bishop of Gottorp (1607). (I., II.) A mortuary thaler (1632), on the death of the learned Moritz, Landgraf of Hesse, has on the reverse an hour-glass, with the inscription: CONSILIO ET VIRTVTE MAVRITI MEMENTO MORI. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler- Cabinet, No. 1246.) (II. and VIII.) Danish memento mori medal (1634). Obv.—Inscription in seven lines : NAAR DU : MEENE . AD: FLORERE BEST SAA . ER . DODEN DIN: WISSE GEST y (" When you think you are blooming best, Then is death your certain guest"). Rev.—Skull and crossed bones, with hour-glass (surmounted by a ball to represent human life) and ears of corn. Inscription: PART III.] COINS, MEDALS. AND TOKENS. 521 HYOR . DV . DIG: WENDE ER . D0DEN . DIN . ENDE (" Wherever you wend, Death is your end "). In the field, the date 1634. (Fig. 63.) Diameter, 10 inch; copper gilt; in the Royal Collection at Copenhagen. Danske Mynter og Medailler i den Kongelige Samling, Copenhagen, 1791, p. 331, No. 842, PL xxii. No. 12. The device of the ears of fresh corn, that is to say, corn springing up from dry and apparently lifeless seeds, on the reverse of this medal, refers to the doctrine of resurrection and eternal life. Compare the " tessera anatomica" figured in Thomas Bartholin's Domus Anatomica (printed at the Hague in 1662), p. 27. The design represents a skull and crossed bones with ears of corn, and is surrounded by the legend, VT SEMINA SICCA YIRESCENT. I have seen a similar device of skull, hour- glass, and ears of corn at the end of one of the "Dance of Death" books. So also one of Gabr. Symeoni's emblematic devices represents Fig. 63.—Danish memento mori medal, 1634. corn springing up around bones, with the motto, " Spes alterae vitae." Symeoni45tt adds: " Corne, graine, and seeds of sundrie sorts, being dead and cast into the ground, do revive, and spring againe: So mans bodie falling into the ground shall rise againe in glory, in the last and general day of the resurrection of the flesh." Symeoni's device and legend have evidently suggested the obverse type (twelve ears of corn, with crossed bones below, and the motto Spes alterae vitae) of a jetton or casting-counter by Kilian Koch, of Nurnberg, apparently of the end of the sixteenth century.457 On one of the old sixteenth century Edinburgh houses (the so-called " speaking house") the device of ears of corn springing up out of dry bones, accompanies the inscription: " Constanti pectori res mortalium umbra." 156 The Heroicall Devices of M. C. Paradin, dc, English translation by P. G, London, 1591, pp. 320, 321. 457 J. Neumann, Kupfer-Milnzen, Prag, 1868,. vol. v. p. 412, No. 32207. 522 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (II. and VIII.) Danish memento mori medal (1634). Obv.—Bust of a young woman, with coronet on her head, to right. Inscription : (in outer circle) LERE • OS • AT • BETENCKE ■ AT ■ WI ■ SKULLE • (and in inner circle) D0E • AT ■ WI • MA • BLIFE ■ PSAL • 90 ("Teach us to remember that we must die, so that we may become wise," Psalm xc, verse 12, after Luther's translation). In tbe field to right: IEG ER SKI0N ("I am beautiful"). Picv_—Skeleton standing by a table resting left hand on an hour- glass. Inscription: (in outer circle) MINE ■ DAGE ■ HAFFE • VERIT ■ SNARERE • END • EN ■ L0BERE. (and in inner circle) DE • FLYDE ■ Fig. 64.—Danish memento mori medal, 1634. BORT • OCH • HAFFE • INTET IOB 9 ("My days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good."— Job ix. 25). In the field, below the table: IEG WAR SKI0N 1634 ("I was beautiful, 1634 "). (Fig. 64.) Diameter, 1-75 inches; gold; in the Royal Collection at Copenhagen. Danske Mynter og Medailler, loc. cit, p. 331, No. 841; PL xxii. No. 11. These last two medals (specimens of which my father, Sir H. Weber, kindly examined during a short visit to Copenhagen) are said to have been struck on the death of Anna Cathrina, the eldest daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark by his morganatic wife, Christina Munk (or Munck). The lady in question (born in 1618) was betrothed to Frantz Rantzow (or Rantzau), Governor of the Royal PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 523 Palace, when the latter was (apparently accidentally) drowned in the moat of the Royal Palace of Rosenborg in 1632. She is supposed to have died of grief in the following year (1633).458 (II. and VIII.) German memento mori medal of about 1634. Obv.—Bust of a young woman with coronet on her head to right. Inscription: QVAE SIM POST TERGA VIDEBIS (" Who I am you will see on the reverse"). Rev.—Skeleton standing by a table, resting left hand on an hour-glass. Inscription : SIC NVNC : PVLCHERRIMA QYONDAM ("Like this now; very beautiful once "). In Fig. 65.—German memento mori medal by Christian Maler. tbe field below the table : CVM PRIVIL: CAES : CM. (Fig. 65.) Oval medal, 1*5 X 1'2 inches; illustrated in Forrer's Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, London, vol. iii. p. 542. The German medallist, Christian Maler, generally added the words " cum privil." to his signature CM., as be has done on the reverse of this medal, because he held the Imperial permission to strike medals in his own house. The designs of obverse and reverse are evidently copied, as Mr. C. F. Gobert of Nurnberg kindly pointed out to me, 458 Cf. F. C. Sch0nau, Leben und letzte Stunden Christina von Munk, German translation, Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1757, p. 211. 524 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. from those on the medal last described, which is supposed to relate to the death of Anna Cathrina, daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark. The reverse designs on both medals were evidently suggested by Jan von Calcar's woodcut (cf. Part I. D.) in Vesalius's Anatomy, liasel, 1543, p. 164 (see Fig. 144). I have to thank Mr. L. Forrer and Messrs. Spink and Son for the blocks for Fig. 65. One need hardly point out that medals of this kind are analogous to the gisant type of sepulchral monuments (see Part I. C), inasmuch as they are intended to contrast—from the religious and admonitory, or memento mori, point of view—life, vigour, and beauty with death, powerlessness, and putrefaction. So also, various carved beads, wooden or wax statuettes, &c, described in Part IV. ii., have a quite similar significance. The inscriptions may be compared with the mottoes on memorial rings, &c, such as : " Quod es fui, quod sum eris," " Hodie mihi cras tibi." Dr. H. R. Storer kindly tells me of an earlier memento mori medal (1603) by Christian Maler. The obverse represents a woman in rich dress, behind whom is Death with an hour-glass; Latin inscription. The reverse device is a withered tree in a spring landscape. (Silver; diameter 1*5 inches.) The design of this medal reminds me of the Nurnberg counter by Hans Krauwinckel (see back), with the inscrip- tion MORS VLTIMA on the obverse. (VIII., XVII.) A German medal of about 1634 by Christian Maler, likens human life to soap-bubbles, and might have been inspired by Ecclesiastes. The obverse is the same as that of a preceding medal (Fig. 65). But the reverse (Fig. 66) represents a boy seated on the ground, leaning on a death's-head, and playing with soap-bubbles. Inscription: OMNES BULLAE SUM(VS) INSTAR ("We are all like a bubble "); the letters in the exergue seem not to be the ordinary signature of the medallist, Christian Maler. I am indebted for the illustration of this piece to the sale catalogue, by Otto Helbing of Munich, 1901, of the J. J. Schrott Collection, in which it formed No. 1443. My attention was kindly drawn to the existence of the piece by Mr. A. E. Cahn of Frankfurt-a.-M. Dr. H. R. Storer has kindly drawn my attention to a memorial medal of Tomas Ernsthuyse, who died in 1684, shortly after he had been appointed Governor-General of the Dutch Indies. The medal is figured by G. van Loon (Histoire metallique des Pays-Bas, French edition, 1732, PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 525 vol. 3, p. 286). and bears on the reverse the device of a child blowing bubbles, with the inscription : MEMENTO MORI. A "Sterbethaler" (1679) of Christiana, the wife of Christian, Duke of SaxeAYeimar, may be compared with the two preceding medals. It has on the reverse a boy, seated on a human skull, blowing soap-bubbles, with the inscription: OMNIA VANITAS. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler- Cabinet, No. 1540.) Cf. the Greek saying, Uo^oXvi, 6 ivOpanros (" Man is a bubble "), and the Latin equivalent, "Bulla est vita humana." The great Francis Bacon (1561-1626) commenced a poem on Life (which might perhaps Fig. 66.—Reverse of German memento mori medal by Christian Maler. have been adduced to lend support to the exploded theory that Lord Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare's plays) as follows :— " The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man Less than a span." William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585-1649), likewise compares human life to a bubble :— " This life, which seems so fair, Is like a bubble blown up in the air By sporting children's breath." A painting (1821), by William Hilton, R.A. (now in the National Gallery of British Art—the " Tate Gallery "), represents a somewhat similar fancy : " Nature blowing bubbles for her children." Francis Beaumont, in regard to the " Life of Man," wrote:— "The wind blows out; the bubble dies; Tbe spring entombed in autumn lies; The dew's dried up ; the star is shot; The fligbt is past; and man forgot." 526 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IIL Lord Byron exclaims :— " How little do we know that which we are 1 How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles; as tbe old burst, new emerge," &c. In Lucian's dialogue, entitled " Charon," that famous ferryman of the lower world has visited the upper world to find out what there is in life on earth that makes all men weep when they enter his boat, and in his conversation with Hermes (Mercury), he compares the lives of men to bubbles, some large, some small, but all breaking up after a longer or shorter time. Hermes tells Charon that his comparison is as good as Homer's celebrated one to the leaves on trees (Iliad, Book vi.). Jeremy Taylor adopted and elaborated Lucian's simile in the opening paragraph of his work, "The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying" (1651). St. James, in his Epistle (Chap. iv. 14), compared human life to " a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." The Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, in his first book of " Meditations," compared human life to a gusty, changeable wind. Cf. Sir Edwin Arnold (The Deva's Song) :— " We are the voices of the wandering wind, Which moan for rest and rest can never find; Lo ! as the wind is, so is mortal life, A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife." Cf. also tbe various mottoes and sayings likening the life of man to a shadow. Most of the following have somewhere or other been inscribed on sun-dials : 2*iay 6vap &v&p'xnros ("Man is like the dream of a shadow," Pindar, Pythia, viii. 136); " Man is but a shadow" ; " Pulvis et umbra sumus " (Horace) ; " Man is like a thing of naught; his time passeth away like a shadow" (Psalm cxliv. 4); " Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding" (1 Chronicles xxix. 15); "My days are like a shadow that declineth " (Psalm cii. 11); " I am gone like the shadow when it declineth" (Psalm cix. 23); "We spend our years as a tale that is told " (Psalm xc. 9); " As a dream when one awaketh " (Psalm lxxiii. 20) ; " Shadows we are, and like shadows depart" ; on a stained-glass sun-dial in a window at Groombridge Place, I bave seen the following inscription : " Umbra videt umbram "— signifying that the person looking at the shadow on the sun-dial is himself only a passing shadow;459 " He (man) fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay " (Church of England Burial 459 On a second window-dial in the same window in Groombridge Place is the inscription, "Lumen umbra Dei." Charles Leadbetter, in his book on Mechanick Dialling (first edition, London, 1737), devotes a few paragraphs to window-dials, and refers to their pleasant effect in a room. Those at Groombridge Place help to give the room a quiet " old world" air. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 527 Service, after Job xiv. 2); " Shadows we are and shadows we pursue " (a quotation by Edmund Burke) ; " Quod petis, umbra est." The significance of all such mottoes and sayings may be summed up in the words of the Preacher: " Yanity of vanities: all is vanity" (Eccle- siastes i. 2); "All is vanity and a striving after wind" (Ecclesiastes i. 14, Revised Version). (I.) A badge of the guild of physicians and surgeons at Delft (1635) bears on the obverse a skull and crossed bones, with the inscriptions: MEMENTO MORI and DELPHENS. S(igillum) COLLEGII MEDIC A CHIRURG. The device is that on the seal of the guild in question. (H. R. Storer, Amer. Journ, Num., April, 1901, p. Ill, No. 1614.) (II.) A mortuary medal (1640) of Anna, daughter of John Gunther IV, Count of Schwarzburg, bears her motto : A(lles) V(erganglich), G(ottes) G(nade) VY(ahret) E(wiglich). (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1891.) (II., XV.) A thaler on the death (1644) and burial (1645) of Albert II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, has the inscription: CORONAM VITJE ACCIPE (cf. Revelation ii. 10). (Madai, Vollst. Thaler Cabinet, No. 1484.) (II.) Memorial medal on the death of Sir John Hotham (1645). Obv.—Bust of Hotham to right; behind his neck, a minute skull, surmounted by a crown. Inscription : MORS MIHI VITA. Rev.—Shield of arms of Sir John Hotham impaling those of his fifth wife, Sarah, daughter of Thomas Anlaby, of Elton, in Yorkshire. Diameter, 1*25 inches; cast and chased in silver. Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 314. Sir John Hotham was Parliamentary Commander of Hull, but became dissatisfied with the proceedings of the Parlia- mentary party, and was with his son suspected of treason. They were both condemned and executed on Tower Hill. (IL, XV.) A curious " moral" medal by the seventeenth- century German medallist, Sebastian Dadler, has on the reverse the inscription: SEY GETREYY BIS AN DEN 528 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. TODT SO WILL ICH DIR DIE KRON DES LEI!ENS 'GEBE (Revelation ii. 10). I do not know on what ground this medal has been (doubtless incorrectly) supposed to com- memorate the Peace of Westphalia (Peace of Miinster) in 1648. (I., XIII.) A medal of Nicolas Georg de Raigersperg, representative of the Archbishop Elector of Mainz in drawing up the Treaty of Westphalia (Peace of Miinster), 1618, has his portrait on the obverse and his arms on the reverse, with the motto: COGITA MORI ANTE MORTEM. This medal (diameter, 1 • 1 inches) is signed by Vestner, and is therefore a work of the eighteenth century. (Le Maistre sale catalogue, Amsterdam, 1913, No. 184.) (XI.) Anne of Austria, Queen-Mother and Regent of France. Medallic jetton, 1648. Obv.—Shield of arms and inscription: ANNA • D • G • FR • ET • NA • REG(INA) • REGNI • MODERATRIX. Rev.—A pelican in her piety. Inscription: MORIAMUR DYM- MODO • VIVANT (" Let us die provided that they—the children—live"). In the exerque is the date, 1648. The two young birds signify Anne's two sons, King Louis XIV, and Philip, Duke of Orleans. Diameter, 1*0 incb; struck in bronze, &c. F. P. Barnard, The Casting-Counter and the Counting-Board, Oxford, 1916, p. 148, No. 187, Plate xiii. No. 187. The device of the pelican feeding her young with her own blood (the "pelican in her piety") is discussed further on. (II. and V.) Memorial medal on the death of King Charles I of England (1649). Obv.—Bust of Charles I to left. Legend : CAROLVS D. G., &c. Bev.—A skull between tbe letters C. R.; over it, a celestial crown with a label GLORIA; below it, an earthly crown with the label VANITAS. Legend: BEATAM . ET . ETERNAM . SPLENDID AM . AT . GRAVEM. The legend signifies: " (I receive) a blessed and eternal (crown). (I relinquish) one splendid but burdensome." Floral border on both Oval medal; diameter, 0 • 8 by 0 ■ 7 inch; cast and chased in silver. Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 344. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 529 The device on the reverse is illustrated by the following passage in the Icon (Eikon) Basilike: "I shall not want the heavy and envyed crownes of this world, when my God hath mercifully Crowned and Consummated his graces with Glory, and exchanged the shadows of my earthly Kingdomes among men, for the substance of that Heavenly Kingdome with him- self e." The device on one of the memorial rings (described in Part IV. ii.) on the King's death is similar to that on the iwerse of this medal. Lord Macaulay, writing of Tunbridge Wells, in Chapter iii. of his History of England, refers to the Church of England (see old copies of the Prayer-book) commemoration of tbe " martyrdom of the blessed King Charles the First in 1649": "In 1685 a subscription had just been raised among those who frequented the Wells for building a church, which the Tories, who then domineered everywhere, insisted on dedicating to Saint Charles the Martyr." The Chapel of St. John the Evangelist at Groombridge, near Tunbridge Wells (which was formerly the private chapel of the old moated grange, Groombridge Place, where—or rather, in the castle which preceded the moated house—Charles Duke of Orleans was a prisoner after the battle of Agincourt, 1415, and wrote some of his poetry), has a stained glass memorial window representing Charles the First, " King and Martyr," in his royal robes of state and crowned, kneeling before an altar and placing his trust in Christ; behind him is St. George, the patron saint of England. Havelock Ellis,460 discussing political executions and Gourmont's paradox that " injustice is one of the forms of justice " says of the execution of King Charles I: "It has conferred upon him a prestige he could never have conferred upon himself. For of all our English monarchs since the Conquest he alone has become a martyr and a saint, so far as Protestantism can canonise anybody, and of all our dead kings be alone evokes to-day a living loyalty." (V., XI.) Memorial medal on the execution of James Graham, first Marquis of Montrose (1650). Obv.—Bust of the Marquis of Montrose, front face, in plain falling collar and armour. Rev.—Incuse inscription :— Treu Pellican who shlit his blood To Saue his King do's Country good. 460 Havelock Ellis, Impressions and Comments, London, 1914, p. 149. 2 M 530 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. Diameter, l-95 by 1-5 inches; silver-gilt; cast, repaired by the graving tool, in very high relief, good bold style of work, not highly finished, with a ring for suspension. It was probably intended to be worn by the partisans and friends of Montrose as a memorial of affection after his execution. Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 386. The famous Royalist commander, the accomplished and noble first Marquis of Montrose, was defeated and made prisoner in 1650, and hanged in the Grassmarket at Edinburgh (May 21st, 1650) with every circumstance of indignity (the various quarters of his body were dispersed throughout the country, according to the sentence passed on him). At the Restora- tion, in 1661, his remains were buried in state, by order of King Charles II, in the Cathedral Church of St. Giles, at Edinburgh. The emblematic use of the pelican in medallic and heraldic devices will be referred to further on. In Fairbairn's Book of Crests, under the family of Hamond- Graeme, the Graeme crest is described as: "Two arms erect issuing from clouds in the act of removing from a spike a human skull; above the skull a marquis's coronet, all between two palm-branches." Surely, this crest (originally) was intended to recall the circumstances of the death of the famous Marquis of Montrose (Graeme being really the same name as Graham). The motto is, I think, Sepultus viresco. (II.) A kind of religious medallic " charm," or " amulet " (German, apparently of the seventeenth century), has on the obverse a traditional representation of the Adoration of the Three Kings ("Magi"), and on the reverse the following inscription, in six lines: H(eilige) * 3 • KON(ige) • CAS(par) ' MEL(chior) • BAL(thazar) • BITET FUR UXS IEZ U • IN DER • STERB • STUND • ("O Holy Three Kings, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, plead for us now, and in the hour of death!") This little piece (octagonal, 0*75 x 0'8o inch), struck in bronze, was kindly sent to me by Dr. H. R. Storer. who suggests that it may have come from Cologne, where there is a famous shrine of the Three Kings. (Cf. the idea of the death-bed scene, as shown in Fig. 18.) T. J. Pettigrew, in his book On Superstitions Connected with Medicine and Surgery (London, 1844, p. 58), narrates that William PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 531 Jackson, a Roman Catholic and a proscribed smuggler, was tried for and convicted of murder at Chichester, in January, 1748-9 ; sentence of death was passed upon him, and he was directed to be hung in chains. He, however, died in gaol a few hours after the sentence was delivered! In a linen purse upon his person was found the following charm <" charact"): Sancti tres Beges, Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar, Orate pro nobis nunc et in hora Mortis nostrae. The same storv, slightly varied, is told in Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, edition of 1849, vol. iii. p. 321, in the section on " characts" or "inscription- charms." On the same page the following passage from the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1749 (vol. xix. p. 88) is quoted: "These papers have touched the three heads of the holy kings at Cologne. They are to preserve travellers from accidents on the road, head-achs, falling- sickness, fevers, witchcraft, all kinds of mischief, and sudden death." (I., II.) German late seventeenth - century or early eighteenth-century religious memento mori medal (by Christian Wermuth). Fig. 67.—German seventeenth-century memento mori medal. Obv.—Death (as a skeleton with a scythe) standing behind a rich man who holds a clock in his left hand and an image of the sun in his right hand. Inscription: OMNIS DIES OMNIS HORA QVAM NIHIL SUMUS OSTENDIT ("Every day, every hour, shows that we are nothing"). Rev.—A hand from a cloud holding the mystic Christian emblematic device of a pelican feeding her young with her blood. Over this device, on an arched scroll, is the inscription • NAM CHRISTI MORS MEA VITA EST (" For the death of Christ is my life"). Above this is a hand from a cloud holding a death's-head, with the legend: DISCO MORI CHRISTO (" I learn to die in Christ "). Diameter, 1*25 inches; struck in silver; formerly in the author's possession (Fig. 67). 2 M 2 532 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IIL The pelican feeding her young with her own blood, which is the heraldic device known as the " pelican in her piety," is a mystic Christian emblem of Christ and the resurrection, the fabulous idea being that the female pelican wounded her breast and revived her apparently dead young ones with her own blood. The device has likewise been employed as an emblem of parental (especially maternal), dutiful, and patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice, and of charity in general. On the medal (already mentioned) commemorating the execution (1650) of James Graham, first Marquis of Montrose, the Marquis is referred to as a true pelican who shed his blood for the sake of his king and for the good of his country. Two queen-mothers of France, Marie de Medicis, when Regent (1610-1614), and Anne of Austria, when Regent (1643-1661), adopted the " pelican in her piety " as their device. I have already (see back) described a medallic jetton (1648) of the latter queen-regent, bearing this device, with the appropriate legend, Moriamur dummodo vivant (" Let us die provided that they—the children—live "). The device lent itself well for architectural ornaments in churches, &c., for ornaments in wood-carving (for instance, " misericord" seats in the choir and elsewhere of old churches and cathedrals), and, naturally, as a personal or family heraldic emblem or badge. (I., II.) German memento mori medal by Christian Wermuth (about 1700). Obv.—A man seated at the base of a broken column; on the ground by him is an antique Roman lamp; on the other side of the column Death is leaning in the form of a skeleton with a quiver full of arrows. Inscription in Gothic letters: " Schau mich an und bedrachte wohl, aus dir dergleichen werden soil." Rev.—Inscription in Gothic letters in fifteen lines : " Gewiss ist der Todt, ungewiss der Tag, die stund auch niemand wissen mag, drum fiirchte GOTT, und denck darbey, dass jede stund die letzte sey." Medallist's signature : c. w. Diameter, 1-35 inches ; struck ; in the Royal Collection at Dresden. Illustrated in Blatter filr Miinzfreunde, Leipzig, 1885, vol. 5, PL 75, fig. 15. (Compare also the medal formerly in my possession, illustrated in this book, Fig. 67.) PART III. j COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 533 The following four pieces (Figs. 68 to 71) belong to the class of so-called " Moralische Pfenninge " struck at Basel in the seventeenth century. They were apparently designed to be given as presents, sometimes probably in connexion with funerals. The medallist, whose signature on these pieces is F. F., was doubtless Friedrich Fechter or one of his family (l\ F. standing either for Friedrich Fechter or for '-Fechter fecit"). In connexion with memento mori medalets of this class, it must not be forgotten that the devastating epidemics of disease in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave them an increased significance at the time when they were issued. Georges Kastner (Les Danses des Morts, Paris, 1852, p. 3, footnote) speaks of a medal struck at Basel in connexion with the very fatal epidemic of 1438. Three roses were on one side and a skull and ear of corn (symbols of deatb and life after deatb) on the other; according to Kastner, the survivors presented the medal to each other as a memento mori. Obviously, however, Kastner was referring to a seventeenth- century medalet similar to those here described, with the inscription, "Heut roth, morgen todt." This inscription occurs likewise on some jettons or casting-counters (German, " Rechenpfennige ") of the early seventeenth century, by Hans Krauwinckel of Nurnberg, as those described by Josef Neumann (Kupfer-Miinzen, Prag, 1868, vol. v. p. 415, Nos. 32243-4) and F. P. Barnard (The Casting-Counter and tlie Counting- Board, Oxford, 1916, p. 223, No. 92, Plate xxxiv. No. 92). (I. and VIII.) Obv.—Basilisk, with leaf-like wings, holding shield bearing the arms of Basel. Pig. 68.—Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century. Rev.—Skull on bone, with worm; rose-tree with flower and buds growing over it. Inscription: HEUT RODT MORN DODT ("To-day red, to-morrow dead"). In exergue, an hour-glass and the engraver's signature, F.F. (Fig. 68.) 534 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. Diameter, 0*95 inch ; struck in silver. R. S. Poole, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Swiss Coins in the South Kensington Museum (the Townshend Collection of Swiss Coins), London, 1878, p. 45, No. 15. (I. and VIII.) Obv.—View of the city of Basel. Fig. 69.—Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century. Rev.—Skull and crossed bones; above which, rose-tree with flower and buds; beneath, hour-glass. Inscription: HEUT . RODT . MORN . DODT (" To-day red, to-morrow dead"). (Fig. 69.) Diameter, 0-8 inch; struck in silver. R. S. Poole, op. cit, p. 45, No. 16. (I. and VIII.) Obv.—Branch with three roses. Inscription: HEVT SENID WIER ROT ("Heut sind wir roth"—" To-day we are red "). Fig. 70.—Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century. Rev.—Dead stag to left, transfixed with arrow, beneath trees. Inscription: UND MORGEN TODT ("And to-morrow dead "). (Fig. 70.) Diameter, 0-6 inch; struck in silver. R. S. Poole, op. cit, p. 45, No. 17. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 535 (II.) Obv.—View of tbe city of Basel. Rev.—Phoenix in burning nest (emblem of the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul). Inscription: MORIAR UT VIVAM ("I will die that I may live"). (Fig. 71.) Fig. 71.—Medalet struck at Basel in the seventeenth century. Diameter, 1*2 inches; struck in silver. R. S. Poole, op. cit, p. 46, No. 20. (I.) An English seventeenth-century memento mori medalet (circa 1650). Obv.—A child seated on the ground, leaning on a skull. On either side, a flower. In the background, a building with spires, apparently meant to represent a church. The whole type surrounded by a serpent with its tail in its mouth. No legend. Fig. 72.—English memento mori medalet. Rev.—Legend in two circles with a rose in the centre: (in outer circle) AS • SOONE : AS -WEE • TO • BEE-BEGVNNE : (and in inner circle) WE • DID ■ BEGINNE : TO-BE • VNDONE : (Fig. 72.) Diameter, 1 • 25 inches; struck in bronze. 536 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [l'ART III. A specimen, which I afterwards presented to the British Museum Collection, was described by me in the Numismatic Chronicle, 1892,461 where I alluded to its resemblance in style of workmanship and in certain details of execution to the medal commemorating John Lilburne's trial in 1649.4G- A similar piece, possibly from another die, but with the same legend, was described by J. Atkins463 as a jetton or token supposed to have been issued by Sir Walter Raleigh for tli<- Settlement made by him in Virginia, 1584. There is another variety (see Fig. 73) with a slight difference in the legend, a specimen of which was kindly shown me by the late Sir John Evans, to whom it belonged. It is of decidedly rougher and more careless workmanship, somewhat smaller (diameter, 1*15 inches), and reading : (in Fig. 73.—English memento mori medalet. outer circle) AS • SOONE • AS ■ WEE • TO • BEE BEGVNN : (and in inner circle) WE • DID • BEGIN ■ TO-BE • VNDONN. This variety is figured in the Catalogue of the Fonrobert Collection, by Adolph Weyl.464 I think these pieces may have been produced to be distributed at funerals. The obverse design and the legend on the reverse were evidently derived from an illustration (see Fig. 74) in G. Wither's Emblems ; 465 the legend in question is 46i p p Weber, Numismatic Chronicle, London, 1892, Third Series, vol. xii. p. 253. 462 Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 385, No. 3. 463 J. Atkins, The Coins and Tokens of the Possessions and Colcmies of the British Empire, London, 1889, p. 250. 464 Berlin, 1878, p. 336, No. 3728. 465 G. Wither's Emblems, London, 1635, folio, p. 45. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 537 an English rendering (which accompanies Wither's illustration) of the well-known Latin hexameter line : " Nascentes morimur finisque ab origine pendet" (Manilius, Astronomicon, iv. 16). Wither may have derived the idea of the child leaning on the skull from one of Giovanni Boldu's medals already referred to, or from some other Italian source, or from one of Barthel Beham's engravings representing a child and skulls. A Florentine woodcut (already referred to in Part I. E.) by an unknown master of tbe fifteenth century, represents a naked boy leaning on a skull, with an hour-glass on the trunk of a tree at his Fig. 74.—Memento mori design from Wither's Emblems, 1635. head, and the inscription : LHORA PASSA. The woodcut in question is reproduced by G. Hirth and R. Muther, in their work on Meister Holzschnitte, Muenchen, 1893, Plate 31. An allegory of life is expressed in a similar way by various Italian statuettes, &c. Thus, in the Catalogue of the Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition of Italian Scidpturc (London, privately printed, 1912), there is the description (page 58, No. 8) of a sixteenth-century ivory statuette in the possession of Mr. F. Leverton Harris. It represents a nearly nude boy, standing; in his left hand, is a staff, which rests on a skull. In the same catalogue (p. 66, No. 32) is the description of a bronze hand-bell by Andrea Briosco, surnamed " Riccio" (early sixteenth century), in Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's possession. It bears the arms of the Doria ."38 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART ANI> EPK.RAM. [PART III. family, and the handle is formed in the shape of a nude boy seated on a skull and holding an acanthus thorn in his left hand. Cf. also Part I. E., where the Italian statuette of a boy with a skull (Fig. 28) may be referred to in this connexion. The aspect of life suggested by the illustration in Wither's Emblems (Fig. 74) is an easy one of quiet contemplation amidst shady groves and beautiful park-land, with the view of church spires in the distance (the ideal life of a college "don"4",; in the popular imagination of former generations). On a circle around the illustration is inscribed part of the line from Manilius: "FINIS AB ORIGINE PEDET"; and accompanying the illustration is printed the English equivalent— " As soone as wee to bee begunne, We did beginne to be undone." The perpetual springing up of new life to replace the old life which is decaying, is indicated on the medalets (Figs. 72 and 73) and on Wither's design (Fig. 74) by the flowers and by the serpent with its tail in its mouth, an emblem of eternity. In a similar way, Schiller (Wilhelm Tell, 1804, act iv., scene 2) makes the dying Attinghausen say :— " Das Alte stiirzt, es iindert sich die Zeit,4,;; Und neues Leben bliiht aus den Ruinen." Cf. Ecclesiastes i. 4 : " One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh : but the earth abideth for ever." Or possibly the flowers springing up from near the skull constitute an emblem of the doctrine of resurrection: The dead are to rise up and live again, just as fresh corn and flowers spring up from dry and apparently lifeless seeds. 460 Richard Porson (1759-1808), the famous professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, is said to have emblematically compared the ordinary life of a college " don " to a certain view at the " backs " of the colleges at Cambridge, namely, a long shady avenue, with a church spire at the end—the spire signifying that the " don " often ended his restful life as a parson in the country. 467 According to Matthias Borbonius (Delitiae Poetarum Germaiiorum, Frankfurt, 1612), the hexameter, " Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis," was attributed to the Emperor Lothair I, who in 855 divided up his empire between his three sons, and died as a monk in the Benedictine Abbey of Priim. The more usual saying is, " Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis." Cf. Ovid, Fast., vi. 771: " Tempora mutantur, tacitisque senescimus annis." PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 539 (V.) A French medallic jetton, dated 1651, threatens Cardinal Mazarin with beheading, &c. On the obverse, together with the fasces of the Roman lictor, is the inscription : QVOD • FVIT • HONOS • CRIMINIS • EST • VINDEX. On the reverse is a sling (the sling of David), referring to the civil war of the " fronde " (= sling), which lasted from 1648 to 1652. The reverse inscription is: SVNT • CERTA • HEC(= haec) • FATA • TIRANNIS (= tyrannis). This- medallic jetton (1-0 inch in diameter) was doubtless made for one of the French nobles of the "Fronde" party, opposed to Cardinal Mazarin (by whom many of the high nobility thought themselves humiliated). It is figured by F. P. Barnard, The Casting-Counter, Oxford, 1916, Plate xiii. No. 188. (X.) There are several medals of Pope Alexander VII, referring to the bubonic plague (1656 and following years) at Rome (L. Pfeiffer and C. Ruland, Pestilentia in Nummis, Tubingen, 1882, pp. 109, 110). One of them, signed with the initials of the medallist, Gaspare Mola, has the portrait of the Pope on the obverse in the third year of his pontificate. The reverse shows stricken persons lying on the ground, one o£ whom looks towards and raises hands towards a floating figure of St. Peter holding keys. On the right a winged form, holding a death's-head and a flaming sword, is departing. On the left, in the distance, is the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome. Underneath is the inscription : VT VMBRA ILLIVS LIBERARENTVR, Of this medal there are two- varieties (Pfeiffer and Ruland, loc. cit., Nos. 318 and 319). Another medal has the portrait of the same Pope in the third year of his pontificate on the obverse, and on the reverse the representation of an angel holding a cross and the Bible, conquering Death; inscription : POPVLVM RELIGIONE TVETVR (Pfeiffer and Ruland, loc. cit., No. 320). (I.) A mortuary piece (1670) on the death of Leopold Charles, the infant son of Ferdinand Albert, Duke of Brunswick (new Wolfenbiittel line), bears the inscription : HOMO UT FLOS ORIETUR MORIETUR, (Cf. Job 540 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. xiv. 2 : " He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down : he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.") (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 3652.) (II., XV.) A mortuary piece of Charles Gustave X, King of Sweden (1660), has the inscription: iETERN AM (coronam) SIBI RESERVAVIT. (Madai, Vollst, Thaler-Cabinet, No 2639.) (II.) A "Sterbethaler" (1660) of Elisabeth Charlotte, widow of the Elector George William of Brandenburg (1619- 1640), mother of the "Great Elector'' Frederick William (1640-1688), and sister of the unfortunate Frederick V, Count Palatine of the Rhine (the " Winter King " of Bohemia), has the inscription: NON FVIT MORTALE QVOD OPTABAT DEFVNCTA. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 595.) (IL, XV.) Mortuary medal on the death of Cornelia Willems Ruigh (1662). Obv.—On a large ornamental tablet is an inscription, signifying that Cornelia Willems Ruigh was born on the 20th December, 1637, and died on the 9th April, 1662. The tablet is supported by a little winged Cupid-like genius standing, one on each side, one holding a torch upwards, the other holding a torch downwards. Behind, a skeleton is standing facing, holding torch and scythe, Rev.—A human skull, crowned with a laurel wreath, with crossed bones below it and a winged hour-glass above it; behind it are two crossed scythes. On a ribbon above is a Dutch inscription, signifying : " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord and rest from their work." In a compartment below the skull and crossed bones is another Dutch inscrip- tion, signifying: " To me to live is Christ and to die is gain " (St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians i. 21). Below the compartment the deceased lady is represented lying. On either side of the compartment is a little Cupid-like genius, one of them holding a torch downwards, the other blowing bubbles—the " bubbles of life" (cf. Part II. xvii.). Oval, 2-5 by 2-25 inches. The medal is hollow, and made of two silver plates, cast and chased, fastened together back to back, after the manner of the medals by Peter van Abeele. It is not described in Van Loon's work. Coin-sale at Sotheby's, London, December 7th, 1915, lot 34. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 541 (II.) An Italian piece, dated 1663, mentioned by Madai (Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 4608), of a Count of Gazoldo, bears the type of a phoenix, with the inscription : HINC VITA PERENNIS. (II.) A "Sterbethaler" (1664) of Eleonora Dorothea, widow of William IV, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, bears the inscription: " Christus ist mein Leben, Sterben ist mein Gewinn" (St. Paul's Epist. to the Philippians i. 21). (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1496.) (VIII.) A "Sterbethaler" and smaller pieces (1666) of Augustus, Duke of Brunswick (New Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel line), has on the reverse a leafless tree with a human skull at its foot and various chronogrammatic inscriptions, including : Sic transit gloria mundi. This was the Duke of Brunswick who in 1643 had the famous series of " Glockenthaler " (coins with a bell on the reverse) struck, and whose motto, Alles mit Bedacht, appears so frequently on his coins. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, Nos. 1153 and 3629.) On one type of his Thaler, besides his motto, Alles mit Bedacht, there occurs, in addition, Jacta est alea, as Julius Caesar is said to have cried out when, after mature deliberation, he crossed the Rubicon. It is like Ulrich von Hutten's favourite German motto, Ich habs gewagt. (IL, XIV.) A mortuary medal on the death (1670) of William VII, Landgraf of Hesse, has on the reverse: VIXIT DIV QVIA BENE VIXIT. The medal is signed : i g.b. (Johann Georg Biittner ?). (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1261.) (II.) A "Sterbethaler" (1670) on the death of Aemilia, widow of Ludwdg Giinther, Count of Schwarzburg, has on the reverse a Christian device, with the inscriptions : IESVS — HOC DVCE — SVB CRVCE — NON SINE LVCE. (Madai, Vollst, Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1899.) (I.) Halfpenny token of John Brearcliffe or Briercliffe, of Halifax (circa 1670). Obv.—Inscription in five lines : John Brearcliffe in Halifax his halfe Penny. 542 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IIL Rev.—A skull and crossed bones, with the inscription : RESPICE . FINEM, on a label above the skull. (Fig. 75.) Diameter, 0-8 inch ; struck in copper or bronze. John Brearcliffe was a surgeon and antiquary of Halifax, where he died in 1682, at the age of sixty-three years. The device on the reverse of this token is one of the commonest and simplest memento mori devices of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shakespeare refers to a similar device, when, in the Second Part of Henry IV (act ii., scene 4), he makes Falstaff say, " Do not speak like a death's head; do not bid me remember mine end." Fig. 75.—Halfpenny token of John Brearcliffe, of Halifax. In G. C. Williamson's edition of W. Boyne's Trade Tokens issued in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1889-1891) many English seventeenth- century trade tokens bearing the device of a human skull or of three human skulls are described, besides the above-mentioned one of John Brearcliffe (ibid., p. 1317, No. 104). The device in question seems to be sometimes an apothecary's sign or the sign of an inn. Following is a short list of such tokens :— (1) " John Hill of Newbury." (Berkshire.) A skull. Ibid., p. 29, No. 58. (2) " Lancelot Cox of Beaminster." (Dorsetshire.) A skull pierced by an arrow. Ibid., p. 170, No. 5. (3) " Edward Coddington in Chancery Lane, 1667." (London.) A skull. Ibid., p. 553, No. 496. (4) "R. D. M. at the Deathes Head in Distaf Lane, 1652." (London.) A skull. Ibid., p. 582, No. 832. (5) "Elenor Fleemin in Finsbury Yard." (London.) A skull. Ibid., p. 598, No. 1037. (6) "I. H. W. at ye Deathes Head in Southwarke, (16)57." A skull. Ibid., p. 1010, No. 103. (7) "E. D. M. in Saruim [Sarum], 1651." (Wiltshire.) A skull. On the reverse: a heart, with tbe words, "If thou believest." Ibid., p. 1245, No. 202. (8) On the obverse is a skull, with the words, "Thomas Wilson of" PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 543 and the date, 1668. On the reverse is a shield with three crowns ; the inscription (continuation of the obverse legend) is "Easingwood, his half peny." (Easingwold in Yorkshire.) Ibid., p. 1315, No. 87. (9) On the obverse, inscription in four lines : Joseph Oddie in Leeds, his half peny. On the reverse, a skull, with the inscription, '• Memento. Finis," and the date, 1668. Ibid., p. 1327, No. 204. (10) "E. M. V. at the 3 Dethes Hedes in Waping." (Wapping, London.) Ibid., p. 787, No. 3347. (11) " William Hopkinson. His peny. At ye Swan in Bradford." (Yorkshire.) Arms, consisting of three skulls with crossbones. Ibid., p. 1311, No. 41. On the subject of Death and Death's-heads as signs of inns, &c, compare J. D. Blavignac, Histoire des enseigncs d'hotelleries, d'auberges et de cabarets, Geneva, 1878, Chapter li. (" La Mort"), pp. 336-343. (XIII.) Mortuary medal on the death of George Hojer (1670). Obv.—Skull, lamp, and corn. On a ribbon above is the inscription : Obiit Amstelodami 26 Aprillis CTOIOCLXX. Below: Mors omnibus aequa. Rev.—Inscription in six lines: P M CI** Doctss Viri Georgii Hojer Commissarii Regis Daniae VITA EST MEDITATIO (" To the pious memory of the most illustrious and learned man, George Hojer, Commissary of the King of Denmark. —Life is Meditation "). Oval, 2-1 by l-85 inches. Illustrated in Danske Mynter og Medailler i den Kongelige Samling, Copenhagen, 1791 (Coins and Medals of Christian V), PI. 62, No. 3. The corn with the skull and lamp on the obverse of this medal evidently has the same signification as that associated with the death's-head and hour-glass on a Danish medal of 1634, already described and illustrated (see Fig. 63). The dead man is to rise up and live again, just as fresh corn springs up from dry and apparently lifeless seeds. (II.) A mortuary piece (1671) on the death of Sibylla Ursula, the first wife of Christian, Duke of Hollstein- Gliicksburg, represents on the reverse the deceased duchess accompanied by angels above the clouds; below lies a skeleton, with a cross, a scourge, and thorns; inscription : QVI VICERIT SIC VESTIETVR VESTIMENTIS ALBIS. (See Revelation iii. 5, " He that overcometh, the 544 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART ML same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life.") (Madai, Vollst. Thaler- Cabinet, No. 1292.) (V., XI.) Murder of the brothers Jan and Cornelius De AVitt, at the Hague, 1672. There are seven medals commemorating the murder of the De Witts. All of these are figured and described in G. van Loon's work, Histoire metallique des Pays-Bas, French edition, 1732, vol. 3, pp. 81-85. The largest of these medals (diameter, 2*75 inches), signed by a medallist, " Aury,: or " Avry" (signature: avry f.), bears on the obverse the portraits of the two De Witts facing each other; the reverse design represents their murder by the populace in the guise of a many-headed monster. There is a fine specimen of this medal struck in gold in the British Museum Collection. On the reverse of one of the other medals, the dead bodies of the two brothers are shown fastened to a post. On comparing the above-described medal signed avby f., with a medal of the French Jesuit statesman, Michel Le Tellier, dated 1679, and signed avby f., I agree with Miss Agnes Baldwin that both of them are the work of the same medallist, who was probably a French- man, or resided in France, not in the Netherlands. (II.) A silver mortuary medal (1672) on the death of Heinrich Ernst, Count of Stolberg-Wernigerode, has on the obverse a death's-head with the following inscription: Hoc Ergastvlo Confracto Svblimis ViVo, which means, " Now that this prison is broken up, I live on high." The larger letters (H.E.C.S.VV.) of this inscription stand for Henricus Ernestus Comes Stolberg-Wernigerode. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1920.) (I., II.) Mortuary medal on the death of Anne Eldred (1678). Obv.—Armorial shield. Legend : ANNE ■ THE • WIFE ■ OF • 10 : ELDRED • ESQ. DIED • MAR • THE • 31 • 1678 • AGED • 72. Rev.—A veiled female figure seated, facing, holding a skull, and resting her head upon her hand supported by a pedestal, PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 545 on which stands an urn. Legend: A WISE WOMAN BVILDETH HER HOVSE. Diameter, 2-0 inches; a hollow medal, cast and chased in silver, in high relief, of rather coarse workmanship. Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 571; Lady Evans, Numismatic Chronicle, Fourth Series, 1908 vol viii' p. 178. The Anne Eldred commemorated on this medal was the wife of John Eldred (who died November 16, 1682), of Olivers, in Essex, and was the daughter and co-heir of Thomas Godman, of Leatherhead, Surrey. For further details, see Lady Evans, " Memorial Medal of Anne Eldred," Numismatic Chronicle, 1908, loc. cit. (I.) Josias Nicolson. Mortuary medal on his death (1683-84). Obv.—Bust of Nicolson, three-quarters, to left, with the legend : IN REMEMBRANCE OF IOSIAS NICOLSON. The legend is divided by four death's-heads. Rev.—Death leaning on a spade, with the legend (incuse) • MEMENTO MORI. Diameter, 2-15 inches; made of two plates of silver, cast and chased, in high relief and of somewhat rude workmanship. In the collection of the late Sir John Evans. Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 597. In regard to what is known about this Josias Nicolson and his family, see Lady Evans's article in the Numismatic Chronicle (Fourth Series, 1901, vol. ix. p. 241), where the medal is well illustrated. (X.) Recovery of the town of Erfurt (1683) from the pestilence. Obv.— The Archangel Michael, standing on a skeleton, sheathes his flaming sword ; to the left is a tablet, surmounted by a death's-head, with the inscription: A • 1683 • SUMMA MORTUORUM ■ 9437. The surrounding inscription is a "Leonine" pentameter line: MORS JUGULANS CEDIT, VITA SALUSQ(ue) REDIT. Below is the signature, D (? D. S. Dockler, of Nurnberg). Rev.—View of the town of Erfurt, with the sun shining above it. The inscription is the pentameter line: HOC REDEUNTE 2 N 546 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. PERIT CONTAGIOSA LUES (" This—the sun—return- ing, the contagious pestilence disappears "). In exergue : ERPHORDIA A PESTE LIBERA(ta) • ANNO 16S3 EXEUNTE. Diameter, 1*9 inches; struck in bronze. Described by L. Pfeiffer and C. Ruland, Pestilentia in Nummis, Tubingen, 1882, p. 112, No. 330. These authors likewise describe a variety without a death's-head over the tablet on the obverse, and with German instead of Latin inscription on the tablet. (X.) Recovery of the town of Magdeburg (1683) from the pestilence. Obv.—The town, with the sun shining; above, the arms and, on a band, the inscription: TANDEM LVX ALMA REVERTIT. Below is the signature, C. P. (Christoph Pflug, Mint-master at Magdeburg). Rev.—In a landscape are two female figures standing; on the right, Death with his scythe rides away; above is the eye of God, and, on a band, tbe inscription: VITA ADSTAT MORSQUE RECEDIT. In exergue: MAGDB • A ■ PESTE LIBERATUM MENS • FEBR • 1683. Diameter, 1-8 inches ; struck. Described by L. Pfeiffer and C. Ruland, Pestilentia in Nummis, Tubingen, 1882, p. 112, No. 332. There exists likewise a variety of this medal dated 1682 instead of 1683. (I., VIII.) A "Sterbethaler" (1684) on the death of Duke Julius Sigismund, of the Miinsterberg-Oels line, has on the reverse a leafless tree with a young shoot, and a chrono- grammatic inscription: " Exusta est arbor, sic exit gloria mundi," &c. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1582.) (I.) Two medals of the Swedish court physician, Urban Hjarne (1641-1724), with his portrait on the obverse, have the following curious reverse design : A human skull, without the lower jaw-bone, rests on the ground, encircled by laurel, irradiated by the sun, and bathed by rain from an armorial shield (of the Tott family) among the clouds. From the right orbit comes a serpent or worm. Around the skull is the inscription: gott vnd tott. One medal is dated 1682, and the other 1702; they are both signed by the medallist, PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 547 A. Karlsteen. The play on the word TOTT (= Death) alluded to the family of Tott, patrons of Hjarne. (See C. A. Rudolphi, Numismnta Virorum dc Bebus Medicis, dc.,Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 196.) (I.) Memorial medal on the death of King Charles II of England (1G85). Obv.—Time seated to right, on a tomb, with one foot on a skull, holding in one hand a scythe and hour-glass, and extending a laurel wreath in the other. Legend : TO ■ THE • COLD • TOMB • ALL • HEADS ■ MVST ■ COME. Bey.—Inscription : KING • CHARLES • THE • SECOND • AETAT- 55 • OBIIT • FEBRV • 6 • ANNO • DOM • 1684. (The date is according to the old style.) Diameter, 1-55 inches; struck in silver and copper. Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 601. There are two varieties, differing from each other only in the arrangement of the legend on the obverse. The legend on the obverse of these medals is taken from James Shirley's The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses (1659):— " Your heads must come To the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust." In Tate and Brady's metrical version of the Psalms (1696) the following similar lines occur (Psalm 112): — " The sweet remembrance of tbe just Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust." Cf. George Herbert (1593-1633) :— " Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like seasoned timber, never gives; But though the whole world turns to coal, Then chiefly lives." A specimen of the second variety of these memorial medals, which is in the British Museum Collection, has had the reverse inscription erased, and another inscription en- graved in its place, commemorating the death, in 1702, of Bartholomew Gidley, of Gidley, in Devon. Specimens, thus altered, were probably distributed at the funeral of Bartholomew Gidley. 2 N 2 548 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. (VIII.) Memorial medal on the death of Kin»- Charles 11 of England (1685). Obv.—Bust of Charles II to right. Legend : CAROLUS II D. G. Ac. Rev.—Sea, with setting sun. Legend : OMNIA ORTA OCCIDUNT. In exergue, MDCLXXXV. Diameter, 1-95 inches; struck in silver or (as in a specimen which belonged to me) in white metal. Medal lie Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 601. The reverse legend, referring to the dissolution of all created things, is derived from Sallust, Jugurtha, 2, and may be compared with Ecclesiastes i. 4, 5 : " One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. . . . The sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." (V.) Execution of Monmouth and Argyle (1685). Obv.—Bust of King James II of England, with his titles, &c. Rev.—k pedestal inscribed: AMBITIO MALESUADA RUIT; on the pedestal, Justice, trampling on a serpent, weighs three crowns against tbe sword, the torch, and the serpent of discord. At her feet lie the bodies of Monmouth and Argyle; their heads are on blocks inscribed: IACOBUS DE MONTMOUT — ARCHIBALD D'ARGYL. Above, the sun. On one side, lightning darting against troops at Sedgemoor. On the other side, two heads fixed over the gates of the Tower of London. Diameter, 2-4 inches ; struck in silver and white metal. Medallic Illustrations, London, 1885, vol. i. p. 615, No. 27. This medal is by R. Arondeaux, a Flemish medallist, of the end of the seventeenth century. There are other medals commemorating the defeat and execution of Monmouth. One of them (Medallic Illustrations, loc. cit., No. 26) presents the rebellion in a different light. It bears the portrait of Monmouth on the obverse, and, on the reverse, his head spouting blood, with the legend: HTJNC SANGUINEM LIBO DEO LIBERATORI. (XI.) Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV, 1685.—Persecution and Martyrdom of Huguenots. A medal commemorating the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes bears on the obverse a figure of the Pope seated on PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 549 the beast with seven heads, holding the keys in his left hand and wielding a thunderbolt with his right hand. On the reverse is a scene representing the execution and persecution of Protestants in France, with the inscription: EX MARTYR!IS PALMAE. Diameter, 2-25 inches; struck in silver. This and two other medals on the same subject are described and figured by G. van Loon, in his Histoire metallique des Pays-Bas (French edition), 1732, vol. 3, p. 312, Xos. 1-3. Three medals of Louis XIV commemorate the same event from the Roman Catholic point of view, bearing such inscriptions as EXTINCTA HAERESIS and KELIGIO VICTRIX. They are described and figured in Mcdaillcs de Louis le Grand, Paris, 1702, pp. 209-211. Another (undated) medal commemorating religious persecu- tion under Louis XIV, was struck at Rome about 1673. On the reverse is a warrior attacking Heresy, with the inscrip- tion, QVIS CONTRA NOS. It is signed by Giovanni Hamerani. (II.) Seventeenth - century ornamental memorial plate (1688). Lady Evans has kindly shown me a small engraved and enamelled plate, the design on which is oval, measuring 1*75 by 2*0 inches. On a shield-shaped compartment the following inscription is engraved : " James Son of Benj Warren and Mary Denew ob : 22l1 March 16S; aged 5 years. Dreamed IS hours before he dyed that he had Wings and Flew to HEAUEN." Above the inscription are two cupids supporting a crown. With this, in regard to naivete, the Latin epitaph (1676) on a boy named Thomas Welsted, in the cloisters of the Chantry Chapel at Winchester College, may be compared (Inscriptiones Wiccamicae, Oxford, 1885, p. 61). He was killed at the age of 18 years by a blow from a ball, and the inscription adds : " In this school be was first, and is not, we hope, the last in Heaven, whither he went instead of to Oxford (University)." An American visitor was beard to say that " it must have come a good deal cheaper." (IL, VI.) Memorial on the death of Marshal Schomberi; at the Battle of the Boyne (1690). 550 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. Obv.— Bust of Marshal Schomberg, three-quarters, to right. Legend: FRIDERICUS MARESCHALUS SCHOM- BERG, &c. Artist's signature on truncation, P. H. M. (Philipp Heinrich Miiller). Rev.—Schomberg, in Roman dress, resting on a shield ornamented with the Christian monogram, plants, like another Hercules, his club, which takes root and flourishes as an olive-tree; &c. Diameter, 1*95 inches; struck in silver, &c, or (as u draughtsman) in wood. For a more complete description of the reverse of this medal, see Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. i. p. 717, No. 139. The edge bears the inscription: PRO RELIGIOSE ET LIBERTATE MORI, VIVERE EST, with the initials of Friederich Kleinert, who is said to have been the first medallist in Germany to strike medals with an inscription on their edges. (V.) Execution of Grand val (1692). There are several medals commemorating the execution of Barthelemi de Lignieres, Chevalier de Grandval, on account of his share in the plot to assassinate William III of England. He was hung, drawn and quartered, and on three of the medals gallows and poles bearing his head and quarters are represented. (Medallic Illustrations, 188"), vol. ii. pp. 70-78, Nos. 287-290.) (I.) A gold mortuary medal (1693) of Ida Blok, of Amster- dam, has the device of a skull and crossed bones, surmounted by a winged hour-glass. (Communicated by Dr. H. R. Storer; figured in the catalogue of the Miiller sale at Amsterdam, 18th March, 1907, No. 66.) (I.) Dr. H. R. Storer has told me of what I suppose is a seventeenth-century jetton of some kind, bearing on the obverse the design of cupid seated on a lion, with the inscrip- tion : AMOR VINCIT OMNIA. The reverse represents a man and a woman upon an enclosed platform, with the inscription: MANVS MANVM LA VAT ; below are a skull and crossed bones and the medallist's signature, I. H. (I., VIII.) A memorial medal on the death (1697) of Charles XI, King of Sweden, has on the reverse the inscrip- tion : HVC TENDIMVS OMNES. Cf. Ovid, Ccnsol PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 551 ad Liviam Augustam, v. 359 : "Tendimus hue omnes ; metam properamus ad unam." (Madai, Vollst. Thaler - Cabinet, No. 2643.) (II., III.) A mortuary medal (1701) on the death of August, Graf von der Lippe zu Bracke, " General-Feld- marschall" of Hesse-Cassel, is remarkable for the number of mottoes which it bears. On the obverse, above the count's head, three figures of Fame trumpet forth the following messages: (1) Vivit post funera virtus ; (2) Haec me post fata mambunt (the middle figure who trumpets this is placing a crown of laurel on the count's head) ; (3) Major post exequias. On the reverse is the cross of the Deutscher Orden, with a crown above it and the inscription : Vicerunt crucem coelestia gaudia tandem; over the crown : Promissa fideli. On the four sides are two roses, a star, and a swallow, heraldic bearings from the count's arms ; with the first rose (1) is the inscription: Nunc cinis, ante rosa ; with the star (2) is: Per aspera ad astra ; with the swallow (3) is : Alibi hyemandum; with the second rose (4) is : Forma perit, virus remanet. The signature of the medallist, Gabriel Le Clerc, occurs on the obverse: g.l.c. (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1748.) (II.) A medal commemorating the death (1717) of Anna Sophia, widow of John George IV, Elector of Saxony (1691- 1694), states that the deceased, quae illustris vixit, illustris nunc vivit, and that her son, the Elector Frederick Augustus I, King of Poland, had the " eternal memorial" made. The reverse shows a ship entering a port, with the inscription : DEO DVCE PORTVM INVENIT. (In regard to the saying, Inveni portum, dc, see Part I. A.) The medal is signed i.g.s. (for Iohann Georg Schomburg). (Madai, Vollst. Thaler- Cabinet, No. 560.) (IIL, XIV.) A Thalerdike medal (1717) of William Ernest, called " The Righteous," Duke of Saxe-Weimar, has on the reverse the inscription: NON OMNIS MORIAR (Horace, Od., iii. 30. 6), referring to a "pious foundation" of his. The medal is signed c.w. (for Christian Wermuth, 552 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. the well-known medallist). (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet. No. 1500.) (I., IX.) There are various medalets (about 1661-169">; of the Guild of Surgeons at Middelburg, which bear memento mori devices. One of them has on the obverse a skeleton with hour-glass and dart and the inscription : VIVE MEM( )1{ LETHI. See H. R. Storer, Amer. Journ. Num., July, 1901, p. 17, Nos. 1636-1639. (I., IX.) Various entrance tickets to the Medical Garden of Amsterdam bear memento mori devices, such as a skeleton with scythe, hour-glass, and tomb. I suppose they beiran to be used in the second half of the seventeenth century. See H. R. Storer, Amer. Journ. Num., July, 1901, p. 19, Nos. 1651- 1664. (X.) The series of St. Benedict amulets (" Benedicts- Pfennige ") were employed by believers as preservative charms against deadly epidemic diseases, &c. The earliest pieces are doubtless of the seventeenth century, but the type has been more or less preserved to modern times on medalets sold to- credulous pilgrims at various popular shrines of Southern Germany and Switzerland. The characteristic type is as follows : The obverse represents St. Benedict with the inscription, CRVX S. P. BENEDICT. The reverse has the device of a cross with the letters, CSSMLNDMD, and in the angles, CSPB ; the surrounding inscription is, IHS'V'R^S' N-S-M-V-S-MQ-L-I-V-B. These mystical letters stand for " Crux sacra sit mihi lux non draco (sit) mihi dux. Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti.----Iesus.----Vade retro, Satanas. nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas, ipse venenum bibas." See L. Pfeiffer and C. Ruland, Pestilentia' in Nummis, Tubingen, 1882, pp. 106-108. These authors likewise describe many other medalet-like amulets, or " Pest- Pfennige," against plague, cholera and other deadly epidemic diseases. Of course St. Sebastian and St. Rochus figure on some of the plague-medalets. Thus, an oval one, with loop for suspension, struck at Munich (1637 ?), has on the obverse PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. o5S .Moses and the brazen serpent before the town of Munich ;: three dead bodies are lying on the ground. On the reverse is the so-called "shield" of St. Benedict (that is to say, the reverse type of a St. Benedict amulet) between the figures of St. Sebastian and St. Rochus, wjth the inscription: S. SEBASTIANE . O(ra) . P(ro) . N(obis)—S. ROCHE . <>(ra) . P(ro) . N(obis) (Pfeiffer and Ruland, op. cit., p. 105, No. 298.) Another (ibid., p. 106, No. 301) has a cabalistic sign and legend on the obverse, with the surrounding inscrip- tion: SIGN VM-ROCHI- CONTRA -PESTE M -PATRON VS (sic); on the reverse is St. George riding to the right, with the inscription : ORA • PRO • NOBIS • S. GEORGIVS. (V., X.) The following are typical examples of the class of medals, &c, on which deadly epidemics of plague and other infectious diseases are referred to as punishments or retributive calamities, visitations or manifestations of the divine wrath on account of the wickedness of the people. They were made at Hamburg, 1709-1714:— Obv.—Patient lying in bed, with priest, physician, and surgeon at his bedside. Inscription: DIE STRAFF WIR WOHL VERDIENET HAN, SOLCHS MUS BEKENNEN JEDERMAN. NIEMAND DARE SICH AUSSCH- LIESSEN. Bey—An angel digging a grave. DRUM LEGE DOCH DIE SUNDE AB. SONST GRAB ICH EILENT DIR EIN GRAB. The following is struck on a four-cornered flan :— Obv.—Dead and dying lying on the ground; the towers of the town in the distance ; above, over clouds, an angel holding sword. Inscription: SO IHR EUCH NICHT BESSERT, WER- DET IHR ALLE ALSO UMBKOMEN. In the exergue is the Latin inscription : " Periculum ex aliis capito." Rev.— Inscription : ACH ! GOTT ! BESSERE ZEIT UND LEUTE 1711. In the exergue is tbe Latin inscription: " Dabit Deus bis quoq(ue) finem." Another four-cornered medal has the same obverse, bub on the reverse has the inscription: DOCH WERD'T IHR EUCH VON SUNDEN KEHREN, SO WIRD AUCH GOTT DER PLAGE WEHREN, 1713. 554 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. The following medal, signed by the Hamburg medallist, David Gerhard von Hachten (engraver at the Hamburg M int, 1704-1726), was made in 1714, the year after the preceding medal:— Obv.—Christ standing amongst dead and dying persons ; the town in the background. Inscription: IESUS DER EINIGE, &c. In the exergue: anno mdccxiv, and the medallist's signa- ture, " V. Hachten." Bei;.—Long inscription: HAMBURG, SIEHE ZU, DU BIST GESUND WORDEN, SUNDIGE FORT NICHT MEHR, and so on, from St. John v. 14; and elsewhere. On the edge of the medal: DER HERR HAT GROSSES AN UNS GETHAN, DES SINT WIR FROLICH, PSAL. OXXVI. The above medals are all described by O. C. Gaedechens, in his book, Hamburgische Miinzen und Medaillvn, Hamburg, 1850, and by L. Pfeiffer and C. Ruland, Pestilentia in Nummis, Tubingen, 1882, pp. 115-117. Pfeiffer and Ruland (op. cit., pp. 117, 118), also quote a four-cornered piece relating to Prague, 1713, very similar to the second of the two above-mentioned four-cornered pieces. Another medal, which they describe (op. cit., p. 11s), relating to the termination of the same epidemic at Prague, shows on the reverse the sword held by the avenging angel being grasped by a hand from the clouds; the inscription is: SVFFICIT, NVNC CONTINE MANVM TVAM; in exergue: n. reg. xxiv. v. 16. This reference is to the Second Book of Samuel (here called the Second Book of the Kings), xxiv. 16 :—" And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people, It is enough: stay now thine hand." A medal struck at Leipzig in 1680 (Pfeiffer and Ruland, op. cit., p. Ill, No. 327), commemorating the deliverance of the town from the bubonic plague, suggests the same idea of epidemic diseases being manifestations of divine wrath. The reverse inscription is: WIR SAHEN GOTTES RVTH V(nd) SIND AVCH SELBST VERSEHRT, DOCH WARD DVRCH REV V(nd) BVS, DER PLAGE BALD GEWEHRT. Similarly, a medal on the termination of the PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 555 pestilence at Erfurt in 1683 (already referred to) represents the Archangel Michael sheathing his sword. (IX.) A medal of Antonio Pacchioni (1665-1726), the Italian anatomist, has on the obverse his portrait at the age of 54 years, and on the reverse an allegorical design relating to the study of macroscopical and microscopical anatomy. A boy is being conducted by a winged genius to Apollo, who shows him a dead body ; at the feet of Apollo a child is seated, holding a microscope; in the distance is a temple. The in- scription is: NON • INGLORIVS • IBIS • (C. A. Rudolphi, Numismata de Hebus Medicis, dr., Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 24). This medal is illustrated by P. Capparoni (Bivista di atari a critiea delle scienze mediche e naturali, 1914, Anno iv.), who says that it was produced in 1719 by the Hamerani medallists at Rome, after models made at Niirnburg in Germany. (I.) A curious medal by the Swiss medallist, Hans Jakob Gessner, of Zurich, commemorates the death (1725) of the Fig. 76.—Swiss medal, 1725. wife of Hans Georg Steiner, of Zurich, who was daughter and co-heiress of Heinrich Rahn of Winterthur. On the obverse are the arms of the Rahn and Steiner families, with the inscription: RARA CONCORDIA. On the reverse, Death with a scythe is mowing in a field of grass and flowers ; inscription: FLOS DEFLUIT ET REFLUIT. In the exergue is the date, mdccxxv : the artist's signature is h.i.g. 556 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. Diameter: 1*55 inches; struck; silver. A specimen was sold in the Stroehlin Collection, 1911. (See Fig. 76.) The thirteenth card of old packs of " Tarot" cards has a skeleton reaping with a scythe, somewhat as on the reverse of this medal. In regard to the type of the reverse of this medal, cf. Psalm ciii. 15 : "As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourishes"; and Job xiv. 2: "He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down." Compare also the following stanza of a hymn quoted by Charlotte Bronte, in her novel Shirley (published in 1849):— " Like flowery fields the nations stand, Fresh in the morning light; The flowers beneath the mower's hand Lie withering ere 'tis night." (I., II.) An engraved German (Niedersachsisch) so-called " Bauernthaler," dated 1728, has on the reverse the following inscription: " Hin geht die Zeit—her Kommt der Todt—O Mensch thu Pecht—und fiirchte Gott." (Information from Mr. L. Forrer.) (II.) A "Sterbethaler" (1737) commemorating the death of Frederick Eberhardt, Count of Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, has on the reverse the device of a phoenix in flames with the motto: EX CINERIBVS ORIOR, that is to say, " I rise out of the ashes." (Madai, Vollst. Thaler-Cabinet, No. 1725.) With this may be compared other Hohenlohe pieces with the device of a phoenix and the motto: EX FLAMMIS ORIOR, that is to say, " I rise out of the flames." (Madai. op. cit, Nos. 1720, 1723, 5307.) (I., II.) A mortuary medal (1738) of Geldolphus van Overbeke, of Amsterdam, has the following obverse design: At the left, a tree in foliage and flowering plants beneath a radiant sun. At the right, a recumbent skeleton beneath a withered tree. On the reverse there is a corpse upon a couch supported by skeletons ; above the corpse are floating angels with trumpets. (Communicated by Dr. H. R. Storer ; figured in the catalogue of the Miiller sale at Amsterdam, 18th March, 1907, No. 383.) PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 557 (II., XIX.) An engraved mortuary medal (1738) of Johanna Elisabeth van de Werre has the obverse design of a monument surmounted by cherub-heads and supported by skeletons holding scythes. (Communicated by Dr. H. R. Storer ; figures in the catalogue of the Miiller sale at Amsterdam, 18th March, 1907, No. 384.) (III.) A medal of the Italian historian, L. A. Muratori (1672-1750), the work (1806) of the medallist, Tommaso Mercandetti, <>f Rome, has for the reverse design a figure representing History warding off a winged figure holding hour-glass and scythe, representing the destructive power of Time. (Anthony Durand, Medailles et Jetons des Numismafes, Geneve, 1865, PI. ix. Fig. 5.) (IX.) Memorial of the death of William Cheselden, the surgeon (1752). The Cheselden prize-medal of St. Thomas's Hospital, London, for practical surgery and surgical anatomy. Fig. 77.—Reverse of the Cheselden medal. Obv.—Bust of William Cheselden (1688-1752), the well-known surgeon, to right. Legend: CHESELDEN. Below, W. WYON SC. MINT. Eev.—Tbe body of a man laid out for dissection. In the back- ground, on a table decorated with the arms of St. Thomas's Hospital, are a skull, book, and vases; above is a human 558 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART III. leg which has been dissected. Legend: MORS VIVIS SALVS. In the exergue: st. Thomas's hospital.— w. wyon s. mint.. (See Fig. 77.) Diameter, 2-85 inches; struck. Medallic Illustrations, 1885, vol. ii. p. 668. This beautiful prize-medal, one of the finest works of William AVyon, R.A. (1795-1851), was founded by tbe late George Vaughan. (IX.) A medal of J. B. Morgagni (1682-1771), with his portrait on the obverse, has on the reverse a figure of Minerva handing a knife (for post-mortem examinations) to a winged genius, holding the serpent-staff of Aesculapius; in the background, on a couch, is a dead body, the thorax of which has been opened ; inscription: SALVTI SCI E NTT A. This medal is signed by the medallist, T. Mercandetti, of Rome, and dated 1S08. (C. A. Rudolphi, Numismata dc Rebus Medicis, dc, Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 30, No. 2.) (II.) Dr. Malcolm Storer (Boston, U.S.A.) has kindly told me of the following medalet in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. It is engraved on an oval plate of silver (0*9 X 1*13 inches), and Dr. Storer regards it as an American college society medal. In the field of the obverse is the legend : A.K.—FEB. XXIII—1767. Around it is the motto: ^ITH • KAI • Eni-gTHMH (''Silence and Knowledge "). On the reverse is a human skeleton, standing, facing, with the inscription: MORS VINCIT MORTEM (" Death conquers death "). Death conquers deatb in a kind of way, because Mcrrtc carent animae (Ovid, Metamorph., xv. 158), and because, "Death once dead, there's no more dying then " (Shakespeare, Sonnet, No. 146); but there is likewise, of course, the specially Christian idea, Mors Christi, mens mortis mihi. (IX.) The medal of the Company of Surgeons (London), by Thomas Pingo, 1767. The obverse of this medal bears the arms of the Company of Surgeons (now the Royal College of Surgeons of England). and the reverse represents the story of Galen contemplating the skeleton of a robber. (See Fig. 78, for which I am PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 559 indebted to Mr. L. Forrer and Messrs. Spink and Son.) The skeleton lies on the ground, on the right, in rustic mountainous scenery : Galen, in antique dress, on the left, stands facing the skeleton, in an attitude of contemplation. The story, as given by Galen himself, is as follows : " I saw the body of a robber lying on a mountain, remote from any public road. He had been killed by a traveller whom he had attacked, and the inhabitants of the vicinity, conceiving so wicked a man proper prey for the vultures, refused him sepulture, and two days afterwards his bones were stripped of their flesh, and dry, like those prepared for students." In Fu... 78.—Medal of the Company of Surgeons, London, 1767. those days it was very difficult to get the opportunity of studying from actual skeletons—even at medical schools skeletons were rare, and it may be called to mind that Apuleius (the author of the Metamorphoseon, or Golden Ass romance), who, like Galen, was born about 130 a.d., was accused amongst other things of possessing a skeleton—for pneposes of magic. There was, therefore, some danger in possessing a skeleton. On the reverse of this medal Pingo has evidentlv, as Mr. T. E. James observed to me, to a large extent copied tbe design of the frontispiece, representing the same subject, of William Cheselden's Osteographia (published in London, 1733). 560 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. Cheselden's Ostcographia is remarkable for the artistic quality of the plates. Truly in some of his illustrations the dry bones express life, as the bones do in Jan von Calcar's woodcuts illustrating the great anatomical work of Vesalius, De'Humani Corporis Fabrica (printed by J. Oporinus, at Basel, 1543), notably Calcar's famous figure of a human skeleton leaning on an altar (op. cit, Basel edition of 1543, p. 164, reproduced in this book, Fig. 144). Some of the illustrations in Cheselden's work were admittedly suggested by woodcuts in Yesalius's great book. In the " curio-room " of the Museum of the Koyal College of Surgeons, London, is an excellent sepia brush drawing (of about the Cheselden period ?)•, representing a human skeleton in a life-like attitude, kneeling and praying. In the background is a cart, the wheels of which have become stuck in the clay, referring evidently to Aesop's popular fable of Hercules and tbe Carter. This drawing is signed with the name, " Swantzfager," but is not dated. I mention it here on account of its artistic workmanship and its probable con- nexion with .the skeleton in the attitude of a man kneeling and praying, on Plate xxxvi. of Cheselden's Ostcographia, The reverse of tbe present "honorary medal" of the Royal College of Surgeons of England is the same as that of Pingo's medal. Sir Henry Morris kindly tells me that, under the Company of Surgeons, from 1768 it was the custom to award a medal to the Company's Professor of Anatomy each year. Mr. Joseph Else, who, I understand, was the second of the Company's Professors of Anatomy, was the first one to receive the medal; it was presented to him in 1768, that is to say, the year after Pingo engraved the dies, according to the date (1767) on the obverse die. The idea of making such a medal was started before the Company of Surgeons separated from the Company of Barber Surgeons (the separation occurred in 1745). At all events, on 15th August, 1734, according to the records, it was ordered that a silver medal was to be made witb a proper device on each side, to be presented at the end of the year to the Demonstrators, as an acknow- ledgment of their trouble in performing sucb demonstrations. On 17th September, 1734, it was further decided "that for the encourage- ment of such Demonstrator or Demonstrators as shall duly and zealously discharge the trust reposed in them ... a medal shall be given yearly with a fine stamp in relievo of the most excellent picture of this Company by Hans Holbein, of King Henry the 8th giving the Charter to the Company on one side. On the reverse the fine Anatomical Theatre of the Company built by Inigo Jones, with a body dissected on the Table, and a proper inscription expressing the intention and motive of establishing the same." No medals of this type were, bowever, ever made. (Cf. Memorials of the Craft of Surgery in England, by J. F. South and D'Arcy Power, London, 1886, p. 245.) (IX.) Because of its reverse design, the following medal of William Hunter (1718-1783), the physician and anatomist, PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 561 may be described here. It is the work (1774) of Edward Burch, R.A., who was well known as a gem-engraver, and, as mentioned further on, was indebted to William Hunter for opportunities of acquiring anatomical knowledge. Obv.—Bust of William Hunter to left. Inscription: GVL . HVNTER . ANATOMICVS. Signed in smaller letters: BURCH • FEC Rev.—A large two-handled vase on which is the representation in bas-relief of an anatomical demonstration. Inscription: OLIM MEMINISSE IVVABIT ("Once it will be a pleasure to remember," Virgil, Aeneid, i. 203). Diameter, 3"2 inches; cast in bronze. Figured by Anthony Durand, Medailles et Jetons des Numismates, Geneve, 1865, Plate vi. Fig. 4. A variety has the date, 1774, on the reverse. I have seen yet another variety, without either date or artist's signature, but with the following inscription on the rim : S< GEORGES SCHOOL OF MEDICINE SESSION 1856-57 ANATOMICAL PRIZE, AWARDED TO MR HERZEON.468 From any cast medal (in fairly high relief) altered copies can easily be made later on, either to serve as prize medals, &c, or even for purposes of fraud (to deceive collectors). The design on the vase on the reverse doubtless refers to William Hunter's lectures, dissections, and anatomical demonstrations at his house at Great Windmill Street in London, or to his Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (Latin edition, J. Baskervdle, Birmingham, 1774). In this connexion it may be noted that the artist, Edward Burch, II.A., who, according to the Royal Academy Records,469 died in 1814, expressed himself as much indebted to his patron, Or. William Hunter, for opportunities of acquiring anatomical knowledge.470 M" There is no record of this at St. George's Hospital Medical School, London. The Anatomy Prizemen of that session had other names. 469 Burch was, I believe, librarian to the Royal Academy. 470 See p. xiii. of the introduction to a Catalogue of One Hundred Proofs from Gems engraved in England, by E. Burch, R.A., Engraver to His Majestv for Medals and Gems, London, 1795, quarto. 2 o 562 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PAKT III. (IX.) The Bristowe prize-medal of St. Thomas's Hospital, London, may be mentioned for convenience here. On the obverse is the profile head to left of Dr. John Syer Bristowe (1827—1895), a well-known physician of the hospital. The reverse represents the interior of a pathological laboratory, with a young man seated to right, examining a human heart (see Fig. 79.) The medal is awarded annually in silver for pathology. Fig. 79.—Reverse of the Bristowe medal. (XIV.) A medal of J. H. Pozzi (1697-1752), poet and physician of Bologna, is inscribed on the reverse with the Hippocratic aphorism, VITA BREVIS ARS LONGA. (C. A. Rudolphi, Numismata Virorum de Rebus Medicis, dc, Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 28.) The following medals and medalets, bearing the same Hippocratic aphorism, are placed here for convenience, though somewhat out of their chronological order. (XIV.) A medal of Dr. C. G. B. Daubeny (1795-1867), Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, has the legend, AR8 LOGNA VITA BREVIS, on the reverse. (H. R. Storer, Amer. Journ. Num., July, 1893, p. 12, No. 630.) i-^RT III.] COINS. MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 563 (XIV.) A medal commemorating the foundation of the Medical Association of AVarsaw, 1809, bears the Hippocratic aphorism, O BIOS BPAXY2 H AE TEXNH MAKPH, and the names of Dr. A. F. von Wolff and the other founders. (C. A. Rudolphi, Numismata Virorum de Rebus Mcdicis, dc. Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 193.) Dr. H. R. Storer has kindly furnished me with descriptions nf medals on which this famous aphorism of Hippocrates occurs. Besides the medals of Pozzi and Daubeny and of the Warsaw Medical Association, already mentioned, it occurs in Latin on medalets of various Paris medical societies, including the Societe Medicale (founded 1796), the Societe Medico- Phil anthropique (1806), and the Societe Medico-Pratique (1808). (AT.) Threat of death to Admiral John Byng, after the loss ut' Minorca in 1756. Obv.—Half-length figure of General Blakeney, facing, holding the British flag; on one side is a ship, on the other a fort firing cannon. Inscription : BRAVE • BLAKNEY ■ RE- WARD-(in exergue:) BUT • TO • B • GIVE ■ A • CORD. Rev.—Half-lengtb figure of Admiral Byng, three-quarters, to left, receiving from a hand a purse; behind him, a ship. In- scription : WAS MINORCA SOLD BY • B • (and in the exergue) FOR • FRENCH GOLD. Diameter, 1*4 inches; struck in brass or bronze. Medallic Illustrations, London, 1885, vol. ii. p. 679, No. 394. There is likewise a slightly smaller variety of this medal with a relatively larger figure of Byng (Medallic Illustra- tions, loc. cit, No. 395). The island of Minorca was surrendered to the Due de Richelieu, on June 27, 1756. This medal is one of the toy- shop or popular kind, like those struck to commemorate the taking of Porto Bello by Admiral A7ernon in 1739 ; and it was doubtless one of the numerous means of exciting popular in- dignation against Admiral Byng. On his return he was tried by court-martial, condemned, and shot in Portsmouth Harbour on the quarter-deck of the Monarque, 14th March, 1757. Voltaire alluded to this execution in his Candide, published in 2 0 2 561: ASPECTS OF DEATH IN AKT AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. 1759 : "Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tucr de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres." iU (II.) A medal of the philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), of Berlin, has on the reverse a skull, on which is a butterfly, and the inscription : PHAEDON. It refers to his work, Phaedon, oder iiber die Unsterblichkcit der Scele (in imitation of the Phaedon of Plato), published at Berlin in 1767. (X.) The following medal (1777), commemorating the prohibition of burials within the walls of Breslau, is described by L. Pfeiffer and C. Ruland, in their book Pestilentia in Nummis (Tubingen, 1882, p. 172, No. 478). Obv.—A church in a broad inclosure. Inscription: CONSERVA NOS DOMINE IN PACE. Rev.—Long Latin inscription, commemorating the event in question. Diameter, 2'0 inches ; struck in silver. (X.) A Belgian new year's jetton for 1785 commemorates the edict of the 26th June, 1784, whereby burials were pro- hibited in cities and towns or inside cathedrals, churches, chapels, and other closed buildings throughout Belgium. Obv.—Busts facing each other of Marie Christine and Albert of Saxe-Teschen. Inscription : MAR. CHRIST. AVST., &c. Rev.—Inscription in five lines : MORTVI VRBIBVS ELIMINATI MORE VETERI MDCCLXXXIV. Octabedral in shape; struck; 1*45 inches in longest cross-measurement. Revue Beige de Numismatique, Brux- elles, 1888, vol. 44, p. 73, Plate ii. Fig. 1. Dr. H. R. Storer kindly drew my attention to this piece. (I.) Death of Louis Joseph Xavier Francois, Dauphin of France (1789). On the obverse Death, with his scythe, approaches a bed on which the child-dauphin is lying, whilst a female figure (France) endeavours to hold him back. (Tiesor de Numismatique-Medailles de la Revolution Francaise, Paris, 1836, Plate ii. No. 8.) 471 Cf. the comments on it by Havelock Ellis, Impressions and Com- ments, London, 1914, p. 146. PAIiT IIL] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 56o (V.) Satirical tokens threatening Thomas Paine (1793- 1797). There are many halfpenny and farthing tokens of the end nf the eighteenth century, representing on the obverse a man hanging from a gallows, with the inscription : END OF PAIN. On one variety of this type a demon is seated on the gallows, smoking a pipe. Amongst the reverse-types of this series are the following 472 :— (a) An open book inscribed: THE WRONGS OF MAN • JANY 21 1793. (6) Inscription: MAY THE KNAVE OF JACOBIN CLUBS NEVER GET A TRICK. (c) A man and a monkey, each standing on one leg, with the inscription: WE DANCE . PAIN SWINGS. (d) A number of combustibles, intermixed with labels, issuing from a globe inscribed FRATERNITY. The labels are inscribed: REGICIDE, ROBBERY, FALSITY, REQUISITION, FRENCH REFORMS 1797. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) published his Rights of Man in London, 1790-1792, and, after migrating to France in 1792, was given the title of French citizen and elected a member of the Convention. His Age of Reason was published in 1793, and made him still more unpopular in England. A satirical print by the caricaturist, James Gillray, entitled "Tom Paine's Nightly Pest," shows Paine sleeping on a bed of straw, seeing in his dreams judges, scaffold and pillory awaiting him ; Fox and Priestly as winged cherubs are acting as guardian angels. The satirical halfpenny and farthing tokens of the " END OF PAIN" type probably helped to prejudice the people against him. Such political tokens doubtless served the purpose of cheap political newspapers, just as some of the " toy-shop medals" (such as those of Admiral Vernon) did during an earlier portion of the same century. (V.) The political executions in France during the great French Revolution are satirized on an anti-revolutionary medal (1795) by the London medal- and gem-engraver, *"■■ Cf. James Atkins, The Tradesmen's Tokens of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1892, pp. 133, 373, 374, 382, 383. 566 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [PART IIL W. Whitley. The reverse shows a decapitated man, sur- rounded by a circle of bleeding heads and the inscription: A PHILOSOPHICAL CURE FOR ALL EVILS- LICENTIOUS LIBERTY IS DESTRUCTION, etc. (IX.) Two medals of Benjamin Franklin, dated respectively 1784 and 1786 (of the latter one I had a very fine specimen in my collection), should be mentioned in this book, because they refer to his life-saving discovery of lightning-conductors, just as much as to the part he played in the American War of Independence. Both medals are signed as the work of the artistically and technically gifted Augustin Dupre, of Paris, the foremost medallist of the great French Revolution. On the obverse (the same obverse die was used for both medals) is a clothed bust of Franklin in profile to left, a lifelike expressive portrait of the great and upright and philanthropic sage. On the reverse both have as inscription the famous Latin hexameter epigram: ERIPUIT CCELO FULMEN SCEPTRUMQUE TYRANNIS (" He snatched tbe thunder- bolt from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants"), but the reverse of the medal of 1786 has the inscription as the main type (within a wreath of oak), whereas on that of 1784 the inscription accompanies the following device: a winged genius stands facing, and with his right arm points to a circular temple on a hill at the left, protected by a rod (lightning-conductor) from a flash of lightning darting from a cloud; with his left arm he points to a crown and sceptre, both broken, on the ground before him. The Latin epigram on these medals473 was first applied to Franklin by the French statesman Turgot (1727-1781), to whom it was probably suggested by a hexameter line of Manilius (Astr<>- nomicon, i. 104), relating to the influence of the teaching of Epicurus against superstitious fears: " Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque tonandi." With reference to a French translation of Turgot's epigram, Franklin wrote: " Notwith- standing my experiments on electricity, the lightning continues 473 Cf. C. W. Betts, American Colonial Histwy illustrated by Con- temporary Medals, New York, 1894, p. 302. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 567 to fall before our noses and our beards, and as regards the tyrant there were more than a million of us engaged in tearing the sceptre from his hands." (XVIII., XIX.) Dr. H. R. Storer has kindly drawn my attention to a rare Masonic medal used at the memorial procession at Boston, in 1800, coincident with the funeral of George Washington, the first President of the United States of America (who died on 14th December, 1799):— Obv.—Bust of Washington within wreath. Inscription: HE IS IN GLORY, THE WORLD IN TEARS. Rev.—Skull and crossed bones, with account of Washington's life. Struck in silver; perforated for suspension. (II.) A memorial medal of Aloisio Galvani (1737-1798), by Mercandetti (1803), bears on the reverse the inscription : MORS MIHI VITA, (and in the exergue) SPIRITUS INTUS ALIT (Virgil, Aen., vi. 726). (C. A. Rudolphi, Numismata Virorum de Rebus Medic is, dc, Duisburg's edition of 1862, p. 33.) (IX.) Medals of F. J. Gall (1758-1828), the founder of the so-called "phrenological doctrine." A medal by Friedrich Loos, of Berlin, dated 1805, with Gall's portrait on the obverse, has on the reverse a partially veiled human skull on a cube, in the front of which are a torch and the Aesculapian staff crossed ; the inscription on the reverse is : DER SEELE WERKSTATT ZU ERSPAEHN FAND ER DEN WEG. Another medal by Abramson, of Berlin, also dated 1805, has a similar portrait on the obverse; on the reverse a human skull, mapped out phrenologically, is represented, with the in- scription : DISTRIBUIT PARTES ANIMAE SEDESQUE. I have likewise seen wooden snuff-boxes with representations, in low relief on the lid, of three human skulls mapped out phrenologically according to Gall. On the under-surface of these boxes is an explanatory tabular key of the phrenological areas. (X.) A French medal of Gall, by J. J. Barre, dated 1820, has his portrait on the obverse. The reverse represents 568 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. a sick person upon a bed, from whom Aesculapius, hold- ing his staff in his left hand, drives away with his right hand an owl and a bat, and with his foot crushes a toad ; behind him is a skull upon a pedestal; the inscription is : AESCULAPIO SALVATORI. One of Thomas Rowlandsons caricatures represents Gall lecturing on phrenology; and doubtless many satirical designs exist on the same subject. (IX., X., and XI.) The Fothergillian medal of the Royal Humane Society (London), 1810. Obv.—A raft with a man and two boys. In the distance a hastening boat. Artist's signature, w. wyon b.a. p,ev.—A nude child, to right, endeavours to rekindle a torch with his breath. Legend : LATEAT SCINTILLVLA FOHSAN. In exergue: EX MUNERE ANTONII FOTHERGILL, M.D. MDCCCX. Artist's signature: w. wyon b.a. Eiameter, 2-8 inches ; struck in bronze or gold. This medal has been awarded in gold on about four occasions since it was founded, for the best treatise on methods of saving life. The British Museum now possesses the specimen struck in gold awarded to the late Sir John Erichsen, the surgeon, in 1845, for his Experimental Enquiry into the Pathology and Treatment of Asphyxia. Amongst others who received the medal struck in gold was H. R. Silvester, whose " method of restoring persons apparently drowned" was adopted by the Royal Humane Society in 1861. The beautiful reverse design4U occurs likewise on the ordinary medals awarded by the Society for gallantry in saving life. Into the general subject of medals awarded for or commemorating gallantry in life-saving in England and other countries, I shall not enter here. It constitutes a large subject in itself- (II., XVII.) A mortuary medal (1827) of Adrian van Bijnkershoek van Hoogstraten (1774-1827), a numismatist 174 I do not know the origin of the motto, Lateat scintillula forsan, nor whether the associated design was suggested by some Greek or Roman gem or sculpture. Epigrams in the Greek Anthology seem to show that in ancient times there existed one or more famous works of art representing a cupid or a child endeavouring to rekindle a torch by blowing on it. FART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 569 of Amsterdam, has the following obverse design: A com- partment with long inscription, inclosed by bones and surmounted by an infant blowing soap-bubbles (emblematic of life and the vanity of earthly ambitions); the compartment is supported by skeletons (emblematic of death), one with scythe and the other with inverted torch. The reverse design is meant to suggest life after death. The dead man, upon a couch supported by cherubs, is irradiated from a Hebrew word in the clouds above. Two floating cherubs are holding a ribbon, on which is the inscription : "Ziet de Dood is een Ingang ten Leven," equivalent to : " Death is entry into life." (Communicated by Dr. H. R. Storer; Anthony Durand, Medailles et Jetons des Numismatcs, dc, Geneve, 1865, p. 21, Plate ii. Fig. 4.) The medal was engraved in silver (oval, 2-9 by 2-6 inches) by the dead man's friend, Hendrik Westhoff, Junior, of Amsterdam, whose name appears below the large compartment on the obverse. (IX.) A medal of the anatomist and anthropologist, J. F. Blumenbach (1752-1840), made at Berlin by Heinrich Gube, under the direction of Gottfried Loos (1825), has his portrait on the obverse, and on the reverse three human skulls of ethnological interest (European between Mongolian and Aethiopian skulls). (XIX.) A medal on the death (1832) of the Duke of Reichstadt, titular Emperor of the French as Napoleon II, has on the reverse his epitaph at Vienna : PHTHISIS TENTAVIT, TRISTISSIMA MORS RAPVIT, &c. It is the work of the French medallist, Valentin Maurice Borrel, 1840. (X.) Epidemic of cholera in Paris (1832). A French medal, by E. Rogat (1832), has on the obverse a figure of Aesculapius feeling the pulse of a sick woman with his left hand, and warding off a figure of death with his fight hand. Diameter, 3"3 inches. Figured in Pestilentia in Nnmmis, by L. Pfeiffer and C. Ruland, Tubingen, 1882, No. 450. 570 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (X.) Some curious amulets or " charms" against the cholera at Munich (1836) are described by L. Pfeitter and C. Ruland, Pestilentia in Nummis, Tubingen, 1882, p. 162. Many analogous coin-like or medalet-like amulets of various periods, against diseases, 4. The medal is struck and is L3 inch in diameter. (VII.) Medal of Samuel Plimsoll, "the Sailors' Friend" (1875). Obv.—His bead to left, wearing spectacles; neck and shoulders clothed. Inscription : S. PLIMSOLL. HOUSE OF COMMONS 22 JULY 1875 LONDON. Signed on the truncation, a. chevalier. Rev.—Ship at sea, sinking. On a sail is pictured a death's-head with crossed bones. In exergue are the words, COFFIN SHIP. Diameter, 1-4 inches; struck in bronze or brass, with loop for suspension. These medalets refer to the "death-traps" termed "coffin ships," which Mr. Plimsoll greatly helped in abolishing. These or similar smaller medalets were made by A. Chevalier, an engraver (of Paris), and were worn by those present at a fete given in 1875, when Mr. Plimsoll was elected Member of Parliament for Liverpool. (X.) Commemorative medal of the International Medical Congress held in London (1881). This medal has on the obverse the crowned head of Queen Victoria to left, and on the reverse an allegorical design by Sir John Tenniel (executed by Leonard C. Wyon, son of W. Wyon, R.A.), representing Aesculapius standing in front of a globe ; before him a mother, holding her sick child, and two sufferers, seek his aid; behind him a figure of death is represented floating in the air. Diameter, 2 8 inches ; struck in bronze, &c. From the artistic point of viewT, this medal is unfortunately not pleasing. (X., XI.) A medal by Madame Marcelle Renee Lancelot - Croce, commemorating the visit of Humbert I, King of Italy, to Naples, during the cholera epidemic of 1884, bears his exclamation in reply to warnings not to venture to Naples: " A Napoli si muora: vado a Napoli," that is, " At Naples PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 573 they are dying: I go to Naples." The medal was struck in 1888. (Communication from Dr. H. R. Storer.) (I., X.) There are, according to Bergs0e,475 certain "pest- tokens" (1889), bearing on the obverse a skull and crossed bones, with or without tbe inscription: MEMENTO MORI, and on the reverse the inscription : DEN ER DIG VIS (" It—death—is certain for you"). I do not know what the use of these tokens (tickets ?) really was, or whether they have any right to be termed " pest-tokens." (X.) Badges worn by medical students at Paris, about the end of the nineteenth century. Dr. C. A. E. Wickersheimer, of Paris, kindly informs me that, about 1897, many of the medical students at Paris carried, at the left upper buttonhole «if the coat, a peculiar little badge, consisting of a black and red (sometimes entirely red or entirely black) rosette with a minute death's-head (in silver-plated metal) in the centre. About the same period (and later) some medical students at Paris carried a minute skull (and crossed tibiae) sewn on to their velvet student's caps. About the same period students of the other faculties at Paris often carried rosettes, but of course without the death's-head. The emblem of the law students was the scales of justice, that of the students of the commercial schools was a caduceus, and so on. (X.) Epidemic of cholera in Hamburg, 1892. The honorary medal of the Communal Council of Ham- burg, conferred for services rendered during this epidemic, is by August Vogel, a contemporary sculptor and medallist residing at Berlin. The obverse bears the arms of Hamburg, with the inscription : DAS DANKBARE HAMBURG 1892. The reverse represents Hercules attacking the Lernean Hydra, and has the inscription: DEN HELFERN IN DEN NOT, together with the artist's signature, and what I take to be the initials of the designer, "J. v. L." (Diameter, 2-75 inches.) 4:3 Cf. Vilhelm Bergs^e, Danske Medailler og Jetons, Copenhagen, 1893, p. 141, Nos. 989, 990. 574 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART III. (IX.) A medal (1892) of Karl Vogt, the great Gorman naturalist, Professor at the University of Geneva, by the Swiss medallist, Hugues Bovy, has a skull as part of the device on the reverse. (III.) A cast commemorative bronze plaquette (4 5 x 3-25 inches) of Philippe de Girard, by the modern French artist, Louis Eugene Mouchon (1892), bears an allegorical representation of Posthumous Fame. A specimen of this plaquette is exhibited in the Luxembourg Museum at Paris. Philippe de Girard, the inventor of the flax-spinning machine, was born in 1775, at the village of Lourmarin, in the department of Vaucluse. He died in 1845. During his life he never received due recognition for his varied talents, his restless work, and his useful inventions; it was not till 1882 that a bronze statue (by Guillaume) was erected to him at Avignon. (IX., X.) A medal of Sir George Buchanan (1831-1895), M.D., F.R.S., the hygienist, has his portrait on the obverse. On the reverse two female figures are standing, of whom one wards off Death, winged and holding a scythe, from a prostrate . person; inscription: IN SALUTEM PUBLICAM AUDA- CIA ET INDUSTRIA. By Buchanan's endowment in 1894, this medal was to be awarded in gold triennially by the Royal Society, for distinguished services in sanitary science. (X. and XI.) Medal awarded for help in sanitary and medical work during the epidemic of bubonic plague at Hong- Kong (1894). Obv.—Sick Chinaman on a bed, partly supported by a European man, who with his left arm presses back a figure of death floating in the air and aiming a spear at the sick man. On the other side of the bed stands a European sick-nurse. In the field, on the "left, Chinese characters signifying Hong- Kong. On the right, a. wyon sc. In exergue the date, 1894. Bei;.—PRESENTED BY THE HONG KONG COMMUNITY, (and in the centre) FOR SERVICES RENDERED DURING THE PLAGUE OF 1894. TART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 575 Diameter, 1*4 inches; struck in silver and gold. This medal is by Allan Wyon, the obverse being from a design by Prank Bowcher. Illustrated in The War Medal Record, London, 1896, vol. i. PL i. No. 4. (V., XIX.) There is a plaque by the great modern French medallist, L. O. Roty, representing France mourning over President Carnot (assassinated 1894). (II.) A modern " Odd Fellows " medalet. Obv.—Three links of a chain, in which respectively are the three letters, F., L. and T. (standing for Friendship, Love, and Truth). Above, the radiating eye of Providence. Below, a human skull and crossed bones. Rev.—The Lord's Prayer, inscribed in very small letters. Diameter, 0-55 inch; struck in bronze. Given me by Dr. H. R. Storer. Medals and medalets with an optimistic significance like this might likewise be remembered (byway of antithesis) in regard to Part II. Heading xvii. (X., XIX.) Medals relating to the cremation of corpses. Dr. H. R. Storer has kindly drawn my attention to various modern medals on this subject. The first is a medal of Dr. Malachia de Christoforis, of Milan. A cinerary urn, &.c, are represented on the obverse, with the inscription : VERMIBUS EREPTI PURO CON- SUMIMUR IGXI, &c. The second commemorates the consecration of a crema- torium at Stuttgart, 1907. Obv.—An angel, floating upwards, conducting two souls to heaven. In the lower background, a building. In the exergue, two smoking torches. On the lower right edge of tbe shield is the artist's signature : p. muller ixv. On the lower left edge of the field is the signature of the die-sinking firm : m. & w. st. (Wilhelm Mayer and Frantz Wilhelm, of Stuttgart). .Rev.—Within depressed circular field, a three-pointed mausoleum, upon which the following verses in incuse letters in eight lines: SaGT ES NIEMAND, NVR DEN WEISEN, WEIL DIE MENGE GLEICH VERHOHNET, DAS LEBEN'GE WILL ICH PREISEN, DAS NACH 576 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [l'ART III. FLAMMEN—TOD SICH SEHNET. Circular inscrip- tion: Z. GEDACHTNISS D. EINWEIHVNG D. KRE- MATORIVMS I. STVTTGART 1907. Diameter, 2'0 inches ; struck in bronze. (Communicated by Dr. H. R. Storer.) There is likewise a quite similar smaller medal, of diameter 1*3 inches. The P. Miiller, since deceased, whose signature appears on the obverse, was a sculptor (a native of Stuttgart), who furnished the local Crematorium Union with the design from which the medals were made. The third is a medal of Burkhard Reber, of Geneva, with a covered urn on the reverse, on which is the word CREMATION. Burkhard Reber, pharmacist and archaeologist of Geneva, founded the Cremation Society of Geneva in 1887, and in 1912 that society had another medal made in his honour, by A. Jacot-Guillarmod, to commemorate his twenty-five years of activity since its foundation. His portrait, three-quarters to right, is on the obverse, and on the reverse is a dedicatory inscription, with a kind of canopic vase, y Sir Arthur Evans to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Fig. 82.—German satirical medal (1915) on the alleged abuse of the flags of neutral countries by England. (Half-size.) (V.) German satirical medal on the naval supremacy of Great Britain, 1916. Obv.—A gigantic skeleton, or Knocheumann (emblematic of death and destruction) standing in the sea, with tbe right hand crushes and sinks a warship flying the British flag (Union- Jack), and with the left hand points to the surrounding inscription: BRITANNIA RULE(S) • THE • WAVES • THOUGH ? In the field, to the right, is the artist's signature : w. th. eberbach. Itev.—Inscription: DEM • ERSTEN • SEELORD FISHER • 1916 ("To the first sea-lord Fisher, 1916"). Below the date is a bent or broken trident. PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 583 Diameter, 2-7 inches; cast in iron. By W. Eberbach. See Fig. 83, from a plaster cast of the obverse of the specimen presented by Sir Arthur Evans to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. (V.) German satirical medal on the sinking of the Dutch ship, the "Tubantia," 1916. i Obv.— Back view of a gigantic skeleton, or Knocheumann (emble- matic of death and destruction), squatting, tailor-wise, in the sea (with the upper partaf the skull above the surface), holding a mine in the left hand and 'a torpedo in the right hand. In front of the skeleton's head is a ship (the " Tubantia"), moving under steam to the right. Inscrip- Fig. 83.—German satirical medal on the naval supremacy of Great Britain, 1916. (Half-size.) tion: ENGLANDS ■ GRUSS • AN • DIE • NEUTRALE • TUBANTIA (" England's greeting to the neutral ' Tubantia ' "). The artist's signature to the right of the skeleton is : w. eberbach. Rev.—Inscription: ES • KANN • DER • BESTE • NICHT • IM ■ FRIEDEN • LEBEN • WENN ■ ES • DEM • BOSEN ■ NACHBAR ■ NICHT • GEFALLT • 1916 (" The best person cannot live in peace if bis quarrelsome neighbour does not please to let him "). Diameter, 2-7 inches ; cast in iron. By W. Eberbach. Sec Fig. 84, from a plaster cast of tbe obverse of the specimen presented by Sir Arthur Evans to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The neutral (Dutch) ship, " Tubantia," was sunk in March, 1916, and for a time the Germans said it was done by an 584 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. | PART III. English mine or torpedo. It, is to this temporary (Jcrman explanation that the whole type of the medal refers. The verses of the reverse legend on this medal are altered from the lines in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell (act iv., scene 3) :— " Es kann der Frommste nicht im Frieden bleiben, Wenn es dem bosen Nachbar nicht gefallt." Schiller's lines form a variation of an old German proverb, quoted already in 1527, by Kaspar Schatzgeyer (cf. Biichmann's Geflilgelte Wortc, 22nd edition, Berlin, 1905, p. 248). (V.) Another German satirical medal (1916), in the same macabre style, by W. Eberbach (same diameter, cast in iron), refers to Italy's part in the War and the Italian statesman Fig. 84.—German satirical medal on the sinking of the Dutch ship, the " Tubantia," 1916. (Half-size.) Baron Sidney Sonnino, who was Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1914. The obverse represents a skeleton-like figure, or Knocheumann (emblematic of death and disaster), kneeling and throttling a wolf; the accompanying legend is: FUR ' LATEINISCHE • BUNDESTREUE (" For Latin loyalty of alliance")—TRIENT \™ FRIAUL. On the reverse is the legend : AN • SIDNEY • SONNINO • DEN • REDEGE- WANDTEN (" Dedicated to Sidney Sonnino, the cunning orator "). The wolf (of Rome) is meant here to signify Italy, suffering disaster, because (from the German point of view) in 1914, under the influence of Baron Sonnino, she broke her supposed pledge in regard to the " Triple Alliance," and finally, in 1915, declared war on Austria, with the object of attacking and annexing Trento (Trient). Italy did not PART III.] COINS, MEDALS, AND TOKENS. 585 formally declare war on Germany till August 1916. Tbe Austrian attack on Friuli in 1916 is represented as the punishment and disaster in question. On another German satirical medal the Italian poet and dramatist, Gabriele D'Annunzio, is represented as Judas Iscariot. (V.) Another German satirical medal (1916), in the same macabre style, by W. Eberbach (same diameter, cast in iron), relates to the Irish rebellion (Dublin revolt), of April-May, 1916. On the obverse a skeleton-like figure of Death, smoking a short pipe and wearing the undress cap of an English hussar, is represented seated on a tomb, which is inscribed: HOME RULE. R.I.P. (= requieseat in pace). (V.) A sixth macabre medal of 1916, by W Eberbach (same diameter, cast in iron), represents the popular German idea of the punishment of England, by bombardment of her coasts, by the activities of submarine U-boats, Zeppelin air- ship raids, &c. (Cf. the at that time popular German phrase, (iott strafe England !) On the obverse a gigantic skeleton like figure, or Knocheumann (emblematic of death and destruction) is represented, with fists clenched, running through the sea towards the coast of England, near which are ships and a bomb-dropping Zeppelin. Inscription: U 22 • L19—ENG- LAND -DAS • MASS • IST • VOLL ("England ! the measure is full"—that is to say, ''The day of reckoning has come"). < )n the reverse, under the German flag, is the inscription : EXORIARE • ALIQVIS • NOSTK1S ■ EX • OSSIBVS • VLTOR, which signifies : " Some avenger shall rise up from our bones" (Virgil, Aeneid, iv. 625). The artist on this medal means apparently to invoke vengeance on England for the alleged murder of sailors of a German submarine (U 22) by the crew of the English auxiliary cruiser "Baralong" on August 19th, 1915; and also for tbe refusal of the crew of the English trawler, " King Stephen," to rescue tbe crew of the damaged Zeppelin air-ship, L19, when that air-ship was sinking in tbe North Sea, February 2nd, 1916. Tbe latter incident is also graphically depicted on a medal by K. Goetz, of Munich, the artist of the German satirical medal on the sinking of the "Lusitania" (see back). The six above-described medals by \Y. Eberbach, constitute a satirical kind of danse macabre series on the Great European War, from the point of view of the Cetman artist in 1910. 58b ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIC 1!AM. | PAKT III. (V.) A German satirical medal, dated August :>rd, li.iMl, by K. Goetz, of Munich (diameter, 2 3 inches, cast), refers to the execution of Sir Roger Casement, in London, on that date. As the obverse design, a thin ("lanky") British soldier, in Highland uniform,476 is represented with a cord strangling a prisoner whose arms are confined in irons ; below is inscribed the name, ROGER CASEMENT. On the reverse, English law is represented by a thick volume (labelled " English law, 1351 "), amidst such dismal surroundings as various instru- ments of torture, a human skull with snakes protruding from the hollow sockets of the eyes (that is to say, being " eaten by worms "), and a gigantic spider's web. Across the field is the above-mentioned date of Casement's execution. Around the design is a doggerel rhyme :— " Edward Third's dead hand Fastens the noose round Ireland." (XI.) The British memorial plaque (1918)—from a design by E.-Carter Preston, of Liverpool—for presentation to the next-of-kin of those who fell in the Great European War, bears the inscription: HE DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR. It is cast in gun-metal, and is accompanied by a scroll, the words (or final phrasing) on which is mainly the work of Montague Rhodes James, Provost of King's College, in the University of Cambridge. A sentence on the scroll is by Charles Francis Keary, the novelist and writer on history, philosophy and numismatics, who died in 1917. The successful design—namely that by E. Carter Preston, to whom the first prize was awarded—was illustrated in the Illustrated London News, for April 6th, 1918. The six designs adjudged next in order of merit were illustrated in the same periodical, for April 20th, 1918. 476 The English Army has been frequently typified in German caricatures by lean and lanky Scottish Highlanders in kilts; in other words, the kilted Highlanders have made such an impression on the Germans, that the latter (in satirical cartoons, &c.) have frequently pictured a Highlander as a type, to signify the whole army of Great Britain. PART IV. engraved gems, finger-rings, jewels, ancient pottery, and small objects of art, relating to death and to the various aspects of or attitudes towards death. 1. Antique Engraved Gems, Designs on Antique Vases, &c There seem to be no antique gems engraved with devices which could make one suppose that they had served the purpose of memorial tokens of deceased friends or relatives, analogous to the memorial finger-rings of relatively modern times, to be described later on. No "parting scenes" occur on gems, such as are found on some beautiful Greek sepulchral marbles, reminding one of the famous lines of Lucretius, commencing— "Jam jam non domus accipiet te laeta neque uxor Optima, nee dulces occur rent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent"; and of Horace's— " Linquenda tellus et domus et placens Uxor neque harum quas colis arborum Te praeter invisas cupressos Ulla brevem doininum sequetur." Parting scenes occur not only on ancient sepulchral marbles from Attica, &c, but also on some of the white Attic sepulchral lecythi, for instance, the parting of mother and child, on a fragment of such a lecythus in the British Museum. Parting scenes as allegories of death are readily understood. Maurice Maeterlinck's La Mort de Tintagiles is simply a pathetic parting scene of the kind for acting as a play. There are, however, various engraved gems of early and later Roman times which may be supposed to have 588 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EITG1IAM. [PAKT IV.-i. in a kind of way served a memento mori purpose. Thus C. W. King figures a late Roman sard intaglio (once the property of Murat),477 on which a winged Cupid-like figure (a kind of " genius of death," like that found on Roman sarcophagi478), is represented (Fig. 85) holding a torch downwards (a reversed or 'inverted" torch). Similar winged Cupid-like figures holding inverted torches appear on three Roman intagli figured by Salomon Reinach.479 In the " C. W. King" (or "Johnston") collection of engraved gems in the Metropolitan Museum Pig. 85.—A genius of death. (After King.) of Art, New York, a Roman intaglio in yellow sard bears the device of a boy extinguishing a torch and with the other hand holding a large hoop, which King, in his catalogue (No. 208), explains as an emblem of Time. In his essay on " Death, as depicted in Ancient Art," 48° 477 C. W. King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, London, second edition, 1885, PL xliii. No. 2. 478 G. Kastner (Les Danses des Morts, Paris, 1852, PL i. Fig. 4) figures sucb a relief. A winged cupid-like boy rests his inverted torch on the recumbent figure of tbe dead person. 479 Salomon Reinach, Pierres Gravies, Paris, 1895, Plate 36, No. 74, 4 and No. 74, 7, and Plate 124, No. 38. jso q -yy. King, The Gnostics and their Remains, second edition, London, 1887, p. 179. I'ART IV.-L] ENGRAVED GEMS, $CC. 589 King thus writes of this Cupid-like representation of the Genius of Death:481 • Mingling among the Cupids, whether sculptured or glyptic, and easy to be mistaken for one of the sportive group by the casual observer, comes the most popular antique embodiment of what to our notions is the most discordant of all ideas. He can only be distinguished from the God of Love by observing his pensive attitude; his action of extinguishing his torch either by striking the blazing end against the ground or by trampling it out with the foot; otherwise he leans upon it inverted, with folded wings, and arms and legs crossed in the attitude of profound repose. At other times he is divested of wings, to typify the end of all movement, and whilst he quenches his torch with one hand, he holds behind him with the other the large hoop (annus), to signify that for his victim no more shall the year (annus) roll on." In regard to the representation of a " genius " of sleep, with or with- out wings, on Roman tombs, see G. E. Lessing's famous controversial essay, Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet (Berlin, 1769). In the Liverpool Museum is a rudely carved relief of a winged Cupid-like figure on a piece of a long bone, doubtless from a small casket of about the third century a.d. This figure was supposed to represent a "genius of death," but apparently on very insufficient grounds. See the descrip- tion of this relief in the Catalogue of Fictile Ivories in the South Kensington Museum, by J. O. Westwood, London, 1876, p. 3. For illustrations of somewhat similar bone carvings, see in the Catalogue Giniral des AntiguiUs Egyptiennes du Musee de Cairo, the volume on Koptische Kunst, by Josef Strzygowski, Vienna, 1904, pp. 182 et sea. In a collection of engraved gems and rings sold at the m On a satirical print, mentioned by R. Dagley, entitled, "An Emblem of a Modern Marriage," sucb a Cupid-like figure is referred to. The print represents a young couple visiting a tomb instead of the altar of the Cupid-like god Hymen, and below are the following lines:— "No smiles for us the godhead wears, His torch inverted, and his face in tears." 590 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV. i. Hotel Drouot of Paris,482 the circular bezel of a Hellenistic antique gold finger-ring bore the device (cut in intaglio) of a winged Cupid-like genius, seated at the foot of a sepulchral column and leaning on an inverted torch. One might here allude to something which is often not recognised, namely, that perhaps, strictly speaking, the winged genius with inverted torch represented on Roman tombs, antique gems, &c, is not a "genius of death," but rather a "genius of the mourning for death." If that were so, the winged boy with the inverted torch would be more nearly related to the true god of love than has been popularly admitted, for he would represent the fond but hopeless yearning (" Pothos," irodos:) after a loved one lost by death. Isaac D'Israeli, however, wrote in the same sense as King: " Love, with a melancholy air, his legs crossed, leaning on an inverted torch,, the flame thus naturally extinguishing itself, elegantly denoted the cessation of human life." King lays great stress on the attitude of crossed legs or crossed arms in ancient art as indicating profound repose or sleep. After referring to the crossed legs of Hypnos and Thanatos on the coffer of Cypselus (see further on), he writes:483 " Thus it is manifest that from the very dawn of pictorial art the crossed, legs were the accepted emblem of the most profound repose; whilst the sluggard's wish for ' a little more folding of the hands in slumber,' bears the same testimony to the import of the crossed arms of the Eoman genius who leans on his in- verted torch. In that masterpiece of Eoman chasing, the Pompeian 'discus,' representing the Death of Cleopatra, May 8th, 1905, Illustrated Catalogue, No. 57, Plate iv. King, loc. cit, pp. 183, 184. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 591 the object of the design is indicated with equal truth and pathos by the placing of the beauteous infant genius at the knee of the dying queen, on which he rests his elbow to form a support for his head, as though dropping off into a gentle slumber. The traditional attitude re- tained its significancy well understood far down into the Middle Ages: witness so many cross-legged effigies of warriors resting from their toils—who for that sole reason popularly pass for Crusaders." King also figures a peridot intaglio of Eoman Empire Pig. 86.—Charon in bis boat, receiving the dead from Mercury. (After King.) style,484 on which Charon in his boat receives the dead from Mercury, that is to say, the Greek Hermes, in his character of " Psychopompos " (Fig. 86). With this gem the scene on a lecythus from Athens may be compared, likewise representing Charon in his boat, as ferryman of the rivers of the nether world, receiving a dead man from Hermes Psychopompos.485 A good many " Charon scenes " exist on Greek vases, &c, in various collections. IM King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, London, second edition, 1885, PL Iii. No. 6. "" It is figured in Die Graeber der Hcllenen, by O. M. Baron von Stackelberg, Berlin, 1837, PL xivii. 592 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. |PAI!T IV.—i. It might be mentioned here that the winged figure of Saturn, holding a crooked pruning-knife, as it occurs on some Eoman engraved gems, bears a resemblance, but merely a superficial one, to modern figures of Time holding a scythe. A so-called " gryllus" of human faces combined with a death's-head might also be mentioned here, but tbe significance of the device is uncertain, though Venuti and Borioni (1763), who figured it, thouglit it was meant to represent the ages of human life. This " gryllus" intaglio, or a similar one, is likewise figured by Salomon Reinach (Pierres Gravees, Paris, 1895, PL 24, No. 47, 11), and similar ones are referred to by G. Treu, in bis Latin dissertation, De Ossium Humanorum Larvar unique apud Antiqtcos Imaginibus, Berlin, 1874, pp. 24, 25. Several Eoman gems (intagli) are engraved with figures of skeletons (" larvae," or " shades "). Some at least of these designs seem to suggest the popular conception of Epicurean advice, namely, to seek pleasure, to eat, drink, and enjoy life to-day, since death may come to-morrow. Cf. Horace's ode :— " Hue vina et unguenta et nimium brevis Flores amoenae ferre jube rosae, Dum res et aetas et sororum Pila trium patiuntur atra " ; and similar passages already quoted in Part I. A., including the well- known Latin students' song:— " Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus, Post jucundam juventutem, Post mofestam senectutem, Nos habebit humus." Thus, an occasional subject (Fig. 87) is a skeleton with a large wine-jar (pointed amphora) or two skeletons with a wine-jar between them. C.W. King, in 1869,486 described the device on a gem of this kind as follows : " Skeleton, the received mode of depicting a larva, or ghost, leaning 486 q W. Tiing, Horatii Opera, illustrated from Antique Gems, 1869, p. 431. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 593 pensively against an amphora, and holding out the lecythus, oil-flask, that indispensable accompaniment of every Grecian burial. These two vessels held the wine and oil, the libations poured upon the funeral pile." But in a later work487 he describes the same subject (i.e. the device on the identical gem) as an Epicurean device: ' Larva, ghost, leaning upon a tall wine-jar, and holding forth an unguentarium: an Epicurean hint to enjoy life whilst one can." E. le Blant488 refers to an unpublished gem, evidently of the same class, in the Walter Fol collection; it represents an upright skeleton and an amphora; the skeleton holds a small vessel in one hand. Fig. 87.—The skeleton and wine-jar type. (After King.) A. Furtwangler, in his work, Die antiken Gemmen,4*9 figures several antique engraved gems having an obviously similar Epicurean significance. A chalcedony intaglio,490 apparently identical with the one which I have figured after King (Fig. 87), represents a human skeleton standing in an easy attitude, leaning with his left elbow on a large pointed amphora for wine and holding a lecythus (or **r C. W. King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, second edition, 1885, p. 226. 488 E. le Blant, MAlange d'ArcMologie et d'Histoire, published by the " Kcole Francaise de Rome," 1887, annee vii. pp. 252-257. w A. Furtwangler, Die antiken Gcmmen, Leipzig, 1900, vol. i. m A. Furtwangler, op. cit., vol. i. PL xxix. Fig. 47. 2 Q 594 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART TV.—i. perhaps it is a small wine-jug) in his right hand. A brown sard intaglio491 represents two human skeletons carrying a large wine amphora between them; one of the skeletons holds a festive garland towards the other skeleton in his disengaged hand (see big. 88). Tbe Fig. 88.— Two skeletons carrying a large amphora between them. From an antique intaglio. (After Furtwangler.) second skeleton seems to be in a tipsy attitude. Tlie design of another intaglio 492 is a human skeleton stretched out like a corpse; on the right is a thyrsus and a festive garland ; on the left is an uncertain object which may be meant to represent a kind of rattle-stick used in dancing, with a ribbon fastened to it, or a kind of flute (Fig. 89). Fig. 89.—Antique intaglio representing human skeleton with thyrsus, garland, &c. (After Furtwangler.) A carnelian intaglio493 shows a human skeleton reclining at ease by the side of a large wine-amphora, and holding 401 A. Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xxix. Fig. 49. 492 A. Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xxix. Fig. 51 (the kind of gem- stone is not stated). 403 A. Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xlvi. Fig. 26. PART IV.-i. | ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. .~)9;"i a cup (cantharus) in the left hand ; above is a festive garland ; on the left is a column with a sun-dial (solarium) on it (Fig 90). The use of a sun-dial on this gem, as a memento mori emblem, is interesting, though the significance of the memento mori message was, of course, of Horace's Carpe diem kind, and totally different to that conveyed by the sun-dial at a later period in Christian Europe. There is no evidence, I believe, that mottoes or epigrams of memento mori or other purport were ever inscribed on sun-dials or their bases in Greek and Eoman times. In connexion with the above gem-devices it is interesting to note that in Nubian (Berberine) cemeteries large wine-jars have been found Fig. 90.—Antique intaglio representing human skeleton, amphora, festive garland, and sun-dial. (After Furtwangler.) by the side of mummified human bodies or skeletons.404 According to H. B. Walters,*0i in the older tombs excavated at Gela (Terranuova), in Sicily, the disposition of the pottery was usually as follows: a kylix (drinking-cup) on the left side of tbe head of the skeleton, analabastron (for perfume-oil) under the right arm, and a lekytbos (oil-flask) under the left. Food and wine were placed in Egyptian tombs for the use of the soul of the deceased. A similar custom has existed also in other parts of the world, where a life after the deatb of the body has been believed in, the soul of the deceased being supposed to frequent the tomb for purposes of nourishment, &c. Some of tbe above-described gems constitute a kind of satire on the fact of the real bodies or skeletons lying shrivelled in their tombs beside their dried-up wine- jars, their drinking-cups, and their vases for oil and ointment. It is just possible that an idea of this kind furnished some of the designs to 404 Vide Bulletin No. 1 of the Archaeological Survey of Nubia, Cairo, 1908. ,9:' H. B. Walters, History of Ancient Pottery, London, 1905, vol. i. p. 37. 2 Q 2 596 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV. -i. the gem-engravers of late Roman times. Offerings were made by the Greeks and Romans at the tombs of the departed. Some of the "Epicurean" designs on gems, drinking-vessels, &c, may indeed have been suggested by the ancient custom of offering gifts to the Manes of the dead—food, wine, garlands, fillets (ribbons), &c. Cf. Sophocles, Antigone, 431: XoaTvi Tf/t(rir6v8oiavo<;, Kat tovto cfrOip.i'voio Trpodcmov lepov ocrrevv EyK€(fia\ov, *frv)(r}<; cftpovpiov aKporarov. " Hive, Acyei to yX.vp.pa, " /ecu eaOte Kal 7rcptK€io~o Avflta" tolovtoi yivop.e6' i$aTrtvr)S." The following English translation is very slightly altered from that given by Lord Neaves (op. cit., p. 109) :— " The poor man's armour see! this flask and bread, This wreath of dewy leaves to deck the head ; This bone, too, of a dead man's brain the shell, The soul's supreme and holy citadel. The gem proclaims : ' Drink, eat, and twine your flowers ; This dead man's state will presently be ours.'" An amethyst intaglio seen by Le Blant497 in the collection of Aug. Castellani at Rome has the simple 407 E. Le Blant, " 750 inscriptions de pierres gravees," MCmoires de I'Acade-mie des Inscriptions, Paris, 1898, vol. 36, p. 114, No. 290. 598 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PAKT IV.-i. device of a cantharus, a patera (?), and a festive garland, with the incription KTU) KPCx). Zahn suggests that here also, as in the device illustrated in Fig. 91, a symbolical loaf of bread may have been intended by the-gem-engraver rather than a patera or phiale mesomphalos. The words ktw xpco (posside, utere, hold—possess—and use) have, in connexion with the device, an obviously " Epicurean " significance : " Use and enjoy what you have whilst you possess it, and whilst you have the power to enjoy it." The same inscription occurs on another gem and on a wine-cup, which will both be described further on. In regard to bread and wine as emblems of the simple enjoyment of life, compare Omar Khayyam (Edward Fitzgerald's translation):— " Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— And Wilderness is Paradise enow." It may be remembered that the Founder of the Christian religion had no objection to the use of bread and wine (not excess) and gardens. The festive garland, which forms part of the device of most of the "skeleton-Epicurean" engraved gems of Roman times, and the roses and other flowers of which it was formed, are constantly referred to in ancient Anacreontic and so-called " Epicurean" poetry. It was customary for every guest to wear, or " be crowned with," a wreath at convivial banquets, and it is because all were expected to keep silence concerning secrets, &c, uttered on such occasions that the expression, sub rosd, came into existence, in the sense in which it is still used. The significance of the device is not quite obvious on an intaglio of sardonyx with transverse stripes,498 which represents a human skeleton carrying on his left shoulder A. Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xxix. Fig. 50. PART IV. i.J ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 599 a pole to which two vessels are attached; in his right hand he holds a burning torch (Fig. 92). P. D. Lippert in bis Dactyliothec (Dresden, 1767-1776, second supplement, pp. 164, 165, Nos. 471 and 472) describes two antique skeleton-gems" (onyx intagli), which perhaps had an "Epicurean" significance. The accuracy of the descriptions seems doubtful. Perhaps the second one represented a skeleton, with a plate of fruit in one hand and a festive garland in the other; a seat below. It seems probable that the oil-flask (kkythos™ or ungaentarium) sometimes held by the skeleton (as perhaps in Fig. 87) refers both to the sepulchral use of oil and to the anointing of the body after baths, which, like wine, were included amongst the "Epicurean" Fig. 92.—Antique intaglio representing human skeleton carrying on his left shoulder a pole to which vessels are attached. (After Furtwangler.) delights of life. The priapic appendages attached to figures of skeletons or dried-up mummy-like corpses (as mentioned further on) have a similar coarse " Epicurean " significance, namely, that the joys of sexual love are to bo seized whilst there is still opportunity, before the warmth of life gives place to the coldness of the grave. This reminds me in some respects of the rare medals of members of the " Beggars' Benison Club," which was instituted at Anstruther in the first half of the eighteenth century. In my collection there was an example of such a medal in silver gilt, 1-4 by 1-15 inches in diameter. VJ9 I have not been particular in regard to the English spelling of this word, lekythos and the latinized form, lecythus, being used indiscriminately. I may even have written lecythos in one or two places. 600 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN AUT AND EPIGRAM. | PART IV. i. The obverse showed Adam and Eve, naked, standing facing, their hands joined; Adam points to a bower; at their feet, a lion. Inscription : BE • FRUITFULL • AND • MULTIPLY. The reverse showed Venus, recumbent, beneath a canopy; at her side, Cupid; behind, Adonis with spear, and dog under a tree. Inscription: LOSE.NO.OPPORTINLTY. Rather later varieties of the Beggars' Benison Club medal exist, one apparently issued as late as 1822 or 1826. The club was ostensibly for collecting "good" songs, jokes, &c, of all kinds, " but in reality to serve as an outlet for the most outrageous fun of the roughest description.'' The club included many noblemen and eminent men of all classes. I believe that King George IV was at one time a member, before he came to the throne (see Hawkins, Franks, and Grueber, Medallic Illustrations of British History, London, 1885, vol. ii. pp. 526-528, and Henry Erskine, his Kinsfolk and Times, by Lieut.-Col. A. Fergusson, 1882, pp. 147 et seq.). Amongst somewhat similar clubs of the eighteenth century was the " Medmenbam Club," into the mysteries of which John Wilkes, tbe politician, was initiated by Sir Francis Dashwood (afterwards fifteenth Baron Le Despencer). It was a society of wits and humourists, who, under tbe assumed title of " The Monks of St. Francis," converted the ruins of Medmenham Abbey into a convivial retreat, and it was stigmatized by some contemporaries as "tbe Hell-Fire Club" (see George Lipscomb, History of the County of Buckingham, London, 1847, vol. 3, p. 615). The dancing or tipsy attitude of skeletons on some vases is probably meant to supply a similar " Epicurean " hint, namely, to drink wine and dance (i.e. " enjoy " one's self generally) whilst one can. The collective meaning of all such devices is therefore to lose no opportunity of enjoying life and its chief delights, namely, " wine, women, and song," baths, music, and dancing. Gross indulgence of this kind was, indeed, in late Roman times considered by some so-called " Epicureans " to " constitute life," though (in excess) it led to disease— " Balnea, vina, Venus, corrumpunt corpora nostra, Sed faciunt vitam, balnea, vina, Venus." If the word "Venus" might be allowed to stand for the female sex and women's work in general (including nursing), and if one believes that alcohol and bath-methods deserve any place in modern therapeutics, then the second line should nowadays run : " Nos aegros curant, balnea, vina, Venus." In regard to the first line exactly the same idea is PART IV. i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, CCC. 601 conveyed by an anonymous epigram in the Greek Anthology (Tauchnitz edition, 1829, x. 112): " Wine, baths, and love inspired by the Cyprian goddess speed men to Hades by tbe swiftest path." Other epigrams from the Greek Anthology, quoted by Iwan Bloch and J. D. Rolleston, associate public baths with prostitution, and remind one of modern London scandals connected with so-called massage and medical bath establishments. A Latin inscription in three lines, quoted by E. Le Blant,500 is: VENARI LAVARI LVDERE RIDERE OCC (for HOC) EST VIVERE ; that is to say : " To hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh— this is to live." [The omission of the aspirate from the HOC in this inscrip- tion may be merely a mistake by a careless and illiterate workman, but it reminds me by-the-bye that our modern 'Arry, in regard to his irregular introductions of aspirates, had a prototype in the person of a certain Roman, named Arrius. Thus, Catullus ridiculed the latter in the following lines :— "C/iommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet Dicere, et /unsidias Arrius insidias." " Ionios fluctus postquam illuc Arrius isset Jam non Ionios esse, sed iJionios."] Bathing is likewise included amongst the "Epicurean" joys of life in an epigram from the Greek Anthology (by Rufinus, English version by Francis Fawkes):— " Let ds, my friend, in joy refine, Bathe, crown our brows, and quaff the wine: Short is the space for human joys; What age prevents not, deatb destroys." I must here refer to several other antique objects showing an obviously " Epicurean " motive. A remarkable antique sardonyx cameo 501 (the genuineness of which, as far as I know, has not been questioned) has a human skull cut on it, and below the skull is a tripod with eatables on it. Between the tripod and the skull is the following inscription in six lines: Hive, \iyei to ART IV- "'• It is surrounded by Bacchic or "Epicurean" emblems — namely, another garland, two Pluygian flutes, a pointed wine-amphora, and a haunch of lamb or venison—and in the field, above, is the inscription: KTQJ XPOU. On each side of the skeleton is an emaciated grotesque dancer with enormous phallus. The inscription ktw %pw, signi- fying Possidc, utere, "Hold (or, possess) and use" (that is to say, " Use and enjoy what you possess, whilst you possess it, and whilst you have the power to enjoy it") occurs likewise on an engraved gem with skeleton and wine-jug device (described and figured further on), and on another engraved gem, representing a festive garland, &c. (which I have referred to in a preceding paragraph). A two-handled cup (a cantharus),507 presented by Paul Gaudin, of Smyrna, to the Louvre Museum in Paris (Fig. 95), which was doubtless inspired by metal (silver) work, has a relief of dancing skeletons, some of them holding a thyrsus in one hand. A similar cantharus from Olbia has been described and figured by Pharma- kowsky.508 A Eoman glass bowl in the Pierpont Morgan collec- tion, formerly deposited for a short time in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), is ornamented with figures of skeletons in relief. They are represented in grotesque attitudes and are furnished with priapic appendages, as if to emphasize the contrast between death and amorous pursuits. It seems to me that all these " Epicurean hints," in .-.or g_ p0ttier, " La danse des morts sur un canthare antique," Revue archeologique, Paris, 1903, 4th series, vol. i. pp. 12-16, Fig. 1. 508 Pharmakowsky, Archaolog. Anzeiger, Berlin, 1911, p. 226, Fig. 37 ; referred to by R. Zahn, loc. cit. PAKT IV.-i] ENGKAVED GEMS, &C. 607 which skeletons or dried-up (mummy-like) human figures sire introduced, constitute practically a kind of cari- cature (from the grossly sensual point of view) of the delights to be expected by the just after death in the Elysian Fields. (Compare also some paragraphs further on dealing with the representation of skeletons in later Roman and Graeco-Boman art.) In regard to the mere memento mori allusion on cups Fig. 95.—Green-glazed cantharus, with relief of dancing skeletons. In the Louvre Museum at Paris. (After Pottier.) and dishes, that is to say, in connexion with eating and drinking, Lady Evans kindly refers me to some relatively modern instances. One such is on a plate of Lambeth Delft ware (dated 1661), bearing the inscription: " You and i arc Earth." The plate is a deep one, of white glaze, of diameter 8£ inches, and without any ornament or design excepting the above-mentioned inscription and date (in blue); it is described by John Eliot Hodgkin and Edith Hodgkin, in their Examples of Early English 608 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. Pottery.509 Lady Evans likewise refers me to the descrip- tion by Sir A. H. Church510 of a large dish ; it was boldly painted with shields of arms and various emblems, and bore the rhyming legend : " Earth : I : am : et: is : most: trwe : desdan : me : not : for : soo : ar ; you : Jan : 16'j1 1660." On a scroll were the names : " Gorg : and : Ellizabeth : Stere." The dish perished at the burning of the Alexandra Palace (London) in 1873. The calvarium or upper part of a human skull has sometimes been made into a bowl or drinking-cup, not for any ordinary memento mori purpose, but to remind the drinker of the death of an enemy. It was a delight of the Scandinavian and Teutonic paradise (Valhalla) to drink mead out of the skulls of vanquished enemies thus transformed into cups. The dead heroes, feasting in the hall of Odin's palace in Valhalla, have been thus pictured, in poetical tale, as drinking out of the skulls of their enemies. Alboin, King of the Lombards (murdered in 573), was said at a carousal to have ordered his wife, the beautiful Rosamunda, to drink from the skull of her father, Cunimund, King of the Gepidae, who was slain in 566.sn Similarly, the skull of Sviatoslav (Swatoslaw) I, Slavonic Prince of Russia, slain by tbe Petchenegs about 972, was adorned with gold and made into a drinking-cup for the use of the conquering chief. According to one story the skull of Baldwin I, first Latin Emperor of Constantinople, was mounted with gold and used as a wine-cup by the Bulgarian King, Joannice, who defeated and captured him at Adrianople in 1205. So also Abbas I (" the Great"), Shah of Persia (1586-1628), is said to have bad tbe skull of a slain chief of the Usbegs made into a drinking-bowl and ornamented with gold.512 Some of the old legends of the Scottish clans (in regard to ferocity and revenge) remind one a little of these stories, which also suggest the triumph of savages in killing and eating their enemies. In regard to savage handling of the skulls of conquered enemies there is the story of the death of Marcus Licinius Crassus (surname "Dives"), the triumvir with Julius Caesar and Pompey. In B.C. 53 he was defeated in Mesopotamia by the Parthian General, Surenas, who cut off his head and sent it to the Parthian King, Orodes I. The latter, according to one account, had molten gold poured into the mouth of his dead enemy, saying: "Sate thyself now with the metal of which in life 50i' John Eliot Hodgkin and Edith Hodgkin, Examples of Early English Pottery, privately printed, London, 1891, p. 87, No. 312. 510 Sir A. H. Cburcb, English Earthenware, London, 1884, p. 37. 511 Cf. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter xlv. 512 See E. Caetani Lovatelli, Thanatos, Rome, 1888, pp. 77-78. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C 609 thou wert so greedy." Cf. the story of the buman tooth quoted by L. Frobenius, Childhood of Man, English edition, 1909, p. 476: Si Gallak was a seemingly genial man, though a cannibal chief. He had a box in the lid of which a tooth was set. This tooth, be said, came from a hated enemy, whom he had killed and eaten. He used to bang the tooth each time be shut the box, declaring that by doing so he had the pleasant feeling of giving his enemy a real blow. Many stories of the kind lose much of their gruesomeness by reason of their quaintness. Of all the fanciful conceits relating to drinking- cups made out of human skulls the quaintest is, perhaps, the inscription " on a skull picked up on the Acropolis at Athens " (Sir Edwin Arnold, The Secret of Death, &c, London, 1885, p. 217) :— " I am the skull of Nedjm, a Turk, Who fought at Athens with the Giaour; When cannon-balls were hard at work Shattering the Parthenon513—that hour A classic fragment took me fair At the last A Briton spied me, as he passed Roaming the strewed Acropolis, And lightly fashioned me to this. 513 On September 26th, 1687, during the Venetian bombardment of Athens, a bomb, fired by a Liineburg lieutenant—serving under Otto Wilhelm, Count von Konigsmark (1639-1688), who was commanding the Venetian Army for Francesco Morosini—fell into and exploded a powder-magazine of the Turks in the Parthenon, killing a great number of Turks and ruining the Parthenon. The above-mentioned Count Konigsmark is better known in England on account of the romantic history of his relatives. Visitors to Westminster Abbey will perhaps remember tbe story of his nephew, Johann Philipp, Count von Konigsmark, who served under him against the Turks in Greece. In 1682, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat (known, on account of his wealth, as "Tom of the Ten Thousand"), was assassinated in London, in Pall Mall, apparently at the instigation of Johann Philipp, who was Thynne's rival, and wished to marry the rich heiress of the Percy estates. Thynne's monument in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey bears a graphic representation of the crime. Philipp Christoph, Count von Konigsmark, the brother of Johann Philipp, disappeared mysteriously (probably he was assassinated) in 1694, at Hanover, where he was supposed to be carrying on an intrigue with Sophia Dorothea, of Celle, the wife of Prince George Lewis, afterwards King George I, of England. The sister of these two brothers, Maria Aurora, Countess von Konigs- mark (1662-1728), will always be remembered as the beautiful and accomplished mother of the famous Marshal Saxe. 2 R 610 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PART IV.-i. Drink! if thou wilt; and, drinking, say Never did ancient craftsman make Cyathus, Krater, Patera Fitter a mighty thirst to slake. But! call not me a thing of tbe clod I The Parthenon owned no such plan I Man made that temple for a God, God made these temples for a man ! " Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotaphia (1658), adduced, as one reason in favour of cremation, that ordinary burial admitted the " tragicall abomination, of being knav'd out of our graves and of having our skulls made drinking bowls and our bones turned into pipes." On a remarkable antique engraved gem (Eoman period) a skeleton is seen emerging from an urn, by the side of Fig. 96.—Allegory of posthumous fame. (After King.) which some armour is piled, and plucking a branch from a palm-tree (Fig. 96). C. W. King514 alludes to this device as "a speaking allegory of the reaping of pos- thumous fame "—cf. Martial, Epig., i. 26. 8 : " Cineri gloria sera venit." 515 It may be held to express the emptiness of posthumous fame, and to illustrate the lines of Persius (Dryden's English version): " Live while thou 5U C. W. King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, edition of 1885, p. 217. 515 The posthumous awards for bravery and military services, which have been conferred nowadays in the Great European War, can certainly not be ridiculed in Martial's sense, and have doubtless often contributed to the consolation and satisfaction of the dead man's relatives and friends. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 611 liv'st; for death will make us all a name, a nothing but au old wife's tale." See Persius, Sat. 5, lines 151 et seq.:— "Indulge genio : carpamus dulcia; nostrum est Quod vivis : cinis et manes et fabula fies. Vive memor lethi : fugit hora : &c." From the same point of view tbe French scholar and printer, Etienne Dolet (1509-1546)—who was devoted to the writings of Cicero, and after a life of many quarrels was executed as a heretic at Paris— wrote:— " Vivens vidensque gloria mea frui Volo : nihil juvat mortuum Quod vel diserte scripserit vel fecerit Animose." That is to say: "I wish to enjoy my glory whilst I am alive and can see: a dead man takes no delight in what he may have written elegantly, or done courageously, during his life." It is, however, not quite certain that any " Epicurean " suggestion was implied by the device on the gem in question (Fig. 96). On the contrary, as expressing the vanity of posthumous fame, the gem may possibly have belonged to a Eoman philosopher of the type of Marcus Aurelius, who " made it a special object of mental discipline, by continually meditating on death, and evoking, by an effort of the imagination, whole societies that had passed away, to acquire a realized sense of the vanity of posthumous fame." 516 Another gem517 represents Cupid throwing the light 516 See Lecky's History of European Morals, edition of 1905, vol. i. p. 186. Lecky points out (loc. cit., p. 185) that the desire for reputation, especially for posthumous reputation, " assumed an extraordinary pro- minence among the springs of Roman heroism." 517 C. W. King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, edition of 1885, PL lxxv. No. 3. In the first edition of the Handbook (Bohn's Illustrated Library, 1866, p. 364) King says that on this gem it is clear that the skeleton represents a ghost—Ovid's " ossea larva." Cf. Seneca:—" lar- varum nudis ossibus cohaerentium figuras." Larvae, King says, was the name given to the shades of the wicked; those of the good, on the 2 R 2 612 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. of a torch into a large vessel (crater), from which issue a skeleton and a laurel-branch (Fig. 97). This device may signify the driving out of an evil spirit (i.e. one of the Larvae) by Love, or it may have been meant to convey the " Epicurean" hint that gloomy thoughts might be expelled by the aid of the light of Love. On the other hand, the device may merely have been intended to typify life and its pleasures (Cupid) contrasted with death (the skeleton), suggesting that the pursuit of pleasure or the enjoyment of love was better than spending one's life in striving to obtain posthumous fame. With this subject Fig. 97.—Cupid and a skeleton. (After King.) may be compared the somewhat similar one of an antique intaglio formerly in the late Mr. aI. P. W. Boulton's collection. The gem I refer to represents a Cupid holding a torch and raising the lid of an urn, from which a skeleton and a butterfly emerge. The butterfly is the symbol of Psyche (the human soul), whose release by love and death from the earthly connexion with the body (symbolized by the skeleton) is perhaps intended to be contrary, became Lares, or domestic deities. But even amongst the Romans themselves confusion arose in regard to the terms " Larvae," " Lemures," "Lares," and "Manes." I shall return to the subject further on. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 613 meant by the device in question (Fig. 98). On the other hand, the piled up arms and armour show that the skeleton in the urn was that of a warrior; and perhaps an " Epicurean" hint was intended that he might have employed his life better by giving himself to love than by seeking for military fame and a hero's death. According to the latter interpretation the butterfly would merely represent Psyche accompanying Cupid, as she often does on Eoman gems. Various gem-designs of this period seem, indeed, to Fig. 98.—Cupid, skeleton, and butterfly. suggest the possibility of the survival of the soul (Psyche) after death. Certain terminal Hellenistic bearded heads (in the style of a so-called " Hermes" or " Terminus") engraved in profile with butterfly wings above the ear have often been described as portraits of Plato518 (Fig. 99). This explanation was apparently due to Winckelmann,519 who regarded the butterfly's wings as an allusion to Plato's argument for the immortality of the soul (Psyche 518 C. W. King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, edition of 1885, PL lxix. No. 3 ; A. H. Smith's Catalogue of Engraved Gems in the British Museum, 1888, PL i. No. 1512. sl» Winckelmann, quoted by A. H. Smith, loc. cit, p. 170. 614 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV. i. or "anima "). Furtwangler 520 speaks of all such heads as representing Hypnos, the Greek god or personification of sleep, who on a fine bronze head of the fourth century B.C. (from Civitella d'Arno, near Perugia), now in the British Museum, is represented beardless and youthful, with the wings of a night-hawk attached to his temples (the wing on the left side has been broken off). Hermes-like (Terminus-like) bearded winged heads of the so-called " Plato " type are figured by A. Furtwangler amongst Hellenistic and early Roman intagli (see Furtwangler, Die antiken Gemmen, Leipzig, Fig. 99.—So-called head of Plato. (After King.) 1900, vol.i. PL xxvi. Nos. 41, 42, and PL xxx. Nos. 24-26). Below the bust on one of those pictured on PI. xxx. (No. 24) is a caduceus (x-qpi/Ktiov of Hermes), thus bringing the gem in question into connexion with the Greek Hermes-busts. On an antique gem at Paris, evidently representing portraits of Socrates and Plato facing, that of Plato is without the wings. (See King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, edition of 1885, PL xlix. No. 2.) There is a marble statue of Hypnos at Madrid and a bronze statuette at Vienna. A youthful beardless figure of Sleep, with butterfly wings on his back, and with horns (containing balm ?) in bis hands, occurs also on gems, if C. W. King's interpretation is correct (Antique Gems, 1872, PL xxxvi. No. 1, and Handbook, 1885, PI. lxxvi. No. 3). On an engraved gem, figured by A. Furtwangler (loc. cit, vol. i. PL xxx. No. 53), Hypnos is represented as a bearded figure (King has described this figure as Death—cf. further on, in regard to the possible confusion of representations of Deatb with representations of Sleep) with wings on his back, coming to the relief of the tired Heracles; and on two other antique gems (Furtwangler, loc. cit, vol. i. PL xviii. No. 28, and PL xxxvi. No. 20) he is represented in the same form, but behind the 0 A. Furtwangler, loc. cit, vol. iii. pp. 209, 292. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 615 figure, not of Heracles, but of a sleepy or sleeping woman. The supposed thunderbolts on a gem of this type (King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, edition of 1885, PL lxxv. No. 4), which, according to Furtwangler, are really ants, made King describe it as representing "Jupiter descending in a shower of thunderbolts upon the dying Semele." At least one gem of this type has neither thunderbolts nor ants in the field (see F. de' Ficoroni, Gemmae Antiquae Litteratae, dc, Rome, 1757, second part, Plate viii. Fig. 6). The early and archaistic representation of Hypnos with a beard may be compared with that of Hermes in the early and archaistic bearded types, so different from tbe figures of the Roman Mercury. It is, of course, quite natural that male figures should be more frequently represented with a beard in archaic (and therefore also archaistic) than in later art. An almost certain and unmistakable allusion to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is, however, fur- nished by an early Eoman intaglio (Fig. 100) representing a bearded man (philosopher) seated, reading from a scroll; Fig. 100.—Philosopher reading f.rom a scroll, with a skull and butterfly on a scrinium before him. (After Furtwangler.) on the scrinium (or capsa) before him is a human skull (emblem of the mortality of the body), and above it a butterfly, the symbol of Psyche, the human soul, or " anima." 521 This type of engraved gem was more probably intended to represent Pythagoras than Plato. It might be fairly described as " a philosopher meditating on mortality (the skull) and immortality (the butterfly)," whereas the type of another small intaglio, described further on (a philosopher seated with a threatening skeleton standing in front of him), might be described as "a philosopher and mortality." (See Fig. 122.) The butterfly was, indeed, as Furtwangler has pointed out, employed at a still earlier period to indicate the soul, and Furtwangler figures an Etruscan scarabaeus of the 5-1 Furtwangler, loc. cit, vol. i. PL xxx. No. 45. 616 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. fifth century B.C. (to which I shall again refer), on which Hermes, in his character of ^v^ajwyo^, is represented with a butterfly on his right shoulder. For other early instances of the butterfly being used on engraved gems as a symbol of the soul, see Furtwangler, loc. cit, vol. iii. pp. 202, 203. I have not seen the following device, though mentioned by Isaac DTsraeli as being an antique allegorical representation of the trans- migration of the human soul after death : " a butterfly on the extremity of an extinguished lamp, held up by tbe messenger of the gods [i.e. Hermes or Mercury] intently gazing above." At any rate, Psyche herself is frequently accompanied or symbolized by a butterfly on Eoman gems, and a butterfly as the symbol of Psyche is often associated with a figure of Cupid. Sometimes a Cupid is represented burning a butterfly with a torch or at a flaming altar, or the butterfly is represented burning itself over a torch or flaming altar.522 On an intaglio, formerly in the late Mr. M. P. AY. Boulton's collection, Cupid is represented holding a whip, in the act of whipping a butterfly, just as on another Eoman intaglio, figured in Eeinach's Pierrcs Gravees (1895), he is maltreating Psyche herself. Vide S. Reinach, loc. cit, PL 38, No. 79, 7. Conversely, on a remark- able Roman intaglio (ibid., PL 38, No. 79, 5) Cupid is represented bound to a column, with a butterfly close by, as if the butterfly had something to do with the binding ; whilst on another gem the butterfly is replaced by Psyche, who is represented binding Cupid to a column (ibid., PI. 38, No. 79, 4). The Roman gem-engravers seem to have taken a special delight in Psyche and Cupid subjects, and tbe fanciful varieties they designed must have been almost countless. On one of the intagli figured by Reinach (loc. cit, PL 39, No. 80, 8) Venus is holding a butterfly before Cupid, who stretches out his left hand towards it, and in his right hand holds a torch. On another (ibid., PL 39, No. 81, 1) Cupid has one leg caught in a kind of " man-trap," on which there is a butterfly, and a second Cupid stands looking on. On yet another gem (ibid., PL 38, No. 80, 1) Psyche herself is burning a butterfly. The famous sardonyx cameo representing the mystic marriage of Cupid and Psyche, a 'treasure of the former Marlborough 522 Catalogue of Gems in the British Museum, 1888, Nos. 832, 833; also S. Reinach, Pierres Gravees, Paris, 1895, PL 38, No. 80, 5. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 617 Collection, would still be one of the finest works of art of the kind in existence, even if (as has been suggested) the signature TPYQN €110161 were not genuine, and it were not the work of Tryphon, a celebrated ancient gem-engraver referred to in the Greek Anthology. C. W. King is amongst those who, with H. Brunn, have doubted tbe antiquity of the whole cameo, as well as of the signature. It seems as if the butterfly on Eoman gems, though often symbolical of the immortality of the soul (freed from its chrysalis-like imprisonment in the body), yet may sometimes signify sexual love or the consuming passion of love, as if Psyche herself were consumed with love; and so indeed she was in the beautiful tale of Cupid and Psyche, as handed down to us in the Eomance (Asinus Aureus) of Apuleius. Psyche may thus have been regarded as a kind of " female Cupid," that is to say, as personifying the more receptive, female element in love, whilst Cupid personified the more active, male element; Psyche would then be the passion of love ready to be ignited, and Cupid would be the flame which sets it on fire. Undoubtedly the Roman gem-device of a torch burning a butterfly is symbolical of Cupid and Psyche, in fact, the torch signifies Cupid (who burns with his torch after wounding with his arrows) igniting the passion of love in Psyche; sometimes the butterfly (Cupid's victim) is being burned not with a torch, but, as already men- tioned, at a flaming (Hymenaeal?) altar. In the above- mentioned tale (included in the Asinus Aureus of Apuleius) Cupid's torch (as well as his bow and arrows) is referred to. An amusing Eoman conceit is that described by Georges Lafaye and others,523 representing Cupid condemned as an 523 The scene is figured in Melanges G. B. de Rossi, Paris, 1892, p. 243; and by F. Cabrol, Dictionnaire d'ArchAologie Chretienne, Paris, 1907, vol. i. col. 443. Cabrol • refers to an article entitled, "L'Amour incendiaire," by G. Lafaye, 1890. 618 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. incendiary to be given to the wild beasts. He is attached to a post in the circus, and spectators are present to watch his punishment, but out of the opened wild beasts' den, instead of savage animals, come only a couple of doves. This interesting scene bears the inscription : AMOE INCIKDIAEIVS. It is remarkable what a luxuriant fancy regarding love (especially in representations of Cupid and Psyche) has been displayed by antique art, chiefly minor works of art (statuettes, pottery, and engraved gems), but, in beauty, variety, and half-serious, half-playful, charm, all such pretty conceits fall far behind the descriptions and theories put into the mouths of Phaedrus, Pausanias (an his- Fig. 101.—Skull with butterfly above it. (After Furtwangler.) torian), Eryximachus (a physician), Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, and Alcibiades, in Plato's famous dialogue, called the Symposium. I am inclined to think that the latter of the two explanations given above of the Eoman Psyche-symbols is generally the correct one, though in some cases both explanations are possible. Thus, on a gem figured by Furtwangler,524 a skull is depicted with a butterfly above it (Fig. 101). This may be taken as an emblematical representation of mortality (the skull) and immortality (the butterfly), that is to say, of the survival of the soul (the butterfly) after death (the skull), or else as an Epicurean hint contrasting love (the butterfly) with death A. Furtwangler, loc. cit, vol. i. PL xxix. No. 48. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 619 (the skull), just as on the gems previously mentioned the wine-jar and the Cupid were contrasted with the skeleton. Amongst excellent articles on Psyche in Greek and Roman art are: that by Otto Waser, in W. H. Roscher's Ausfuhrliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Rbmischcn Mythologie, Leipzig, 1902-1909, vol. iii. part ii. columns 3201-3256; and that by G. Nicole, in Daremberg, Saglio, and Pottier's Dictionnaire des Antiquites, Paris, 1905, vol. iv. part i. pp. 743-750. In regard to ancient works of art which have been supposed to represent Psyche ivithout wings, see these two articles, and also Caetani Lovatelli, Amore e Psiche, Rome, 1889; the latter thinks that the artists may sometimes have preferred to represent Psyche, during her earthly pilgrimage, without wings. Psyche, and Psyche with Cupid, are of course also frequent subjects of Renaissance and modem art—there are the beautiful series of wall-paintings by Raphael Fig. 102.—Intaglio engraved with skeleton and various emblems. (After Caetani Lovatelli.) in the Farnese Palace (Rome), representing Psyche's story after the tale in the Asinus Aureus of Apuleius; Giulio Romanus likewise treated the subject; and there are the beautiful statues and engraved gems by excellent artists of more modern times. In regard to the whole subject of ancient ideas on the immortality of the soul from the literary point of view, see Erwin Robde, Psyche Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechcn, Tubingen, 1903, third edition. On a sardonyx intaglio, first described and illustrated by Filippo Buonarroti,525 is a human skeleton, stretched out at full length like a corpse, accompanied by the following symbols : a wine-jug, a wreath, a ball, and a butterfly (see 525 Filippo Buonarroti, Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vasi antichi di vetro ornati di figure trovati ne' cimiteri di Roma, Florence, 1716, p. 193; quoted by several writers on the subject, and in J. A. Hild's article on "Larvae," in Diet des Antiquites Grecqueset Romaines (Daremberg, Saglio, and Pottier), Paris, 1904, vol. iii. p. 952. 620 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PAUT IV.-i. Fig. 102, after Caetani Lovatelli, with permission). This device may be intended to represent the instability of human life (the ball), and to contrast temporary sensual enjoyment (the wine-jar and the wreath) with the immortality of the soul (the butterfly) after death (the skeleton), but is much more probably intended to convey the " Epicurean " advice that smce human life is uncertain and fleeting (the ball), and since after death (the skeleton) no pleasure is possible, it is better to lose no opportunity of enjoying wine and feasting (the wine-jar and wreath) and love (the butterfly). This latter explanation is decidedly favoured by the inscription which accompanies the device on the gem in question : KTU> XPto (" hold and use"—in other words, " use and enjoy what you have whilst you possess it, and whilst you have the power to enjoy it"). The same inscription occurs on an amethyst intaglio, which I have already described (see back), and on a green-glazed antique cup (Fig. 94) with the figure of a skeleton, in the Berlin Antiquarium. A somewhat similar device is that in intaglio on the bezel of a silver ring figured by Edmond le Blant.526 A skeleton is standing with the left hand on the hip, in an easy attitude, and the right arm resting on a staff, to which a small vessel is attached; on the right (the observer's right) of the skeleton is an amphora (for wine) crowned with a garland of flowers, and a butterfly above it. The inscription, POLIO, seems to have been the owner's name (see Fig. 103). The butterfly on these two gems may, however, have been really intended to symbolize tbe human soul, thus suggesting that those who like (whether enjoying the present life or not) may live in hope of an ethereal, 526 Le Blant, Melanges d'Archeologie et d'Histoire, published by the " Ecole Francaise de Rome," Rome, 1887, ann6e vii. PL vii. Fig. 4. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, CCC. 621 though problematical existence after the death of the body. The meaning of the whole device on each of the two gems would thus become that of the already-quoted late epigram (by Palladas) in the Greek Anthology: %/cnvr) 7ra9 6 /3to9 Kal Traiyvwv: rj fidde Trai^eiv rrjv o-irovBrjv fieradek rj (pepe rd<; oSiWy (" All life is a stage' and a game : either learn to play like a child, laying earnestness aside, or bear its griefs "). Furtwangler refers likewise to a gem representing a skeleton and a butterfly with a torch below the latter, Fig. 103.—Bezel of an antique silver finger-ring, representing a skeleton, with wine-amphora, butterfly, &c. (After Le Blant and J. A. Hild.) and thinks that this device is meant to signify that the soul is no more immortal than the body, that, as Lucretius in his great didaotic poem, De Rerum Naturd, endeavoured to teach, it perishes with the body. But I have already pointed out that the torch burning the butterfly on Eoman gems signifies Cupid igniting the passion of love in Psyche; so that the whole device on the gem in question would possess an " Epicurean" meaning like other devices already referred to. Furtwangler, loc. cit., vol. iii. p. 297. This gem (a carnelian intaglio) is depicted in an absurdly magnified form by R. Venuti and Borioni (Collect. Antiq. Roman, Rome, 1736, PL lxxx.). The skeleton 622 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. is apparently seated on a wine-amphora, with tbe feet resting on a wheel-like object, which may have been intended by the gem-engraver to represent a loaf of bread (cf. the description of the intaglio, Fig. 91, in the present book). The complete meaning of complicated devices on gems is often by no means certain. Thus, F. de' Ficoroni (Gemmae Antiquae Litteratae, dc, Rome, 1757, second part, PL viii. Fig. 1) has figured a sard intaglio with the following symbols on it: buman skull, butterfly, lyre, wine-jug, festive garland, and (?) pincers. Another sard intaglio (ibid., PL viii. Fig. 3) has a human skull, a pair of scales (balance), and a wheel-like object (cf. Fig. 91 in tbe present volume), possibly intended for a loaf of bread. Another intaglio (figured in A. Gorlaei dactyliothecaepars secunda cum explicationc Jacobi Gronovii, Leyden, 1695, No. 490) has a human skull, a butterfly, a wine-amphora, a wheel-like object, and an uncertain object, which Gronov apparently thought was intended for a flower. It is, however, quite likely that amongst the Eomans the idea of love (i.e. sexual love) was often blended with the idea of the human soul, whether the latter was regarded as mortal or immortal. It appears, then, natural that Psyche (or her butterfly) should be employed as a symbol both of sexual love and of the soul (see back), though the soul was doubtless regarded by some as mortal and by others as immortal. The story of Cupid and Psyche was adopted by the early Christians as typifying the purification of the human soul by the trials and sufferings of life,527 just as the myth of Orpheus charming the wild beasts was regarded as symbolical of the work of Christ. A sculp- tured stone sarcophagus (Fig. 104) in the British Museum, the front of which represents Cupid and Psyche, is, according to W. E. Lethaby, probably early Christian of the Constantinian age, though the account by A. H. Smith528 does not point to any such special interpretation 527 On the Platonic and early Christian aspects of Psyche in art, see E. Caetani Lovatelli, Amore e Psiche, Rome, 1889. Compare also the writings on Psyche already referred to. 528 A. H. Smith, Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, 1904, vol. 3, p. 330, No. 2320. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 623 of the design. The scene represented is thus described 1.3 o ."S CLj S c3 □ o< S-, o by W. E. Letbaby:529 " Cupid and Psyche recline at the 529 W. R. Letbaby, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, second series, 1911, vol. 23, p. 326. 624 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. banquet. The figures, contrary to wont, are almost fully draped, and Psyche looks intently into the face of Cupid. Cupid holds a wine-cup, and beneath his hand is a roll in a basket or 'capsa,' possibly the Gospel. In front is the table with the significant fish (the Christian emblem, ixgyz) ; the ends of the couch also have the fish form as found on Christian ivories. The attendant (to the left of the couch), who plays a lute, sits in a high-backed wicker chair, such as are frequently seen on Christian ivories; the table which supports the fish is of the three-legged type which appears in the catacomb paintings. Beneath the reclining figures of Cupid and Psyche a boy plays with a bunch of grapes and a young goat or rabbit, whilst, above, another (winged) boy releases a bird—a well-known symbol of the flight of the spirit in death. At the head of the couch is Orpheus, or a Cupid in the attitude of Orpheus—I think the former; he holds his lyre in the traditional way on his upraised left knee, his left foot resting on a peacock, the well-known symbol of im- mortality (the peacock is frequently seen with Orpheus). Further to the left and right are two pairs of figures, possibly the Seasons, who frequently appear in the catacombs. At each end is a fruit tree." An interesting fragment of figured gilded glass, of the early Christian period (3rd to 5th century a.d.), is illus- trated by Filippo Buonorroti,530 and may have formed the bottom of a marriage-present bowl. It represents Cupid and Psyche (with a little drapery in front of her) embracing; in a circle around them is a characteristic Latin inscription of the period: ANIMA DVLCIS 530 Filippo Buonorroti, Osservazioni sopra alcuni frammenti di vast antichi di vetro ornati di figure trovati ne1 cimiteri di Roma, Florence, 1716, p. 193, PL xxviii. Fig. 3. PART IV.-i.J ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 625 FEVAMVE X( )S SIXE BILE ZESES. The last word, taken from the Greek, is found on many vessels of the kind, and the meaning of the inscription is: " Sweet soul, let us enjoy ourselves ; you shall, live without bile [anger or discontent]." In regard to the doctrines of metempsychosis and the question of a spiritual existence independent of bodily life, I shall for convenience here refer to a Graeco- Scythian gold finger-ring (about the first century b.c.) found in the tomb of a woman at Kertch (the ancient Panticapaeum), and presented by Dr. C. \V. Siemens to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. According to the description exhibited in the Museum, the facing head engraved in intaglio on the bezel represents the Oriental moon-god (Deus Lunus of later Borne), and the figure of Fig. 105.—From a Graeco-Scythian gold finger-ring. the bee a*bove the head is the symbol of the moon as the abode of spirits (Fig. 105). In the old Persian religion (according to the same account) the moon represents the cosmic bull from whose carcase bees, typical of the vital principle in souls, swarmed to earth. Thus, in Mithraism the moon itself came to be known as the Bee (cf. Porphyrius, De Antro Nympharum). For permission to illustrate the ring in question I am indebted to Mr. D. G. Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, who kindly sent me an impression. In regard to the old idea of bees being generated from putrefying carcases, compare Virgil's description (Geoig., iv. lines 281 et seq.) of a method, said to have been practised in Egypt, of raising a stock of bees 2 s 626 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—i. from the putrefying carcase of a steer. Conington, in a note on Virgil's description, says that this notion of the generation of bees from putrid oxen was common among the ancients. Varro (Res Rtisticae, ii. 5), in speaking of oxen, refers to the same belief : " Denique ex hoc putrefacto nasci dulcissimas apes, mellis matres, ex quo illas Graeci BovyeveTs appellant." Ovid, in the Fasti, narrates that Aristaeus, unhappy at the loss of his bees, learnt from Proteus that the carcase of a young ox, buried in the ground, would furnish him with a new supply of bees. See Ovid, Fasti, book i., lines 377-380 :— " Obrue mactati corpus tellure juvenci: Quod petis a nobis, obrutus ille dabit. Jussa facit pastor. Fervent examina putri De bove: mille animas una necata dedit." Compare also the story of Samson and the swarm of bees in the lion's carcase (Judges xiv. 8). In reference to Virgil's mistaken belief, Mr. S. G. Shattock has drawn attention to the striking resemblance to bees and wasps (mimicry) observed in certain species of the family Syrphidae, the maggots of which are found in decaying matter. J. H. and A. B. Comstock (A Manual for the Study of Insects, p. 471) Fig. 106.—Hermes Psychopompos. (After Furtwangler.) say that a common representative of this family, Eristalis tenax (the "Drone-fly"), is often mistaken for a male honey-bee. The device of Samson and the lion, with the motto, Ex forte dulcedo, occurs on a Thaler (1676) commemorating the hundred-year jubilee of the Helmstedt University (Madai, Vollst Thaler-Cabinet, No. 2374). There are several antique gem-types to which we must still allude. In the first place, Hermes has some- times been represented on early intagli in the exercise of his functions as WvxoTrofnros (veicpayaiyos, y\rvxaywyoq, Sec), the conductor of the shade (etSwXov) or soul (yjcyxv) of the deceased from the upper to the lower world. Particularly interesting is an Etruscan sardonyx scara- baeus,531 on which (Fig. 106) Hermes is seen standing 531 Furtwangler, Die antiken Gemmcn, vol. i. PL xviii. No. 12. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED i.EMS, &C. 027 with petasos slung at the back of his neck, holding a diminutive human figure (evidently intended to signify a human soul or shade) on his left arm, whilst in his right hand is the kerykeion (caduceus) ; the Acheruntian water of the nether world is indicated at his feet on the right. A quite similar device occurs on a carnelian Etruscan scarabaeus of the older .style,532 but the water is not indicated as it is on the last-mentioned one. On an Etruscan scarabaeus533 of the fifth century B.C., Hermes, holding his kerykeion, is represented with a butterfly on his right shoulder (Fig. 107) ; and Furtwangler points out how interesting it is to find that at that early period Fig. 107.—Hermes with butterfly on right shoulder. (After Furtwangler.) already the butterfly was employed as a symbol of the human soul, the " anima " or Psyche.534 In regard to the representation of the human soul on Greek painted terra-cotta vases of the " black-figure" and " red-figure " periods, there is a good deal of material at hand. Small winged figures represent souls which have escaped from the bodies of deceased persons, or indicate the souls of Achilles and Hector (Eiad, xxii. 209), or the souls of Achilles and Memnon being weighed in the balance—the " Psychostasia" (cf. Iliad, viii. 69).535 532 Furtwangler, loc. cit, vol. i. PL xvi. No. 51. 533 Furtwangler, loc. cit, vol. i. PL xviii. No. 22. 534 For other early instances of the butterfly being used as a symbol of the soul, see Furtwangler, toe. cit, vol. iii. pp. 202, 203. 535 Cf. H. B. Walters, History of Ancient Pottery, London, 1905, vol. ii. p. 72. 2 s 2 628 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. The weighing is represented as being carried out by Hermes as " Psychostates " (generally the archaic bearded type of Hermes, and generally holding his kerykeion), in one instance at least in the presence of Zeus (who holds a thunderbolt). The ^vxoo-Tao-la, or "Weighing of the Souls," was the name of a lost tragedy by Aeschylus, in which Thetis and Eos weighed the souls of Achilles and Memnon against one another (following the passage in the Iliad, xxii. 209 et seq., above referred to). It was parodied by Aristophanes in part of his Frogs. On this whole subject of the " Psychostasia" compare S. Reinach (Peintures de Vases Antiques recueillies par Millin et Millimjen, Paris, 1891, pp. 15, 16, and Plates, Millin, i. 19), who gives references not only to the Iliad, but also to Quintus Smyrnaeus, Aeschylus, and the commentary of Servius on Virgil's Aeneid. O. Crusius, in his article on "Keres" in Roscher's Lexihon (W. H. Roscher's Ausfuhv- liches Lexihon der Griechischen und Romischen Mythologie, Leipzig, 1890-1894, vol. ii. part i. cols. 1135-11G6), figures three " Psychostasia " scenes from Greek painted vases. His first figure (from the first edition of A. S. Murray's History of Greek Sculpture, 1883, vol. ii. p. 28) represents an archaic bearded Hermes standing, and as Psychostates, weighing the two /o}pes or e?8w\a in the form of minute wdnged figures. His second figure (Reinach-Millin, loc. cit.) represents a beardless Hermes seated, weighing two minute winged figures in the scales of the balance. His third figure (taken from J. A. Overbeck, Heroische Bildwerke, Stuttgart, 1857, Atlas, PL xxii. Fig. 9) is that of the Luynes vase, on which the two Kijpes or ttSuyXa are personified as two minute fully-armed wingless figures (of the warriors in question) standing up in the scales. The weighing is being carried out by a bearded Hermes, standing, holding kerykeion, in the presence of Zeus, standing, holding thunderbolt and long staff. Another interesting " Psychostasia" scene, on a kylix in the Louvre Museum at Paris, forms the subject of one of the illustrations of Otto Waser's article on "Psyche," likewise in Roscher's Lexihon, op. cit, vol. iii. part ii. col. 3225, Fig. 14, where a PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 629 bearded Hermes, as Psychostates, is weighing two minute wingless figures standing upright in the scales; on either side are Thetis and Eos. (This scene is likewise figured in Monumenti Inediti dalV Instituto di Corrisp. Archeol., Rome, 1857, vol. vi. PI. 5a.) A "Psychostasia" scene, where Hermes is as usual Psychostates, also constitutes the device on an Etruscan mirror, now in the Royal Library of Madrid Csee S. Reinach, op. cit., Plates, Millin, i. 72, Fig. 1, and Crusius, loc. cit., Fig. 4). Hermes, beardless, is there re- presented seated and weighing, in the presence of Apollo, the eiowAa or n^pis of Achilles and Memnon, symbolized by small clothed human figures (without wings), standing upright in the scales of the balance; the names (Etruscan versions) are inscribed on the metal beside the various figures pictured. In such representations there seems to be some confusion between the eidwAov (ghost or shade), and the nrjp (" doom ") assigned to a man who was to die a violent death. In the " psychostasia" passages in Homer's Iliad it is the /o/pes (of Achilles and Hector) that are weighed in the balance. According to one passage (Iliad, ix. 411), Achilles had two Krjpcs, between which he was permitted to choose. The ghost or shade (elBcoXov) of a hero is sometimes represented on black-figure vases floating in the air, fully armed, with large wings. On a black-figure vase illustrated by E. Gerhard,536 a ghost of this kind floating above a prow, is apparently intended for that of Achilles hovering over the Greek ships before Troy. On a similar vase 537 the ghost, apparently of Patroclus, is represented in the same way, hovering over his tomb. On another black-figure vase538 the inscribed names leave no doubt as to what the artist meant to represent. The body of "" E. Gerhard, Auserlesene Griechische Vasenbilder, Berlin, 1847, part iii. PL cxcviii. Fig. 1. 537 E. Gerhard, Auserlesene Griechische Vasenbilder, Berlin, 1S-17, part iii. PL cxcviii. Fig. 2. :,3V Ibid., PL cxcix. Fig. 1. 630 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. Hector is seen fastened by the feet to the chariot of Achilles, and the ghost of Patroclus floats over a tomb hard by, as a diminutive fully-armed figure (this time without wings). In Homer's Iliad, after Achilles has killed Hector and dragged his body to his ships, the ghost of Patroclus appears to him in his sleep and says (translation by the fourteenth Earl of Derby):— " Sleep'st thou, Achilles, mindless of thy friend, Neglecting not the living, but the dead? Hasten my fun'ral rites, that I may pass Through Hades' gloomy gates; ere those be done, The spirits and spectres of departed men Drive me far from them, nor allow to cross Th' abhorred river; but forlorn and sad I wander through the widespread realms of night." On an amphora in the National Museum at Naples, with a similar scene of the body of Hector fastened by the feet to the chariot of Achilles, the ghost of Patroclus, in the form of a diminutive armed and winged figure, floats close by.539 So also on certain Greek vase-paintings (described further on) belonging to the picture-type of Sleep (Hypnos) and Death (Thanatos) lifting the corpse of a fallen hero, the elhwXov of the warrior is represented as a minute winged and fully-armed figure floating just above his dead body. The relief on the front of the large archaic (sixth. century B.C.) Etruscan terra-cotta sarcophagus from Caere (the modern Cervetri), now in the British Museum,540 represents two warriors, who cannot be identified, fighting in single combat. Each of the two combatants is attended 539 Figured by Raoul-Rochette, Monuments inedits, Paris, 1833, part i. PL xvii.; also in Otto Waser's article on " Psyche" in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon (op. cit), vol. iii. part ii. col. 3223, Fig. 13. 540 A. S. Murray, Terracotta Sarcophagi, Greek and Etruscan, in the British Museum, London, 1898, PL ix. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 631 by one male and two female attendants, and. at each end of the scene is a small youthful winged human figure. The warrior on the (spectator's) right hand, who is like- wise being attacked by a lion, is wounded, and is falling ; and the above-mentioned winged figure behind him is represented as flying away. Apparently, therefore, the winged figures in question (whether they be called Keres or not) represent the souls, or the etSojXa, of the fighting warriors. In early (and up to late mediaeval) Christian sepulchral art, as is well known, the soul was often represented leaving the dying person (generally coming out of the mouth) in the form of a diminutive draped or nude human figure. On Greek painted vases, little winged figures are some- times represented in the air near dead or dying persons (especially in " prothesis " or laying-out scenes), or near tombs (especially in scenes depicting persons making funeral offerings at a tomb), and there is a good deal of difficulty in interpreting their exact significance. On a white, so-called Attic, sepulchral lecythus (figures on white ground) from Eretria, now in the British Museum,541 a diminutive draped and winged figure is flitting in the air near a tomb (sepulchral stele), with one hand raised to its head and with the other pointing to the tomb. On a similar white lecythus figured by E. Pottier,542 a little winged human figure is again pictured floating near a tomb. Similar little winged figures hovering about tombs (sepulchral stelae) are pictured on two Attic lecythi in the 541 A. S. Murray and A. H. Smith, White Athenian Vases in the British Museum, London, 1896, PL v. 542 E. Pottier, Etudes sur les Lecythes blancs Attiques a Repre- sentations Funeraircs, Paris, 1883, PL iv. 632 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGIiAM. [PART IV.- I. Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.543 These might all be supposed to represent the e'i&ooXa of the deceased persons whose tombs are pictured, but on another vase 544 several little winged figures of the same kind are seen on a tomb ; and on yet another vase 645 three little winged figures of the same type are hovering over the stretched-out body of the deceased in a " prothesis " (laying-out) scene. Otto Waser546 refers to various " Charon scenes," in which one or more minute winged figures, similar to the above- mentioned ones, are pictured as hovering in the air near the dead persons, who are being received by Charon (standing in his boat as ferryman of the rivers of the nether world). Waser figures two such scenes:547 the first, from a lecythus in the Louvre Museum at Paris,548 repre- sents a dead man and a dead woman being received by Charon, with three of the little winged figures hovering about them; on the second one, from a lecythus in the Polytechneion at Athens,549 only one little winged figure is seen. Waser refers likewise to an Attic lecythus in the Ashmolean Museum,550 on which apparently the dead person himself, who is being received by Charon, is repre- sented in the form of a similar minute winged figure. 543 Described and figured by Percy Gardner, in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1905, vol. xxv. pp. 73-76, Figs. 544 and 546a. 544 Monumenti Inediti pub. dalV Instit di Conisp. Archeol., Rome,. 1864-1868, vol. viii. PL 5, Fig. lh. 545 Otto Benndorf, Griechische und Sicilische Vasenbilder, Berlin,. 1868, PL xxxiii.; and Fig. 6 in 0. Crusius's article on "Keres" in Roscher's Ausfiihrliches Lexikon. 546 Otto Waser, in his article on " Psyche," in Roscher's Lexikon* op. cit, vol. iii. part ii. cols. 3201-3256. 547 Otto Waser, loc cit, Figs. 15, 16. 548 Stackelberg, Die\Graeber\der Hellenen, Berlin, 1837, PL xlviii. 549 Antike Denkmaeler, Berlin, 1891, vol. i. PL 23, Fig. 1. 550 Described and figured by Percy Gardner, Journal of Hellenic Studies, London, 1905, vol. xxv. p.i75, Fig. 547. PAKT IV.—i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 633 Charon is in his boat, amidst reeds, holding a boat-pole in his right hand, and extending his left hand towards the little winged figure that flies, with both arms out- stretched, to him. A white sepulchral lecythus, figured by Miss J. E. Harrison, in her article on " Pandora's Box," 551 represents a bearded Hermes standing, holding a kerykeion in one hand and a wand in the other, apparently letting out a whole swarm of similar little winged figures from the mouth of a huge jar or " pitlios," which is buried almost up to its neck in the ground. Miss Harrison holds that on this vase Hermes Psychopompos is letting loose the «■%)£? " which give grievous diseases to men," and that Pandora's " box " (really a pithos in old Greek descrip- tions) contained similar imprisoned Kr)pes, which Pandora e£ 8' IreKt. oruycpoV Te Mdoov koI Kiypa p.eXaivav Kal ©avarov, T€K6 8' "Yirvov, itiktz Se vXov 'Oveipwv. ("Xight indeed brought forth hateful Fate and black Doom and Death, and brought forth Sleep and gave birth to the race of Dreams.") He also quotes another passage (Theog., 756, which, according to August Fick, has been embedded in the poem at a somewhat later date) :— fj 8' "Yttvov /actol xeP°'l> KacriyvqTov Savdroio Nv£ 0X077, veepeo"#ai, "Yirvia Kal ©avaru) 8iovpdoo-iv, &G.— and as brothers in an earlier passage (Iliad, book xiv. lines 231 et seq.) :— ev0' "Yttvo) ^vp/3Xr]T0, Kacriyvr/Tii) ©avaroio, tv t apa ol (pi) XetPLi ^■7ro^ T' «*paT' eK t 6v6p.at,tv, &C. In his above-mentioned work, entitled, Thanatos in Poesie und Kunst der Griechen,bU Kurt Heinemann has described or referred to all the known Greek vase- paintings of the picture-type of Hypnos and Thanatos lifting or carrying a dead body. They include the following representations :— On the " Piot amphora," a black-figure vase from Capua, in the Louvre Museum at Paris,575 two winged fully-armed beardless figures (Hypnos and Thanatos?) are lifting a beardless dead body (Sarpedon?) between them. The ghost (etSwAov) of the fallen hero is depicted as a minute fully-armed beardless winged warrior hovering just over his dead body. By the figures are imitation inscriptions, but there are no real inscriptions on this vase. The " Bourguignon amphora," a black-figure vase formerly in a collection at Xaples,576 has on one side an almost exactly similar scene, but the corpse is bearded, and the two armed figures (one of whom, at the feet of the dead body, is bearded) are without wings. The eiSwAov of the fallen warrior is repre- sented, as on the " Piot amphora," just above the corpse. The 574 Kurt Heinemann, Thanatos in Poesie und Kunst der Griechen, Miinchen, 1913. 575 Figured by E. Pottier, Vases Antiques du Louvre, Paris, 1906, PL 87, F. 388; Heinemann, op. cit, PL 1. 576 S. Reinach, Repertoire des Vases Peints Grecs et Etruscques Paris, 1899, vol. i. p. 347, No. 1; Heinemann, op. cit, PL 5. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 645 dead hero on the Bourguignon vase is probably meant to be Memnon, because on the other side of the vase a winged female figure (evidently Memnon's mother, Eos) is represented carrying a bearded corpse. A red-figure lecythus from Eretria, now in Berlin.577 Two fully-armed, winged, bearded nude figures are lifting a young male beardless corpse apparently to lay it down at a tomb (indicated by the dead man's shield, helmet, and weapons). The "Pamphaios" red-figure kylix, from Vulci, now in the British Museum, which I have above referred to.578 The bearded corpse was probably meant to be that of Memnon. The female figure with kerykeion^caduceus), on the spectator's left, is, as already stated, Iris, and that on the right is probably Eos, the mother of Memnon. A black-figure Attic lecythus in the Furtwangler collection at Frankfurt-am-Main.579 Two winged male figures, wearing short chitons, are lifting up a bearded corpse. This is probably that of Memnon, and the draped female at thd side of the corpse is probably his mother, Eos. The red-figure krater from Caere, in the Louvre Museum at Paris,580 represents a youthful beardless male corpse being lifted by two nude winged male figures. The one at the head of the corpse is beardless, and was meant to be Hypnos, as the accompanying inscription shows. Owing to a restoration of the vase, it is uncertain whether the other one (Thanatos), at the feet of the corpse, was originally depicted with or without a beard, and was or was not accompanied by an inscription. The black-figure kylix of the commencement of the fifth century B.C., found at Yelanidesa (Attica), and now at Athens.581 Two bearded winged figures, dressed in short chitons, carry the corpse of a bearded man (Memnon); by the side of the dead body, and tenderly bending over it, walks a ,77 Heinemann, op. cit., PL 2. 3:^ Heinemann, op. cit, PL 3 and PL 4, ,:;' Heinemann, op. cit, PL 1. 5"° Monumenti Inediti dall' Instituto di Corrisp. Archeol., Rome, 1S58, vol. vi. PL xxi.; Heinemann, op. cit, PL 5. 5M Heinemann, op. cit, PL 5. 646 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. [PART IV.-i. draped winged female (Eos, the mother of Memnon) ; in front of the procession is Hermes, looking backwards, and a woman and youth follow behind. The black-figure lecythus of the Navarra (Terranova) collection, a good example of antique over-painting,582 repre- sents a variation of the usual scene, for the bearded corpse (Memnon) is being lifted by two negroes (Aetbiopians) instead of by Hypnos and Thanatos (or Boreas and Zephyros). In the above-mentioned vase-paintings of most archaic style, the winged demons, that may almost certainly be regarded as Hypnos and Thanatos, were represented (cf. the " Piot amphora ") quite similar to each other (like twin-brothers, as in the Homeric account) and fully armed; in the designs of rather later style they were represented dressed in short chitons, or (as on the Caere crater in the Louvre) entirely nude. It is interesting to note that the vase-painters allowed themselves great latitude in their renderings of this artistic motif. Thus, on the " Bourguignon amphora " (of the same period as, if not by the same artist as, the " Piot amphora") the two armed, winged demons carrying the corpse are replaced by similarly armed figures without wings, and on the " Xavarra lecythos" the winged figures are replaced by Aethiopians. We may now pass on to the white-ground Attic lecythi bearing designs of the Hypnos and Thanatos motif. On these Thanatos, usually bearded, and Hypnos beard- less, are depicted lifting the body of a man or woman to deposit it in the grave at the foot of a sepulchral stele. Heinemann divides these vases into an earlier group, on which Thanatos has a somewhat savage or gloomy aspect, 382 0. Benndorf, Griech. und Sicil. Vasenbilder, Berlin, 1868, PL 42, No. 2; Heinemann, op. cit, PL 6. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 647 and is always represented at the feet of the corpse; and a later group, on which the respective positions of Hypnos and Thanatos have been changed, Thanatos having a milder or even a sorrowful and tender aspect, and being at the head of the corpse instead of at the feet. In the first group he places the two white lecythi. in the British Museum above referred to,583 on one of which 584 the nude Hypnos is painted brown, reminding one of Death and Sleep being represented, the one as a white boy and the other as a black boy, according to Pausanias's account, on the previously mentioned archaic " Coffer of Cypselus." On both these lecythi the armour shows the corpse to be that of a warrior. In the later group he places a lecythus in the vase- collection at Berlin,585 a lecythus in the National Museum at Athens,586 and the following two others. A second one in the National Museum at Athens 587 has a variety of the usual scene, for the burial of a woman is represented. The draped life-like body of the young woman is being lifted to her tomb by two winged male figures, Thanatos (bearded) being at her head and Hypnos (beardless) being at her feet. To the right of the stele stands a young man looking on; he is dressed in chlamys and petasos, and might, I believe, though he is beardless, represent Hermes (compare the beardless heads of Hermes on the silver coins of Aenus in Thrace, 450 to 400 B.C.), but Heinemann prefers to suggest that he represents a brother or some relative of the deceased. On another lecythus (or rather the fragment of one) in the vase-collection at Berlin5S8 the Hypnos and Thanatos scene is represented in a peculiar way, namely, as an " archi- tectural " ornamental design on the top of a sepulchral stele; 583 Heinemann, op. cit, PL 7 and PL 8. 584 Murray and Smith, op. cit, PL xi. 585 Heinemann, op. cit, PL 9. 586 Heinemann, op. cit, PL 10. 587 Heinemann, op. cit, PL 6. 588 Heinemann, op. cit, PL 11. 648 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. around this stele stand the usual relatives or mourners, bringing funereal ribbons, &c. The deceased in this instance again is a woman. She is draped and diademed. She is held almost entirely by Hypnos (beardless), and turns her ^orrowful face towards (the bearded) Thanatos, who is about to assist Hypnos in lifting her. Heinemann likewise gives references to many other objects on which a corpse is represented being carried by two winged or wingless figures. On some of them the design is evidently the Hypnos and Thanatos subject, or has been suggested by it, but on others the explanation may be a different one. Thus Pausanias, in his descrip- tion of the painting by Polygnotus at Delphi, representing the " Sack of Ilium," says that at one part of that picture " Sinon, a comrade of Ulysses, and Anchialus, are bringing out the corpse of Laomedon." 589 The body of Meleager was also represented on ancient art being carried by two bearers, and at one part of the Tabula Iliaca illustrated in Otto Jahn's Griech. Bilderchroniken (PI. 1) Hector's body is being carried in the same way. Besides other painted vases with designs of this kind, Heinemann 590 refers to a small (portable) terra-cotta altar, to bronze handles from the lids of " Etruscan " cistae, to the " Colonna" marble relief,591 to a small ivory relief in Naples,592 to a bronze Etruscan mirror,593 and to some engraved gems. On the bronze handles from the lids of cistae (above referred to) the bearers of the dead 589 Pausanias's Description of Greece, book x. chap, xxvii. 1; J. G. Frazer's translation, London, 1898. 500 Heinemann, op. cit., pp. 57-68. 591 Emil Braun, Antike Marmorwerke. 592 Hans Graeven's Antike Schnitzerein aus Elfenbein, Hannover, 1903, first series, No. 28. . 593 E. Gerhard's Etruskische Spiegel, Berlin, 1840-1897, vol. iv. PL 397, 1. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 649 body are sometimes men in armour, sometimes nude, and the corpse is mostly that of a young man (armed or nude), but in at least one instance is that of a woman (nude). On the above-mentioned portable terra-cotta altar594 the winged male bearers probably represent Hypnos and Thanatos; in some instances the bearers (male or female) are winged and in others wingless; on a bronze in the Museo Kircheriano at Eome the bearers are a young man and a young woman. A very remarkable late use of the Hypnos and Thanatos device is that on the leaf of an ivory diptych 595 in the British Museum, representing the apotheosis of a Roman Emperor, possibly Constantius Chlorus (a.d. 305- 306), the father of Constantine the Great. The Emperor is being carried up by winged figures of Hypnos (unbearded) and Thanatos (bearded) to a group of five deities that await him in the clouds (Fig. 110). I have still shortly to refer to certain gem-devices related to the same subject. A. Furtwangler596 figures two carnelian Etruscan scarabaei of early style bearing an intaglio representation of two winged figures carrying a dead body. In his description 597 he says that on the first (see Fig. Ill, after Furtwangler) the corpse is being carried by a nude winged youth and a draped winged woman [? derived from the Thanatos, Eos, and Hypnos idea, though without Hypnos], but that on the second (see Fig. 112, after Furtwangler) the corpse is being 594 Monumenti Ined. dalV Inst it. di Corr. Arch., vol. xi. PL x. 3. 593 Described and figured by Hans Graeven, " Heidnische Dip- tychen," Mitteilungen des Kaiserl. deutsch. Archaolog. Instituts Roemischc Ableilung, Eome, 1913, vol. xxviii. p. 271, PL vii. 580 A. Furtwangler, op. cit., vol. i. Nos. 22 and 23. 597 A. Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. ii. p. 77. OS o Fig. 110.—Ivory diptych in tho British Museum, representing the Apotheosis of a Roman Emperor. He is being carried by winged figures of Hypnos and Thanatos to Heaven. A group of five deities in the clouds receive him. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 651 carried by two female figures in long chitons. He likewise refers to an early sard " Etruscan" scarabaeus Fig. 111.—Two winged figures carrying dead body. From an Etruscan scarabaeus. (After Furtwangler.) from Chiusi in the British Museum collection598 repre- senting a corpse being carried by two draped and winged Fig. 112.—Two winged figures carrying dead body. From an Etruscan scarabaeus. (After Furtwangler.) female figures (see Fig. 113) ; and also to a similar device on an antique paste in the Fol collection. Fig. 113.—Two winged figures carrying dead body. (After an Etruscan scarabaeus in the British Museum.) Formerly two such winged female figures were regarded by E. Gerhard as Victories carrying the body of a fallen hero.599 They might represent the idea of Eos, with the "» Catalogue of Engraved Gems in the British Museum, by A. H. Smith, London, 1888, p. 69, No. 346, PL E. «»• Gerhard's Gcs. academ. Abhandlungcn, Berlin, 1866, vol. i- p. 167 ; compare his PL xi. Nos. 1 and 2. 652 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PAKT IV.-i. help of Iris, carrying off the body of Memnon. In favour of such a supposition I would refer to the above-mentioned bronze Etruscan mirror, figured by E. Gerhard,600 on which two draped females are carrying the corpse of a bearded man. ("J-erhard believed that the scene represented Eos and Iris carrying off the body of the fallen Memnon. Neither of the bearers has wings on the shoulders, but one of them (Eos ?) has wings on the ankles, and has a kind of nimbus around the head : a nimbus or halo seems fitting enough as an attribute either of Eos (Dawn) or of Iris (the rainbow idea). It is interesting, by the way, to note that in the ornamental border surrounding the device (below the centre of it) a winged bearded figure is repre- sented with a ray-crown on his head. This figure, according to Gerhard, was perhaps intended to represent Thanatos or Hades. In all probability, in the play Alcestis, by Euripides, " Thanatos" was represented as a winged male figure. The dialogue shows that he was robed in black, and carried a sword to cut off a lock from his destined victims. The relief on a sculptured drum (Fig. 114), now in the British Museum, from a column of the later temple of Artemis at Ephesus, apparently represents Alcestis between Hermes (with his kerykeion or caduceus) and Thanatos. If that be the correct explanation of the three figures in question, as W. E. Letbaby seems to be right in claiming,601 Thanatos is pictured as a winged nude youth with a sword girded on by his side. The 600 E. Gerhard, Etruskische Spiegel, Berlin, 1840-1897, vol. iv. PL 397, 1. 601 W. R. Lethaby, " The Sculptures of the Later Temple of Artemis at Ephesus," Journal of Hellenic Studies, London, 1913, vol. xxxiii. p. 87. PART IV.-i.J ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 653 first temple of Artemis at Ephesus was burnt down in B.C. 356 (in the night on which Alexander the Great was born), and this relief would therefore probably date from the latter part of the fourth century B.C. Fig. 114.—Alcestis between Hermes and Thanatos. Relief on a drum (now in the British Museum) from the later temple of Artemis at Ephesus. On a vase (stamnos), of Etruscan make,602 a winged youthful figure, probably meant to represent Thanatos, is standing behind the Telamoniau Ajax, apparently urging 602 S. Reinach, Repertoire des Vases Peints Grecs et Etrusques, Paris, 1899, vol. i. p. 278. 654 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PAKT IV.-i. him to commit suicide by throwing himself on a sword which projects, point upwards, from the ground in front of him. On an alabaster urn with a scene of the combat between the brothers Polynices and Eteocles,603 Ker (Doom) is apparently personified, in much the same way as Thanatos, by a winged (but female) figure seated beside the brothers, who have both fallen mortally wounded. To Ker, and the Keres, I shall refer again, however, further on. In describing the painting by Polygnotus at Delphi, representing Ulysses in Hades, Pausanias writes : " Higher up than the figures I have enumerated is Eurynomus; the Delphian guides say that he is one of the demons in hell, and that he eats the flesh of the corpses, leaving only the bones. But Homer's Odyssey, and the poem called the Minyad, and the one called The Returns, though they all speak of hell and its terrors, know of no demon Eurynomus. However, I will describe his appearance and attitude in the painting. His colour is between blue and black, like that of the flies that settle on meat: he is showing his teeth, and is seated on a vulture's skin." 604 This description shows that even the celebrated Greek painter Polygnotus (fifth century B.C.) sometimes in bis pictures introduced loathsome objects relating to the idea of death, reminding one of other primitive conceptions of horrible monsters and guardians of the nether world, such as the fierce dog-like monster Cerberus (with its three, or fifty, or even a hundred heads), the Etruscan " Charun," already alluded to, with his hideous face and his terrible-looking hammer, and the Etruscan male and 603 Gazette Archeologique, Paris, 1881-1882, annee vii. PL viii. 604 Pausanias's Description of Greece, book x. chap, xxviii. 4; J. G. Frazer's translation, vol. i. p. 542. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 655 female winged demons and Gorgon-like or Fury-like figures, holding hissing or biting serpents. Medusa or Gorgon-head masks, as wall-paintings, as minute terra-cotta antefixes, &c, were common objects of Etruscan sepulchral ornamentation. An archaic type of such masks showed a horrible mouth with tongue protruding between two pairs of tusk-like teeth. On an early Greek painted vase in the Louvre Museum at Paris, with a representation of Thetis and her sister Nereides mourning over the death of Achilles, the dead body of the hero is laid out on a funeral couch and a large Gorgon- mask by the side of the couch is apparently only the front of his shield. The Gorgon's mask was, indeed, pictured at early periods of Greek art as a terror-inspiring emblem on the shields of the warriors, as it afterwards was universally represented on the aegis of Zeus and Athene. In Eoman times, in cameo form, it decorated the breastplate of the emperors. In sepulchral decora- tion running Gorgon-like figures, Gorgon heads, and other terrifying objects of infernal significance were doubtless introduced partly for the (" apotropaeic") purpose of frightening away intruders, especially evil spirits. Virgil (" Dante's master"), in his description in the Aeneid of the visit of Aeneas to Hades, evidently having the traditional archaic " Etruscan " type of " Charun " in bis mind, pictures Charon thus:— " Grim, squalid, foul, with aspect dire, His eyeballs each a globe of fire." King points out that this traditional Etruscan image of " Charun " was handed down in Italy through Mediaeval times, for Dante speaks of " Charon, demonio con occhi di bracna" (" Charon, a demon with live-coals for eyes"). 656 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—i. Etruria was, as King explains, the early school of art for Eome, and she supplied the figures of the Eoman deities. Pluto, he says, must have been personified, like the Etruscan " Charun," in the shows of the Eoman amphi- theatre, as late as the third century a.d. ; for Tertullian, in his Apologia (xxv.), remarks that " amongst the other scenic cruelties of the afternoon, the spectators laughed at the sight of Mercury raising the dead with his red-hot wand (applied, doubtless, to the feet of the slaughtered gladiators, to ascertain if life still lingered); whilst the ' Brother of Jupiter,' armed with his mall, escorted the dead bodies of the combatants. A horrible monster was tbe Egyptian Am-mit (the " Eater of the Dead"), in part crocodile, in part lion, and in part hippopotamus, who ate up the heart of the deceased when in the balance its weight was found wrong (to this subject I shall return further on). E. A. Wallis Budge605 writes: " According to some, those who were condemned in the Judgment were devoured by the monster Am-mit, the ' Eater of the Dead' ; but others held that they were dragged to the divine ' block of doom,' where they were beheaded by the headsman of Osiris, called Shesmu. Sometimes their bodies were backed limb from limb by him, and sometimes they were seized upon by the ' Watchers,' who ' carry slaughtering knives, and have cruel fingers,' and cut the dead into pieces, which were thrown down into pits of fire, or into the great ' Lake of Fire.' Here, at one corner, sat a monster who swallowed hearts and ate up the dead, bimself remaining invisible; bis name was 1 Devourer for Millions of Years.' " Kali, in the Hindu mythology, the bloody consort of Siva, or Shiva, is depicted with black body, red palms, and long dishevelled hair, wearing a necklace of buman heads and a girdle of bloody hands, her tongue protruding from her blood-stained mouth. Ker—Ktjp—the goddess of death or doom (sometimes the plural is used, K.r}pes davdroio), was a dark and awful figure frequently mentioned in the Homeric poems. On the archaic so-called " Coffer of Cypselus," according to the description of Pausanias, who examined it at Olympia 603 E. A. Wallis Budge, A Guide to the Egyptian Collection in the British Museum, London, 1909, p. 144. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED (JEMS, &C. 657 in the second century a.d., Ker was represented in the scene of the combat between the brothers Polynices and Eteocles. The passage,603 translated by J. G. Frazer, runs as follows: " Behind Polynices stands a female figure with teeth as cruel as a wild beast's, and the nails of her fingers are hooked: an inscription beside her declares that she is Doom (Krjp)." In his annotation on this passage Frazer refers to an alabaster urn607 representing the combat of Polynices and Eteocles ; beside the brothers sits a winged female figure with drawn sword. In the Hesiodic poem, The Shield of Heracles, the Keres are described as hideous creatures with white teeth and great claws, who drank the blood of those slain in battle. Mimnermus, the Greek elegiac poet, who flourished in the second half of the seventh century B.C., spoke of the " black Keres " : Kfjpes Se Trapecnr)icaari jAeXaivat, &c. In some respects the Keres are analogous to the " Valkyrs" of Norse mythology; the latter chose those who were to be slain in battle, but, on the other hand, after death conducted them in triumph to everlasting enjoyment in Valhalla, the warriors' paradise and the abode of Odin. In Greek art, as I have already stated, there is some confusion between the representations of the tftwXov, the shade or ghost of a hero, and the Kyp, or Doom of a man who was to die a violent death. In the "psychostasia" passages in Homer's Iliad it is the Krjpes (of Achilles and Hector) that are weighed in the balance. According to one passage Iliad, ix. 411) Achilles.had two Kfjpes, between which he was permitted to choose. In regard to the representation of more than one, or several, KTJpts in "prothesis" (laying-out) scenes, or in scenes representing funeral offerings being made at a tomb, or in scenes representing Hermes bringing the dead to Charon, the ferryman of the lower world- see back. B0li Pausanias's Description of Greece, book v. chap. xix. 6. Bo: See illustration in the Gazette ArcMologiquc, Paris, 1881-1882, annee vii. PL 8. I have already alluded to this urn. 2 U 658 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. The reason why snakes are so frequently represented on tombs or in connexion with tombs on Greek painted vases of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. does not seem very clear, unless they were regarded as underground creatures, and fitting symbols of the nether world. For a consideration of many Greek painted vases on which snakes are figured, see Miss J. E. Harrison's article " Delphika," in Journal of Hellenic Studies, London, 1899, vol. xix. pp. 203-251. In discussing the characteristic archaic Spartan stele from Chrysapha, near Sparta (now at Berlin), Mrs. Arthur Strong608 adds a note that the great snake which rears itself up behind the throne-like chair on which the deceased is represented sitting, is the dead man's " spirit in another form," as Percy Gardner puts it—what Gilbert Murray regards as the regular symbol throughout ancient Greece of the " underworld powers, especially the hero or dead ancestor." See also Percy Gardner, Sculptured Tombs of Hellas, London, 1896, p. 76, Plate ii. (illustration of the above-mentioned stele from Chrysapha). The harmless snakes, which at the present time abound in the hot caverns and natural or artificial galleries where thermal springs arise in the Pyrenees, are probably the same as those connected with the worship of Aselepios (Aesculapius) in ancient Greece and Eome. They were found about hot springs and wells and natural thermal baths (having or supposed to possess healing virtues), and they probably also often frequented sepulchral chambers and caverns. A Greek painted kylix in tbe British Museum609 represents the story of Polyidos and Glaukos, a favourite subject with the ancient poets and artists. Polyidos and Glaukos are pictured inside a vaulted tomb; the latter wrapped or muffled up in the squatting position in which a corpse was probably usually buried in such tombs. Two snakes are seen on the stony floor of the vault. The vase bears the signature of the 608 Mrs. Arthur Strong, op. cit, pp. 130, 257, PL xvi. Fig. 1. 609 A. S. Murray and A. H. Smith, White Athenian Vases in the British Museum, London, 1896, PL xvi. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 659 artist Sotades, and the figures of Polyidos and Glaukos are both " labelled " with their names, painted in minute letters beside them. The tale, as told by Apollodorus (Bihliothcca, iii. 3), was that Glaukos, one of the sons of the Cretan king, Minos, was suffocated when a boy by falling into a cask full of honey. Minos searched in vain for his son until the body was discovered by the soothsayer Polyidos, of Argos. Minos then required Polyidos to restore Glaukos to life, but as he could not accomplish that, he was entombed alive by order of Minos with the body of Glaukos. When Polyidos was thus shut up in the vault, he saw a snake approaching the dead body of the boy, and killed the reptile. Soon afterwards another snake came, and placed a herb upon the dead snake, which was thereby restored to life. Polyidos then covered the body of Glaukos with the same herb, and the boy at once came to life again. Eeference has been made (Fig. 93) to the implements of navigation on a clay (terra sigillata) drinking-vessel in the Museum of Orleans (ornamented with reliefs of skeleton-like figures and an altar, on which are a rudder and an oar) as possible symbols of the voyage of the dead to Hades or to the jxaKapatv vfjcroi, the "Isles of the Blessed," of Hesiod and Pindar (The Fortunate Islands, the Elysian Fields, the "realms of bliss"). Caetani Lovatelli alludes to gems and other objects, which may perhaps have a similar significance, notably to a gem figured by Venuti and Borioni, representing Psyche (the human soul, or "anima") on a boat drawn by two dolphins. C. W. King610 speaks of the hippocampus (a 810 See C. W. King's essay on " Death as depicted in Ancient Art," in The Gnostics and their Remains, London, second edition, 1887, pp. 182-183. 2 U 2 660 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. fantastic figure, like a winged sea-serpent, which later became the Eoman Capricornus) as an emblem of the voyage after death to the happy land. He says the original monster is often engraved on Phoenician scarabs, and refers to a vase figured by Caylus,611 on which the monster in question is painted "joyously careering over the sea," whilst on the other side of the vase stands the mourner (praefica), "chaunting the funeral hymn over the corpse laid out upon its bier of bronze." A muffled-up figure seated on a hippocamp is sculptured on a monument figured in the Revue Archeologique for 1844.612 Mrs. Arthur Strong,613 in regard to the different ways in which the deceased was represented making his way to the ultramundane abode of bliss, writes: " Already on the sarcophagus of Haghia Triada—dating from a pre- or proto-Hellenic civilisation—we beheld the dead borne, like Elijah, on a winged chariot through the flaming aether; chariots winged and unwinged (ad supcros and ad inferos), winged steeds, boats, Harpies, Sirens, eagles, sea-monsters of every description, are only a few of the many vehicles of the soul's transit." With the above-mentioned emblems of the sea-voyage, King compares the horse, symbol of departure from life, on sarcophagi and tablets, on which that animal, ready for the supreme journey, is represented looking in through the window upon a party feasting and merry-making. On an Etruscan sculpture, already referred to, " Charun," the rough Etruscan messenger of death, " armed as usual with his ponderous mall, actually leads tlie horse upon 611 Comte de Caylus, Recueil d'Antiquites, Paris, 1761, vol. i. PL xxxii. 612 Paris, vol. i. PL 17, Fig. 2. 613 Mrs. Artbur Strong, op. cit, p. 126. S'ART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 661 which sits the deceased with head muffled up." "The same reason," says King, "probably made the horse's head so popular a subject for signet-gems; it served there for a memento mori, like the death's-heads so much in vogue amongst the jewels of the cinque-cento time, although the antique symbol carried with it a widely different admonition." Certain representations of Hermes on antique gems are thought by Furtwangler614 to relate to Pythagorean and Orphic doctrines of a transmigration of souls (metem- psychosis), doctrines probably originally derived from India and the East. Fig. 115.—Hermes summoning a soul from the lower world. (After Furtwangler.) In regard to the Orphic doctrines of an existence after death, see the account of Orphic inscribed tablets of thin gold, found in tombs of Lower Italy, &c, in Miss J. E. Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 1908, pp. 572 et seq., and the Critical Appendix by Mr. G. Murray; see also Miss J. E. Harrison's Themis—a study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1912; the various writings of Robert Eisler (especially his Wcltenmantel und Himmelzelt, Munich, 1910) and S. Reinach; the article on Orpheus by 0. Gruppe, in W. H. Roscber's Ausfuhrl. Lexikon d. Griech. und Rom. Mythologie, Leipzig, 1884, &c. Mrs. Arthur Strong (op. cit., p. 274) gives many other bibliographical references on the subject. Numerous representations of the Orpheus legend occur in antique and later art; in Christian symbolism Orpheus became a type of Christ (see back). On a carnelian Etruscan scarabaeus615 (Fig. 115), Hermes with his kerykeion (caduceus) seems to be summoning a soul from the earth (or rather, from the lower world). On another Etruscan scarabaeus (of "• Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. iii. pp. 202, 255 et. seq. 613 Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xviii. No. 55. 662 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-j. chalcedony),616 Hermes seems to be calling up a soul from a large jar (pithos); a bearded head is seen emerging from the jar, which is perhaps intended to represent an exit from the lower world (Fig. 116). Furtwangler likewise Fig. 116.—Hermes calling up a soul. (After Furtwangler.) Fig. 117.—Hermes raising a soul. (After Furtwangler.) figures several early Italian intagli,617 on which Hermes (mostly with his kerykeion) is represented "raising" souls or spirits out of the earth, the soul or spirit being indicated by a human head (Fig. 117), or by a head and upper portion of the body. C. W. King618 describes a similar gem-type as: " Mercury, by the magic power of his caduceus, drawing up a soul from the Shades." On two Etruscan scarabs,619 Hermes appears to be placing a human head on the body of a swan or bird of some kind Fig. 118.—Hermes placing a human head on the body of a bird. (After Furtwangler.) Fig. 119.—Hermes placing a human head on the body of a bird. (After Furtwangler.) (Figs. 118, 119). Furtwangler thinks that these gems do not refer to mere magic or so-called " necromancy" (veicpofiavTeia), that is to say, the magical invocation or 616 Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xx. No. 32. 617 Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xxi. Nos. 64-72. 618 C. W. King, Handbook of Engraved Gems, edition of 188c PL lxxv. No. 1. 013 Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xix. Nos. 49, 50. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C 663 " raising " of ghosts or shades of the dead (for the purpose of obtaining information about the future), as believed in by the credulous of many ages and many countries. He supposes that the idea of metempsychosis is indicated,620 and that Hermes is represented calling up souls from Hades that they may live again on earth. A peacock, employed in modern times as a symbol of vanity, occurs not rarely on Eoman intagli; and, according to Furtwangler, was intended by the Eoman gem-engravers to signify everlasting life. It is repre- sented alone or together with other birds; sometimes at a fountain or basin of water, or with a thyrsus.621 It may be accompanied by a. butterfly,622 or may be apparently standing on a butterfly;623 and in one case a peacock, a " hermes " of Priapus, and a butterfly are all represented on the same gem.624 I have already pointed out that on some Roman gems the butterfly, especially the burning butterfly, appears rather to be an emblem of sexual love than an emblem of the soul. It seems, indeed, as if in many Roman minds ideas of love (sexual love), the human soul, and immortality, were closely united. [Was this not a kind of chance foreshadowing of tbe modern "plasmal" doctrine of immortality—the immortality of germ-plasm----August Weismann, &c. ?] And this is not surprising when one remembers that, even nowadays, youthful, ecstatic love, jealous of time and space, in poetry and real life, often believes itself immortal and fondly refuses to acknowledge any bounds but those of eternity. It seems, like the circle of the wedding-ring, "to have no end." The following "posy" is engraved on a sun-dial finger-ring (a so-called " ring-dial"):— " Like to this sirkell round No end to love is found." " How near to good is what is fair, Which we no sooner see, Than with its form and outward air Our senses taken be." (Ben Jonson.) 1120 Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. iii. pp. 254, 262. '-' Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xxix. Nos. 57 (with thyrsus), 60; PL lxiv. Nos. 51, 52. ,:- Furtwangler, op. cit., vol. i. PL xxix. No. 55. 123 Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xxix. No. 61. "'-'■' Furtwangler, op. cit, vol. i. PL xxiv. No. 59. 664 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. In Imperial Eoman times the peacock, as the special " bird of Juno," was sometimes placed on the reverse of coins of the " consecratio" kind, commemorating tbe " deification," " apotheosis," or " immortality" of an Empress, just as the eagle, the special bird of Jupiter, was placed on similar (" consecratio ") coins commemorating the deification of an Emperor. The eagle, however, also appears on " consecratio" coins of Empresses. Thus on the reverse of coins commemorating the deification of Sabina and Faustina senior, these Empresses are sometimes represented as being carried up to the skies on an eagle or by a figure of Victory. By the early Christians the peacock was adopted as a symbol of im- mortality, because it renews its tail-feathers every year, or for some imaginary reason.625 Amongst other "consecratio" types on Eoman Im- perial coins are: a large funeral pile or mausoleum, and a funeral carpentum drawn by mules or elephants.626 Of antique gems representing the apotheosis of Eoman Emperors or members of the Imperial family, the most remarkable is the large cameo (in the National collection of coins, medals, and gems, at Paris) engraved with an apotheosis-scene, showing the Emperor Tiberius enthroned in the centre, wearing the aegis of Jupiter, and other deified members of the Imperial house around him. We may here for convenience mention the numerous Eoman Imperial coins with reverse types symbolic of " aeternitas." Eternity was represented in various ways : 623 For examples of this and other devices of ancient Christian symbolism, see Fernand Cabrol's great Dictionnaire d'Archeologie Chretienne (Paris, 1907 and following years). 626 On the whole subject of the Roman Apotheosis and the symbols connected with it, see Mrs. Arthur Strong's Apotheosis and After Life, London, 1915. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 665 often by a veiled figure, standing, holding the heads of the Sun and the Moon in her hands, with an altar at her feet; by a figure of Ceres in a chariot; &c. The phoenix, as a symbol of eternity, appears on pieces of Constantino the Great and his children; and, needless to say, this fabulous bird has been much employed in Christian countries (notably by Tertullian, the most ancient of the Latin fathers of the Christian Church whose works are still extant) as an emblem of the resurrection. The phoenix (" the Arabian bird "), as, according to the Oriental myth, there was only one in existence at a time, came to be an emblematic device for a man or woman excelling all others in some noble quality—a paragon. It is thus referred to in Shakespeare's Cymbeline: " She is alone the Arabian bird." It is represented in this sense on the reverse of an Italian late fifteenth-century medal (described in Part III.) of Giulia Astallia, with the inscription: " Unicum for(titudinis) et pud(icitiae) exemplum." The phoenix was said to visit Egypt from time to time, and, according to the historian, Tacitus (Annals, book vi. chap. 28), appeared there in the year a.d. 34. A phoenix rising from the flames with the motto, Resurgam, is placed in the pediment over the southern portico of St. Paul's Cathedral, as an emblem of the Cathedral having risen again after the "great fire " of London (1666). At the commencement of the rebuilding a labourer, when asked to bring a stone (from a rubbish-heap of debris from the old Cathedral) to mark a certain spot, happened to bring the fragment of a tombstone with the word, Resurgam, on it; the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, seems to have accepted this word (at least, so the story runs) as a motto and a favourable omen for the work in hand. A. F. Gori627 figures an antique gem (see Fig. 120), on which is engraved a man in rough dress (countryman, peasant, or, as sometimes described, Silenus ?) seated on a stone, with his right foot resting on a globe; he is piping on a double flute, and before him a skeleton dances grotesquely. Perhaps the skeleton was meant to 62T Gori, Museum Florintinum, Florence, 1731, vol. i. PL 91, No. 3. Salomon Reinach (Pierres Gravees, Paris, 1895, PL 43, No. 91. 3) figures the same intaglio, ar.d describes it simply as representing Silenus making a skeleton dance. 666 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-i. represent a malevolent ghost or spirit (one of the " larvae," an " ossea larva" of Ovid), and the device of the piping man was intended to show that any one leading a natural life with innocent pleasures had no occasion to fear the apparition or malignant interference of ghosts or evil spirits, or could charm them with his piping. On the other hand, a contrast was possibly intended, the man being represented unaware or unmindful of some Fig. 120.—Skeleton in dancing attitude before a man seated piping. (Enlarged from an antique gem, after Gori.) threatening danger or disaster, connected with the appearance of the skeleton, the gem being used as an amulet supposed by some apotropaeic virtue to protect the bearer. Kastner628 refers to a very similar engraved gem (Fig. 121, after Kastner) which at one time was in the Badeigts de Laborde collection. In favour of the view that the skeleton on these two gems is meant really to 026 G. Kastner, Les Danses des Morts, Paris, 1852, PL ii. Fig. 10. PART IV.-i.] ENGRAVED GEMS, &C. 667 represent a danger to life, is an intaglio formerly in the late M. P. W. Boulton's collection (see Fig. 122). On the Boulton gem a man is seated, reading from a scroll; resting against his chair is a lyre; in front of him is a Fig. 121.—Skeleton in dancing attitude before a man seated piping. (Enlarged from an antique gem, after Kastner.) skeleton standing holding a dagger or knife in upraised hand; but he seems to disregard, or not to be aware of, the threatening skeleton. This brings us back to the subject of the representation of " larvae," and to the significance of skeletons and! Fig. 122.—Roman intaglio (enlarged), representing a man seated, reading from a scroll, with a threatening skeleton in front of him. shrivelled mummy-like figures of skin and bone (in Greek o-Kt-XeTov, understanding adpn, in Latin sceletus, under- standing homo, i.e. the Hautskelett of Mediaeval art) in Eoman and Graeco-Eoman art. The skeletons and " skin- 668 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV. i. and-bone figures" not rarely represented " larvae," the ghosts or shades of wicked persons, apparitions of evil omen, but sometimes doubtless they (though called " larvae ") merely represented the dead as a class. Ovid uses the expression " ossea larva " for a skeleton-like appa- rition : "Insequar atque oculos ossea larva tuos " ("And as a bony spectre I will haunt your sight"). Seneca (Epist. ad Lucilium, xxiv. 18) writes, " Nemo tarn puer est, ut Cerberum timeat et tenebros et larvarum habitum nudis ossibus cohaerentium." Similarly, Lucian, in his Philo- pseudes, speaks of the Greek Mormo and Lamia as bogies or bugbears to frighten children with. The Empusae were monstrous spectres sent by Hecate to frighten travellers. Amongst the Empusae were the Lamiae and Mormolyceia, who assumed the form of handsome women for the purpose of attracting young men, and then sucked their blood and ate their flesh. They represented the Vampire and Willi ideas of Eastern Europe in mediaeval and modern times. Apuleius, in his Apologia (p. 315, Elnienh.), speaking ■of a " sceletus " which he had been accused of possessing and using as a magical object, groups " sceleti," " larvae," and " demons " all together: " Hiccine est sceletus ? Haeccine est larva ? Hoccine est quod appellitabatis ■daemonium." A sceletus, according to him, is " eviscerata forma diri cadaveris." On the whole subject of "larvae," see the article by J. A. Hild, in the Dictionnaire des Antiquites Grecques et Romaines (Daremberg, Saglio, and Pottier), Paris, 1904, vol. iii. pp. 950-953. I am much indebted to this article. As an instance of the terror inspired by the apparition ezel has been made hollow and to open like a minute box. Some have supposed that these boxes were made to con- tain poison (such as arsenic), but it appears extremely unlikely that any genuine secret " poison-ring" should ever have been made in a form likely to attract special attention. It is far more likely that such boxes contained supposed holy relics, or other amulets or " charms," or mementos (such as hair) of a dead relative or friend. G. F. Kunz676 mentions and figures a German eighteenth century finger-ring, with its bezel formed in the shape of a coffin; on this are skull and cross-bones, and on its sides is the inscription, Hir ist Ruhe (" Here is rest"); when the lid of the coffin is lifted, a compartment is disclosed, containing a minute heart. Memento mori devices have occasionally been adopted for seals, and the backs of small seals or " signets," just as the shanks and other parts of finger-rings were sometimes chiselled in memento moid fashion ("skull- decorations," &c.).677 I have already alluded to the seal of Erasmus (a man's head, facing, on a boundary stone or 676 G. F. Kunz, Rings, 1917, p. 45. 677 One such signet is figured in Paul Lacroix's Arts in the Middle Ages, English edition, by Sir W. Armstrong, p. 135, Fig. 139. See also H. Clifford Smith, Jewellery, Methuen & Co., London, 1908, Plate 40. PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 703 terminus, with the inscription : CEDO NVLLI) with which he sealed his last will, dated at Basel, 1536; and I now picture it (Fig. 132) from the figure in Jortin's Life of Erasmus, together with an antique intaglio which belonged to Erasmus. The latter forms part of a finger-ring, and Fig. 132.—Seal of Erasmus with his " terminus " device. (After Jortin.) represents a bearded terminal head, or " Hermes," pos- sibly the Indian Bacchus, in Hellenistic style, without any inscription; from this Erasmus apparently derived his idea of taking a terminal figure as a memento mori Fig. 133.__Finger-ring with an antique intaglio, from which apparently Erasmus derived the idea of his " terminus " device. (After Jortin.) device (Fig. 133). The seal of the Guild of Physicians and Suro-eons at Delft was a skull with crossed bones, and the inscription: MEMENTO MORI. On the seal of Jean Coeur, Archbishop of Bourges (1470), the shield of arms is surmounted by a skeleton with bat's wings; out 704 ASPECTS OF DEATH" IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-ii. of the skeleton's mouth conies a ribbon, inscribed: MEMENTO MORI.678 Inscriptions referring to death occur on a few Oriental seals.679 Thus on a seal of Chosroes I, the Great, of Persia, called Nushirvan or " the Generous Mind " (531-579 a.d.), the builder of the splendid palace (the ruins of which still remain) at Ctesiphon, there is said to have been a pessimistic inscription (such as might have been derived from Ecclesiastes) signifying: " The way is very dark, what can I see ? One lives once only, what can I desire ? Behind me is Death, what can delight me ?" It must, however, be remembered that Chosroes was a man of great general learning, and caused many Greek, Roman, and Indian classics to be translated into Persian. At the conclusion of his first war with the Romans (532 or 533 a.d.) one of the conditions of peace imposed on the Emperor Justinian was that seven Greek, but pagan, philosophers who had resided some time at the Persian court, should be allowed to live in the Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) without being subject to the imperial laws against pagans. 678 Joseph Roman, Manuel de Sigillographie Franchise, Paris, 1912, p. 201. The Archbishop of Bourges (who died in 1483) was the eldest son of Jacques Coeur (1400-1456), the great merchant-financier, whose house is still a monument of interest and curiosity for all visitors to Bourges, and who was falsely accused of having poisoned Agnes Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII of France. 679 There is some confusion between Oriental seals and Oriental talis- mans. A talisman may be a gem-stone engraved with an incuse Arabic inscription like a seal, but in a talisman the inscription should not be reversed as in a seal. Carnelians are favourite stones for Oriental seals, and are likewise used for talismans; in the latter case the incuse inscription is sometimes filled in with white enamel. Such carnelian seals, owing to the red colour of the stone, have been likened by poets to red wine and red lips, and kissing has therefore been playfully likened to sealing, and a kiss to the device known as " Solomon's seal." In this footnote I have used the word " talisman" somewhat loosely for both talismans proper and protective " charms" (i.e. " amulets "). PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 705 Chosroes was a philosopher as well as a man of action and a great leader. Compare the words of another moody or dreamy man of action, the Emperor Napoleon I, who, when a young lieutenant in the artillery at Valence, wrote : " Whither do my thoughts turn to-day? To death. Yet is my life only at its dawn, and I may expect to live a long i.ime. . . . Since I must die some day, why not now ? . . . My life is a burden to me." «"° A table remark of the poet, Samuel Rogers, was : "I sometimes wonder how a man can ever be cheerful, when he knows that he must die." Henry Luttrell681 versified it as follows :— " 0 death, thy certainty is such And thou'rt a thing so fearful, That, musing, I have wondered much How men were ever cheerful." On the seal of Moawiyah II (683 a.d.), the third Caliph of Arabia of the Ommiad dynasty, there are said to have been words meaning, " The world is vanity." On the seal of Walid I (705-715 a.d.), the sixth Caliph of the same dynasty: " 0 Walid, thou art dead and shalt be brought to account." On the seal of Walid II (743-744 a.d.), the eleventh Caliph of the same dynasty : " 0 Walid, take heed of death." 682 An Arab seal of the Blacas Collection683 bears an inscrip- tion signifying: " 0 Khalil, remember death, and put thy trust in God. That will be sufficient." For contrast witb these seal-inscriptions a rather different memento mori idea may be quoted from one of the tales of Haroun-al-Raschid (Caliph of Bagdad, a.d. 786-809).°84 Abu'l Kasim shows the Caliph his treasures, amongst which, on a throne of gold, the embalmed figure of their first owner is seated, witb an inscription stating: " Whosoever shall see me in the condition I now am in, let him open his eyes ; let him reflect that I once was living like himself, and that he will one day die like me. . . . Let him make use of it (the treasure) to acquire li"° From a document still preserved, quoted by T. P. O'Connor, in an article on " The Insanity of Napoleon's Genius," 1911. '*' See H. P. Dodd, The Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 113. B"2 See Abhandlung iiber die Siegel der Arabcr, dc, by Freiherr Hammer-Purgstall, 1818, pp. 6, 8, 9. I am indebted to Dr. Oliver Codrington for reference to this paper. Iis3 J T Reinaud, Description des Monuments Musulmans du Cabinet de M. le Due de Blacas, Paris, 1828, vol. ii. p. 292, and PL iv. No. 128. For this reference I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. J. Allan. 6S4 Claud Field, Tales of the Caliphs, London, 1909, p. 81. 2 Z 706 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [ PAPT IV.-ii. friends and to lead an agreeable life; for when the hour appointed for him is come, all these riches will not save him from the common destiny of men." Compare Longfellow's poem, Haroun al Raschid :— "'0 thou who cboosest for thy share The world, and what the world calls fair, Take all that it can give or lend, 0 But know that death is at the end! ' Haroun al Raschid bowed his head: Tears fell upon the page he read." In regard to Alp Arslan (1029-1072), the powerful sultan of the Seljukian Turks, Edward Gibbon685 writes: "The remains of the sultan were deposited in the tomb of the Seljukian dynasty; and the passenger might read and meditate this useful inscription: O ye who have seen the glory of Alp Arslan exalted to the heavens, repair to Marou, and you will behold it buried in the dust! " Gibbon adds : " The annihilation of the inscription and the tomb itself more forcibly pro- claims the instability of human greatness." In this connexion it may be noted that Nourredin, the powerful Sultan of Damascus (died 1174), regarded all his possessions as " treasure held for the faithful"—as be once explained to his wife when she complained of his gifts to her being of trivial value. The death (in 1193) of Nourredin's successor, Saladin, the opponent in arms of Richard Coeur de Lion in the Third Crusade, is characteristic of the man. At Damascus, to which he had retired, about a year after the peace with the Crusaders, "feeling the approach of the last enemy, and realizing that a greater than Richard was upon him, he ordered that his burial shroud, instead of his usual standard, should be carried through all the streets of Damascus, while his herald cried: ' This— this is all that remains of the glory of Saladin, who conquered the East.' " G8° This reminds one of the ideas of the orthodox Mediaeval Church in Europe, which sometimes made sovereigns, statesmen and prelates prefer to breathe their last lying on a bare plank, a mean pallet of straw, or a bed of ashes, like King Louis IX of France (Saint Louis) (died 1270) and Saint Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln (died 1200), or stripped naked, " in the arms of Poverty," like Saint Francis of Assisi (died 1226). An (" Epicurean ") answer of another kind to the above-mentioned seal of Chosroes is furnished by some apparently newly-discovered verses of Omar Khayyam687:— " And wherefore then should you and I be sad Because to life no minute we can add ? . . . So drink ! For this blue sullen vault of sky Hates our white souls and waits to watch us die. Rest on the soft green grass, my love, for soon We shall be dust together, you and I." 685 Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. lvii. 686 J. M. Ludlow, The Age of the Crusades, Edinburgh, 1897, pp. 178, 235. us7 Miss J. Kilmer's translation, from the New York Evening Times. PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 70: Fig. 134.-" Dance of Death" designed by Holbein for the sheath of 2 Z 2 708 ASPECTS CF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—ii. In regard to passive fatalistic ("Kismet") attitudes towards death and the events of life (see Part II. Heading xvi.), another Oriental seal of the Blacas Collection688 may be instanced, the inscription on which signifies that it is "of no avail to defend one's self against destiny." One would expect that swords and daggers and their handles and sheaths would sometimes have been deco- rated (by way of grim allusion to their use) with memento mori emblems or devices. It is not therefore astonishing that a Holbein design (see Fig. 134) for the sheath of a dagger (the Museum at Basel and the Beuth-Schinkel Museum at Charlottenburg, Berlin) represents a spirited "Dance of Death" subject, Death fetching a king, a queen, a soldier, a young woman, a monk, and an infant.689 Part of the handle of a Moorish dagger of the fifteenth century G9° is in the fearsome form of a human skeleton, about which is a large snake (see Fig. 135). Memento mori death's-heads (generally pierced for use as rosary beads or for suspension in various ways) are met with in ivory, rock-crystal, amber, silver, &c. In the British Museum is an Ancient Mexican rock-crystal death's-head, that is to say, a mass of rock-crystal cut and polished in the shape of a human skull. It is nearly if not quite as large as an average adult skull, and is referred to by G. F. Kunz in his Gems and Precious Stones of North America™1 who says that similar skulls exist in the Blake Collection (United States National Museum), the Douglas Collection (New York), and the ,:ss J. T. Reinaud, op. cit, vol. ii. p. 28, PI. i. No. 8. liS9 See A. Goette, Holbeins Totentanz, Strassburg, 1897, plate i.; and E. Hiss, Dessins Wornements de Hans Holbein, Paris, 1886, plate xxi. No. 3 ; and Francis Douce, op. cit. eoo Figured by J. F. Riano, The Industrial Arts in Spain, South Kensington Museum Art Handbooks, London, 1879, p. 89. B!" G. F. Kunz, Gems and Precious Stones of North America, 2nd edition, 1892, p. 285. PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, ecC. 709 Trocadero Museum (Paris). A much larger rock-crvstal skull is in the possession of G. H. Sisson of Xew York, measuring l&fe inches in length, 15* inches in width,' and 15 ji inches in height. Kunz 692 adds that the making Fig. 135.—Moorish dagger of the fifteenth century. (After J» F. Riano.) of these rock-crystal skulls may have been suggested by the real skulls, incrusted with turquoise, &c, such as the Christy specimen now in the British Museum. The actual purpose, however, for which the Mexican rock-crystal tia- G. F. Kunz, op. cit, p. 28b. 710 ASPECTS CF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—ii. skulls were made appears to be unknown. It seems to me quite possible that they were in some way connected with Aztec religious observances. One may recall the descriptions of the "teocallis" or temples of Ancient Mexico, and the gruesome rites practised by the priests, as they appeared to the Spanish conquerors. Cortes and his companions, on their arrival in the city of Mexico, found that human sacrifices to the Aztec idols were of very frequent occurrence, and saw human hearts which had evidently quite recently been torn out of the bodies of unfortunate victims. From the terraces of a lofty teocalli on to which the Aztec " Emperor," Montezuma II, conducted them, they could enjoy the fine view over the surrounding country, but at the shrines the loathsome smears of blood and nauseous odour contrasted most unpleasantly with a dazzling display of gold and gems or precious stones. In this connexion one may remember that death-masks or mummy-masks are occasionally represented on ancient Peruvian pottery of the time of the Incas. Here one should mention that in Japanese " netsukes " (a kind of toggles) and other Japanese carvings of ivory, bone, boxwood, &c, human skulls and skeletons are often represented, possibly not with any memento mori intention, but merely as grotesque ornaments, like the cleverly modelled fierce-looking masks which are used as net- sukes, &c. Perhaps there may originally have been an idea of their power to ward off evil spirits and ghosts, like the various and numerous European " charms," or " protective amulets," employed by the ignorant and superstitious against the "evil eye." The skulls and skeletons are sometimes being " eaten by worms," or associated with snakes, frogs, toads, &c, as if the Japanese designers had PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 711 obtained their ideas from old European memento mori ivories. One Japanese ivory which I have seen repre- sents a human skeleton fighting with toads, as if the artist had got the curious grotesque idea of a dead body resenting his " heritage " of " creeping things, beasts, and worms." In some Japanese coloured drawings and prints ghosts or skeletons are represented, probably as "grotesque horrors," like (if I may mention an analogy at hand) the skeleton's head with one enormous eye, depicted as appearing to frightened sailors during a storm at sea, in one of Alfred Kubin's designs of 1907.693 As to the significance of skulls and skeletons in Japanese and Chinese art, I would again quote the story of the Chinese mystic, Chuang Tzii.694 One day the Chinese philosopher came upon a bleached human skull, and [Hamlet-wise] mused as to what kind of a man it had once formed part of. In the night he dreamt that the skull appeared to him and told him that after death there were no troubles, that existence was bounded only by eternity, and that the happiness of a king among men did not exceed that enjoyed by the dead. I have, however, seen one Japanese design at least in which living men are represented as being "haunted" by the ghosts of those whose deaths had been caused by them. Jean de Dinteville, Lord of Polisy, as represented in Holbein's picture (1533) known as " The Ambassadors," wore a hat-jewel formed of a silver (or white enamel) skull set in gold. The enamelled gold hat-medallion (sixteenth century) in the British Museum, with the Ba3 Reproduced in S. Seligmann's Der bose Blick, Berlin, 1910, vol. 2, p. 436. ,;,M Musings of\a Chinese Mystic, London, 1906, p. 84. 712 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.-ii. original owner's name, Carolus von Sternsee, bears an elaborate allegorical device (relating to the fickleness of fortune and the uncertainty of human life, and to the world, the flesh, the devil, life, death, &c), in whicb both death (a skeleton) and the devil figure. Skulls, skeletons, and decaying bodies, as memento mori devices in jewellery, just as in paintings and engravings, were frequently represented with long worms, snakes, toads, &c, that is to say, being " eaten by worms," the idea having been doubtless chiefly suggested by the well- known passage in Ecclesiasticus (x. 11): "For when a man is dead he shall inherit creeping things, beasts, and worms." The artists seem to have preferred snakes to worms, in order to increase the horror of their subjects (cf. Part II. xix. xx.). In the British Museum are several memento mori carved ivories mostly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (possibly certain ivories of the kind are earlier i.e. of the fifteenth century), and mostly made as beads or for suspension. It is probable that memento mori ivory skulls, &c, at last became such familiar objects as to lose their horror-inspiring quality. I have seen a carved ivory (of the seventeenth century ?) representing a human skull being " eaten by worms " ; the worms (or rather snakes) and some flowers are arranged in a symmetrical ornamental pattern, about the orbits, &c.; the whole device is thus transformed into a mere orna- mental design and has lost its power of striking terror, just as phonetic alphabetical letters have lost the original hieroglyphic or picture- writing significance of primitive times. The carved ivory skull in question may possibly, however, be of Japanese workmanship—produced as a " grotesque horror " or " quaint ornament" (see back). Some of the above-mentioned memento mori ivories are quite analogous in their significance to the sepulchral monuments of the gisant type of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries referred to in Part I. A., and to certain memento mori or admonitory medals described in Part III., PART IV.-ii.] FINCER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 713 such as those portraying a beautiful woman on the obverse and a skeleton on the reverse. One of these ivories (Fig. 136) represents a corpse's head and a human skull back to back; the face of the former is "eaten by worms"; in the mouth of the latter a toad is visible; on the fore- head of the face is the inscription, in black letters, " a la saint. . ." on the frontal bone of the skull is: "point de devant a la mort." G95 Another of these ivories represents Fig. 136.—Memento mori ivory in the British Museum. on one half a lady's head and on the other her skull, below which is a pair of scales.696 Another has on one side the head of a woman (head-dress of the early six- teenth century), with the inscription: ELLAS NEST(?) 805 Catalogue of the Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era in the British Museum, London, 1909, p. 148, No. 441. 696 Catalogue of tlie Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era in the British Museum, London, 1909, p. 148, No. 442. / 14 ASPECTS <)E DEATH IN APT AND EPIGRAM. [l'ART IV. ii. IL POINT POSSIBLE TAX ECHAPEK; below: ME- MENTO; on the other side are the head and shoulders of a skeleton.697 An elaborate one (Fig. 137) has on one side the head of a moribund person, on whose forehead is a band inscribed, " dura et aspera"; on the other side is a skull with worms; below are two gold labels enamelled with INRI and MARIA; from the base hangs a small gold enamelled pendant representing two hearts crowned ; Fig. 137.—Memento mori ivory in the British Museum. at the top a small chain is attached for suspension.698 This ivory carving has been regarded as the work of Christoph Harrich (who died in 1630), but is probably of earlier work. In the Victoria and Albert Museum (Mr. J. Pierpont 697 Catalogue of tlie Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era in the British Museum, p. 149, No. 443. tia* Ibid., p. 149, No. 444. PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 715 Morgan's collection in the Loan Court) were exhibited some similar carved ivories of the sixteenth century. Two have on one half the head of a man, and on the other half his bare skull. Another has on one side the head of a youth (sixteenth-century dress), and on the other side the upper part of a skeleton, with the inscription: COGITA MORI. Another has on one side the portrait of a woman, and on the other side the upper portion of a skeleton, with the inscription : V. OYOT (?) ERIS ("See what you will be "). Mr. Henry Oppenheimer has kindly shown me a similar rock-crystal bead in his collection, representing on one side a human face, and on the other side a skull. Another ivory of the same class (Marlay Bequest, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), of doubtful authenticity, represents the mask of a moribund man, and on the other side, a skull with lizard-like reptiles; below are the inscriptions: COGITA MORI and RESPICE FINE(M). A larger ivory of the same kind in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford is eight inches high, and has on one side the figure of a woman slightly draped, and on the other side the figure of a skeleton in a shroud. This is referred to by Mr. Alfred Maskell, who, in his book on Ivories, likewise describes a remarkable termi- nating rosary-bead (" boss ") in the Victoria and Albert Museum.699 The bead in question (Fig. 138), of old German work, is large—two inches in diameter—and consists of four half-figures placed back to back. One is a man in the costume of the time with a cup in his hand, and beneath is inscribed: " Amor mundi." The next represents the man dying, the mouth open, gasping for 699 A. Maskell, Ivories, Methuen & Co., London, 1905, p. 188. See also the account by W. Maskell, A Description of the Ivories, Ancient and Mediaeval, in the South Kensington Museum, London, 1872, p. 6. 716 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGPAM. [PART IV.—ii. breath, and under him is the inscription : " Vado mori." The third shows him in a shroud, with staring eves and swollen tongue; the abdomen is occupied by a hideous head, supposed to signify punishment; under him is the inscription: " Sequere me." The fourth is a skeleton with an hour-glass, and with worms crawling in and out of the sockets of his eyes ; the inscription below is : " Ego sum." In regards to the old Vado Mori poems, and Fig. 138.—Large rosary-bead (" or boss ") of memento mori design. the early prints and literature of admonitory significance analogous to all such ivories, &c, see Part I. B. Large ivory rosary-beads of the same memento mori class sometimes portray three conjoined heads, namely, of a man and woman in the prime of life, and of a skeleton. There is a good specimen of this variety in the Victoria and Albert Museum; and a similar one in the Pierpont Morgan collection, formerly exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, represented figures of a man and woman (husband and wife ?) on one side, PART IV. -if] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 717 and on the other side (back to back with them) a skeleton with worms. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is likewise a rosary of sixteenth-century German work, con- sisting of twelve carved ivory beads, the two terminating beads, or " bosses," being larger than the others. The larger of the two bosses has three heads carved upon it: a man's, bearing a laurel-wreath; a woman's, with hair plaited in the form of a diadem ; and a skull, also crowned with laurel, out of the jaws of which worms creep. The other beads are carved with representations of a king, an emperor, and a pope, aucl with the heads of princes, princesses, gentlemen, ladies, bishops and ecclesiastical dignitaries, monks and nuns. The whole rosary is designed to show the power of death, whilst the tablet at the top represents the Virgin Mary and St. John, by whose intercession (cf. Part I. B.—the death-bed scenes of the Ars Moriendi, etc.) doubtless the owner hoped to obtain salvation.700 A larger carving in wood, eighteen inches in height, illustrated by Julius von Schlosser,701 under the description " Allegorie der Verganglichkeit," is obviously meant to have the same significance, although death is not actually presented. It is of very fine German work of about the end of the fifteenth century, and consists of three full- length nude figures standing with their backs to each other, namely, a young man, a young woman, and a very ao-ed emaciated woman with a distorted face. With this may be compared a German painting of the sixteenth century, in the Museo del Prado at Madrid, representing 700 See W. Maskell, Description of the Ivories, Ancient and Mediaeval, in the South Kensington Museum, London, 1872, p. 115. 701 Julius von Schlosser, Werke der Kleinplastik, Vienna, 1910, vol. ii. PL 1. 718 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. ( PART IV.—ii. " the three ages of mankind." Death, a shrivelled mummy-like figure of " skin and bones," has come to fetch an aged woman, and links his arm in hers to conduct her away. She, evidently unwilling to accompany him, takes hold of the shoulder and scanty drapery of a younger woman, standing by her; but the latter turns away to avoid the disagreeable sight. At their feet lies a child in an attitude of peaceful sleep.702 I have seen modern (nineteenth-century) coloured wax statuettes, intended to convey much the same idea. One side of each standing figure is modelled after a richly dressed man or woman in the prime of life, whilst the other side represents a skeleton with fragments of decaying flesh and skin still adherent to it. Mr. C. J. S. Thompson tells me that the two wax figures of this class in the Welloome Historical Medical Museum (1913) are certainly the work of the late Richard Cockle Lucas (1800-1883). Lucas is supposed by many to have modelled the wax bust of "Flora," now in the Berlin Royal Museum, which was olaimed by W. Bode as a genuine work of Leonardo da Vinci, and gave rise to so keen a newspaper correspondence about the beginning of 1910. Symbolically quite analogous to the ivories and other objects just described, are a couple of prints (representing Vanity) by Math. Greuter, of Lyon, dated 1596. One of these shows a lady in the costume of the period, with farthingale and broad skirts. On the other, the lady's skirts are opened so as to expose what is beneath them, namely, a skeleton, a coffin, and a skull (encircled with a wreath). The inscription on both prints is : " Omnis caro 702 See illustration in Paul Ricber's L''Art et la Medecine, Paris, 1902, p. 523, Fig. 328. PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, eVX. 719 foenum, et gloria ejus sicut flos agri," which means : " All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field " (Isaiah xl. 6). With these may also be compared a German " memento mori" woodcut of the first decade of the sixteenth century, representing a richly dressed woman (holding a mirror) in the prime of life, but with the head of a skeleton (with an insect crawling over it) instead of the beautiful face which one would expect. It bears wishes for the New Year and inscrip- tions relating to inevitable death and the folly of human vanity.703 R. Dagley704 mentions two prints, representing respectively male and female figures. Each of the two figures is made up of a skeleton half, joined to a fleshly and richly dressed half. Certain modern paintings in various European galleries exhibit a similar striking contrast. One such picture shows a beautiful semi-nude woman standing in front of, and looking at, a mounted human skeleton, which might have been used for anatomical demonstrations. Here one may mention various jewels, small bronzes, &c, bearing devices referring in one way or another to the subject of death. Mr. \V. T. Ready has kindly given me an illustration (Fig. 139) of an early sixteenth-century German shell-cameo, which is circular, PI inch in diameter, and mounted in a silver-gilt setting of the time. It represents a nude man and a nude woman seated facing, with a figure of Death, holding a scythe, standing between them in the background. The woman has two infants in her arms, one of whom is being seized by 703 See the description in the Catalogue of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts in the British Museum, by Campbell Dodgson, vol. i. London, 1903, p. 117. 704 R. Dagley, Death's Doings, second edition, London, 1827, p. 9. 720 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—ii. Death. Before the man is an anvil, on which lie is hammering a child, whilst he grasps another child tightly between his knees. This device (the arrangement of which may have been suggested by some group repre- senting A'enus in the workshop of Vulcan) appears to me emblematic of a somewhat pessimistic view of life (man, woman, and children) and death. The child is thrust naked into the world to take part in the trials and penalties and pains of life, whether he wishes or not; death stands by, awaiting him, and often seizes him, not Fig. 139.—German shell-cameo of the sixteenth century. during his troubles, when he is being hammered on the anvil, but when he is happy and contented with life and does not wish to die. I would further explain the device by the help of the type on the medals (dated respectively 1458 and 1466), already described and figured (Figs. 47 and 48) in Part IIL, by Giovanni Boldu of Venice, representing a young man seated, hiding his face with his hands, with a winged child (probably meant to represent a kind of " genius " of his life, the flame or torch of which he holds) and a skull before him. Compare the passage in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (part i. cap. xiii.), PART IV.-ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 721 of which an English version is given in Longfellow's Hyperion :— " Wei nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Niichte Auf seinem Bette weinend sass, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Miichte. "Ihr fiihrt ins Leben uns hinein, Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden, Dann uberlasst ihr ihn der Pein, Denn alle Schuld racht sich auf Erden.'' Fig. 140.—Reverse (reduced) of a medal by Giovanni Boldu of Venice. (After Heiss.) In this connexion another medal, made by Boldu in 1458, may likewise be referred to. It represents the artist's bust on the obverse, with inscription in Greek and Hebrew. On the reverse (Fig. 140) is a young man, nude, seated to left, resting his head on his right arm. Under him is a skull, and behind him an old woman is striking him with a whip. In front of him is a winged angel, holding a cup, as an emblem of Christ's Passion (cf. pictures of Christ's Agony in the Garden, by 3 A 722 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—ii. Giovanni Bellini, &c). Above is the sun. The legend is : OPVS • IOANIS • BOLDV • PICTORLS • VENETI • MCCCCLVIII.705 In Thomas Wright's introduction to Fairholt's Miscel- lanea Graphica,106 a curious seventeenth-century jewel in the Londesborough Collection is illustrated, which appears to have belonged to King James I of England. It is a silver apple containing a small skull, the top of which opens like a lid. Inside the skull are representations of the Creation and the Resurrection, with the inscription: " Post mortem vita eternitas." Watches of the seventeenth century were occasionally made in the form of a death's-head, so as to serve memento mori purposes, reminding one that with every hour one is nearer one's end, and that hours misspent cannot be re- gained. In this respect they resemble old sun-dials and clocks with quaint memento mori inscriptions. Compare the words of Thomas a Kempis (about 1380 to 1471), in his De Imitatione Christi: " Memento semper finis, et quia perditum non redit tempus"—which could have been used for an inscription on a sun-dial or a clock. The moral and admonitory inscriptions, relating to the waste or misuse of time, on clocks and watches, are of course the representatives of similar verses, epigrams, &c, written in regard to, or inscribed upon, sun-dials and hour-glasses in earlier times. F. J. Britten707 describes and figures several " skull- 7os ip.]^ njgcia^ cast m Dronze, 3*4 inches in diameter, is described by A. Armand, Les Medailleurs Italiens, 2nd edition, 1883, vol. i. p. 36, No. 2; and by A. Heiss, Les Medailleurs de la Renaissance, Paris, 1887, vol. i., Venetian medals, pi. ii. No. 1. 706 London, 1856, p. 63. 707 F. J. Britten, Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, third edition, London, 1911, pp. 127-138. PART IV.-ii.J FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 723 watches " or " death's-head watches," the most remarkable of which is traditionally said to have belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and to have been presented by her to her maid of honour, Mary Seaton (or Setoun), one of " the four Maries." Cf. The Queen's Marie, an anony- mous poem in Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border:— " Yestreen the Queen had four Mairies, The night she'll have but three; There was Marie Seaton, and Marie Beaton, And Marie Charmichael and me."' I have figured the memento mori watch in question (Fig. 141) after the steel-engraving in Historical and Literary Curiosities, by Charles John Smith, F.S.A. (London, 1840), to which my attention was kindly drawn by Mr. W. Wale. The skull is of silver-gilt, and on the forehead is engraved a figure of Death holding scythe and hour-glass, standing between a palace and a cottage, with his toes applied equally to the door of each; the appropriate inscription is from Horace (Od., i. 4. 13): " Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres." On the hinder part of the skull is a representation of Time, with the inscription : " Tempus edax rerum tuque invidiosa vetustas" (Ovid, Met am., lib. xv. line 234). Ovid's lines are:— " Tempus edax rerum, tuque, invidiosa vetustas, Omnia destruitis, vitiataque dentibus aevi Paulatim lenta consumitis omnia morte." 'The scene of "the temptation" with Eve about to pluck the forbidden fruit, occupies the chief portion of the watch seen in the illustration (Fig. 141). Some other me mat do mori watches in existence are traditionallv supposed to have belonged to Mary Queen 3 a 2 Fig. 141.—A silver memento mori watch, shaped like a death's-head, said to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, and to have been given by her to Mary Seaton. (After C. J. Smith.) PART IV.—ii.] FINGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 72;") of Scots ; one of them mentioned by Britten708 is enclosed in a piece of rock-crystal shaped like a coffin. The same author also says that in the Vienna Treasury there is a small skull-watch of the reign of the Emperor Eudolph II (1576-1612), in which the movable lower jaw has been constructed to strike the number of the hours against the upper jaw. A rock-crystal watch shaped like a death's- head, which I have illustrated,709 is said to have belonged to that mentally-morbid character, King Henry III of France (Fig. 142). Another curious death's-head watch, Pig. 142.—A rock-crystal death's-head watch. (After Guiart.) made by the English clock-maker, Daniel Quare (1648- 1724), was in the collection of Catharine II of Eussia, that extraordinary " Semiramis of the North." There are several silver death's-head watches in the Cluny Museum at Paris. A rather commonplace silver seventeenth- century death's-head watch is in the Fitzwilliam Museum (Frank Smart Bequest) at Cambridge. Here likewise may be mentioned the small silver 708 Britten, loc. cit. ■°* With the kind permission of Professor Jules Guiart, from Aesculape, Paris, January, 1913, p. 20. 726 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. [PART IV. ii. pomander boxes or vinaigrettes in the shape of a human skull with an hour-glass on the top—some of them pro- bably made in quite modern times for the benefit of curio-hunters. Amongst memento mori jewels in the British Museum are locket-like pendants or charms (seventeenth century) shaped like a coffin, containing the minute figure of a skeleton. One of these coffin-shaped pendants is of gold, enamelled, bearing the words, COGITA MORI YT VIYAS ("Think of dying so that you may live"). Another in silver is inscribed with the name of the deceased. A coffin-shaped pendant of this kind is figured by H. Clifford Smith, in his work on Jewellery.110 It is of enamelled gold and contains a minute articu- lated skeleton. In the collection of the late Mr. M. P. W. Boulton was a fine jewel (German sixteenth-century work) of enamelled gold, shaped as a sarcophagus with nude figures of Adam and Eve and a serpent on the cover; on the sides were Greek inscriptions signifying " Know thyself " and " Eemember the end "; inside was a minia- ture skeleton. A locket-like memorial pendant of a later date in the possession of Lady Evans is in the shape of a minute coffin; the lid is made to open on a hinge, and in the inside is some hair in an ornamental border of gold thread, with a death's-head (there were originally doubt- less two death's-heads) and the initials P.P. in fine gold wire; the back is inscribed: " P.B. obit ye 17 Mar: 1703 Aged 54 years." A little pendant (early seventeenth century) in the British Museum is of gold and enamel in the form of a skull;m in the interior of the skull, which opens on a 710 H. Clifford Smith, Jewellery, London, 1908, Plate xliv. No. 16. 711 It is figured in F. W. Fairholt's Miscellanea Graphica (London, 1856, PL i. Figs. 3, 4) from the Londesborough Collection, but is now exhibited in the Gold Ornament Room of the British Museum. PART IV.-ii.] FIXGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 727 hinge, is a minute enamelled figure of a skeleton with an hour-glass under its neck as a pillow. A small heart- shaped memorial locket of gold, enamel, and gold-thread ornamentation (late seventeenth century) represents a skeleton emerging from a tomb, with an angel on either side, trumpeting the resurrection; below is the mono- gram of the deceased, with the inscription, COME YE BLIiSSED. A small memorial brooch of the same period and kind of work bears the device of a figure seated at a table with open book, candle, and death's-head; and the legend, LEARN TO DIE. This design may be compared to that of the reverse of a medal, dated 1556, supposed to be the work of Jacques Jonghelinck (1530-1606), a sculptor and medallist of Antwerp. The obverse of the medal bears the portrait (at the age of 49 years) of Viglius van Zuicbem van Aytta, the learned and bigoted President of the Privy Council of Philip II. The reverse presents his punning device and motto (on his name, Viglius): a lighted candle, an open book, and an hour-glass, on a table; with the motto, Vita mortalium vigilia, "the life of mortals is a vigil." Cf. St. Matthew, xvi. 41 (and other parts of the New Testament) : " Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation " ; and the Latin Vulgate version: "Vigilate et orate"; and such mottoes (sometimes inscribed on old sun-dials, &c.) as Laborare est orare, and Ora ne te ultima Jiora fallat A small eighteenth-century mourning brooch exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum has a miniature painting of the deceased's relatives mourning at his tomb, in the usual style of the period, with the inscription : HEAYEN HAS IN STORE WHAT THOY HAST LOST. (See back, in regard to the popular eighteenth century con- solatory saying, Not lost, but gone before.) Minute skulls in ivory or wbite enamel (with perhaps ruby-eyes) have sometimes been mounted for use as pins for the scarf or necktie, probably to supply an occasional demand for eccentric jewels and ornaments in modern times. Some specimens of macabre finger- rings and jewels are actually spurious, being modern imitations of cinqueccnto objects, cheaply made by casting, &c, in order to deceive unwary curio-hunters who have never seen original specimens of elaborate workmanship. 728 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AXl) EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—ii. Even mirrors used by ladies, and mirror-cases, have been decorated with death's-heads and similar devices. Fig. 143.—Medal (1552) of the physician, Adolph Occo III, of Augsburg. (After Picque.) The reverse design has been suggested by a woodcut in the Anatomy of Vesalius, pub- lished in 1543. (See Fig. 144.) C. AY King alludes to a mirror-frame of this kind which he speaks of as Lucrezia Borgia's. The little gorgon's head above the curious design of the back of the famous PAPT IV.-ii.] FIXGER-RINGS, JEWELS, &C. 729 l«4 A N O R E AE HVMANI COR' r E R. I S Qjr AS SC LIBEKORVM, SVAQ.VE UtCTC ddl VE5AL11 BRVXELLENSIS PORIS O S S I V M . C AE snwj.vr tas~t j£ y s SEDE POSITOKVM EX ;ai?*5«^®* Fig 144 —Anatomical woodcut by Jan von Calcar (see Part I. D.), from the great anatomical work of Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, first edition, printed by J. Oporinus, at Basel, 1543, p 164 This woodcut suggested the design on various memento nuni medals, &c. Cf. Part I. D.; Part III medals of the Occo family of physicians, of Augsburg (Fig. 143), and Danish and German memento mori medals of about 1634. 7-">0 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AXI) EPIGRAM. [PAPT IV.—Li. " Martelli" mirror, supposed to be the work of Donatello (in the Yictoria and Albert Museum, London), also carries with it, strictly speaking, an allusion to death, though only a distant echo of its meaning in the ancient world. In the eighteenth century and later death's-heads (notably a human skull held between two human hands), with or without snakes, and similar devices of the " skull- and-skeleton" class, carved in ivory, bone or other materials, sometimes served to ornament the handles of walking-sticks, &c. Such handles were probably, most of them if not all, made in Japan. With the admonitory devices and inscriptions on sepulchral monuments and memorial medals, finger- rings, &c, may be compared some of those on funeral palls. The hearse-cloth or state pall of the Yintners' Company of London, still preserved at the Company's Hall, bears, amongst other devices in embroidery, four representations of Death, supporting a coffin with one hand, and in the other holding a spade. Above these four figures are labels with the following inscriptions: (1) "Morere ut vivas," i.e. "Die so that you may live (for ever)"; (2) " Mors p(ec)catoru(m) pessima," i.e. " The death of sinners is most wretched "; (3) " Mori disce quia morieris," i.e. " Learn to die because you shall die "; (4) " Mors justoru(m) vita a(n)i(m)aru(m)," i.e. " The death of the just is the life of souls." These sentences are of course in the spirit of such orthodox didactic books as the Mediaeval Latin Ars Moriendi, the English Craft of Dying, &'c. At Subiaco in Italy (Province of Rome) a fresco depicting the " Triumph of Death " is accompanied by a somewhat similar inscription : " Mors malis formidabilis ; bonis desiderabilis ; nemini evitabilis." This inscription is on the scythe held by Death, who is mounted on horseback, riding over bis multitudinous victims. State hearse-cloths also are in the possession of several PART IV.-ii.J FIXCER-RIXCS, JEWELS, &C. 731 other City Companies: the Merchant Taylors' Company possess two; the Ironmongers', the Fishmongers', the Brewers', the Saddlers', each possess one. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is part of a fifteenth-century hearse (from Snarford Church, in Lincolnshire) bearing the inscription :— " Aspice, quid prodest transacti temporis evunr! Omne quod est nichil est preter amare Deum." In Part II. xiv. I have quoted a similar (epitaph) inscription, after John Woever's Ancient Funerall Monuments, commencing: "Respice quid prodest praesentis temporis aevum." Praeter amare Deum is the addition made by Thomas a Kempis (born at Kempen in Rhenish Prussia about 1380, died in the Nether- lands in 1471), in his famous Dc Imitatione Christi (lib. i. cap. 1), to the words of the " Preacher " (Ecclesiastes i. 2): " Vanitas Vanitatum, et omnia Vanitas" (Latin Vulgate version)—thus making the whole passage read: " Vanity of vanities: all is vanity, excepting to love God." In this connexion it is interesting that roughly cut into the plaster on the wall of the so-called " Haunted Galleiy " (which was said to be haunted by the ghost of Queen Catherine Howard, who was beheaded in 154^) of Hampton Court Palace, there has been discovered a Latin inscription, ending, praeter amare Deum. The first part of the short inscription is said to be not decipherable, but I suggest that it was Omnia praetereunt, like a house-motto mentioned in Part II. xv. In that case the whole inscription would be the Latin pentameter line, Omnia praetereunt praeter amare Deum, which was a favourite saying of Kaspar Cruciger (1504-1548), the German Protestant theologian and friend of Luther. In the Times for Dec. 3rd, 1917 (p. 4), Mr. Ernest Law states that this inscription was most probably cut by or by direction of "Mr. Henry Williams, Priest," Surveyor of the Works at Hampton Court, both to Cardinal Wolsey and, after Wolsey's fall, to King Henry VIII. The so-called "Haunted Gallery" is on the eastern side of the "Round Kitchen Court," and is one of those spacious galleries built by Cardinal Wolsey himself, which have been referred to by bis gentleman usher, George Cavendish, in his metrical life of Wolsey (written about 1557, published in 1815):— "Mv galleries were fair, both large and long, To walke in them, when that it lyked me best." A kind of old funeral pall in the Cathedral of Evreux is embroidered with the representation of a corpse being "eaten by worms," and bears the Latin inscription : "Credo quod redemptor meus vivit," &c. (Job xix. 25 and 26). 7-i2 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AXI> EPIGRAM. [PART IV. ii. With the preceding admonitory devices and inscrip- tions the following Latin couplet may be compared :— " Vive diu, sed vive Deo : nam vivere mundo Mortis opus; viva est vivere vita Deo."712 ("Live long, but live for God; for to live for the world is death's work [it is unlikely that 'opus' means 'need' here]; the living life is to live for God.") Tins advice forms part of tbe epitaph (to which Dr. -I. A. Arkwright drew my attention) on the monument of a member of the Burrell family (1628) in Cuckfield Church, Sussex. Tbe words of the epitaph are, I find, obviously suggested by the two last lines of an epistle written by Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in Campania713 (who lived about '-ViA- 712 This epitaph inscription reminds one of the repetition of syllables in some Mediaeval and later Latin jingling "puzzle-verses," such as the hexameter, "Mors mortis mordet mortalia morsu," which E. H. Langlois said he could decipher on a representation of " the Three Dead and the Three Living," at Longpaon, near Rouen. Cf. also the following Latin verses quoted by R. Pierpoint (Notes and Queries, July 6, 1889, p. 12), relating to the Christian " death of death " :— "Mors mortis morti mortem mors morte redemit." "Mors mortis, morti, mortem si morte dedisset; Hie foret in terris, aut integer astra petisset: Sed quia dissolvi fuerat sic juncta necesse; Ossa tenet saxum, proprio mens gaudet in esse." "Mors mortis morti mortem nisi morte dedisset ['or, dedisses], Aeternae vitae Janua clausa foret." " Morti morte tua mortem moriendo dedisti, Est tua mors mortia Christe medela mea." Cf. also— "Mala mali malo mala contulit omnia mundo, Causa mali tanti foemina sola fuit." (" The jaw-bone of the evil one brought all evils to the world by an apple, The cause of so much evil was woman alone.") 713 Bishop Paulinus, of Nola, is the reputed inventor or introducer of large church bells, and from Campania the Italian word campana (for that kind of bell) is said to be derived. PART IV.-ii.] FLXCER-RIXGS, JEWELS, &C. 733 431, and was a pupil of the poet Ausonius), in which he exhorts Licentius to live a godly life714:— " Vive, precor, sed vive Deo : nam vivere mundo Mortis opus; vera est vivere vita Deo." For the numerous memento mori and admonitory inscriptions on sun-dials and church bells, see The Book of Sun-Dials, by Mrs. Alfred Gatty, enlarged and re- edited by H. K. F. Eden and Eleanor Lloyd, London, 1900 ; Ye Sundial Booke, by T. G. TV. Henslow, London, 1914, which contains a large collection of verses relating to the subject by Mr. Henslow; the first edition of Charles Leadbetter's Mcclianick Dialling (London, 1737), which is interesting because chapter xxiii. gives a list of mottoes for sun-dials, all of which must'of course be prior to 1737, the date of publication of the book; the chapter on old sun-dials in G. Clinch's Handbook of English Antiquities, London, 1905 ; the part on sun-dials, bells, &c, in S. F. A. Caulfeild's House Mottoes and Inscriptions, new edition, London, 1908; A Book about Bells, by G. S. Tyack, London, 1898 ; La Cloche, by J. I). Blavignac, Geneva, 1877 ; and the various works on English church bells by H. B. Walters, including Church Bells of England (London, 1912), Church Bells (London, 1908), &c. I have already referred to many of the sun-dial mottoes. The function of the church bell as the "passing bell" is often alluded to in poetry, but it should be noted that the passing bell was (in some parts of Europe at least) originally tolled to signify, not that someone had just died, but that someone was (apparently) dying, that is to say, passing from this 714 See Migne's Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, vol. lxi. column 184. 734 ASPECTS OF DEATH IX ART AXI) EPIGRAM. [PART IV.—ii. life. Amongst the inscriptions on church bells in England are:— " I toll the funeral knell, I hail the festal day, The fleeting hour I tell, I summon all to pray"; "Remember death"; "Prepare to die"; " My roaring sound doth warning #ive That men cannot heare allwaies live ' : " All men who hear my mournful sound Repent before you lye [or be] in ground";71"' " When you hear this mournful sound, Prepare yourselves for underground " ; " I to the church the living call And to the grave do summon all" ; " Unto the church I do you call, Death to the grave will summon all." The last inscription occurs with the following lines added:— " Attend the instruction which I give, That so you may for ever live." The two following Latin inscriptions are respectively from Warmington (Northamptonshire) and Hambleton (Rutlandshire) : " Vitam metior, mortem ploro " ; " Non sono animabus mortuorum sed auribus viventium." A bell of the year 1624 at Shillington (Bedfordshire) furnishes one of the best elegiac Latin couplets of its kind:— " Cum cano busta mori cum pulpita vivere disce ; Disce mori nostro vivere disce sono." On the minster bell at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland, is the inscription : " Defunctos plango, vivos voco, fulmiua frango." This is almost identical with the one always quoted in connexion with Schiller's famous Lied ron der Glocke: " Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango." 715 Such an inscription occurs on a Bakewell (Derbyshire) church bell dated 1671. PART IV-ii.] FIXGER-RIXGS, JEWELS, &C. 735 H. B. AValters716 writes: "An old monkish rhyme sums up the ancient uses of bells as follows:— ' Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum ; Defunctos ploro, pestem fugo, festa decoro; Funera plango, fulgura frango, sabbata pango; Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos.'" A similar old monkish rhyme is quoted in Brand's Popular Antiquities (edition of 1849, vol. ii. p. 213, footnote), as follows :— " En ego campana, nunquam denuntio vana, Laudo Deum verum, plebem voco, congrego clerum, Defunctos plango, vivos voco, fulinina frango, Vox men. vox vita2, voco vos ad sacra venite. Sanctos collaudo, tonitrua fugo, funera claudo, Funera plango, fulgura frango, Sabbatha pango; Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos." 71(i H. B. Walters, Church Bells, London, 1908. ADDENDUM. Antique Pictorial or Plastic Analogues to Luciax's "Dialogues of the Dead." Luciax, who is supposed to have been born at Samosata, on the Euphrates, about 120 a.d., and to have died about 200 a.d., is justly celebrated for his brilliant fanciful and humorous " Dialogues of the Gods," " Dialogues of the Dead," "Auction of Philosophers," &c. With keen humour and epigrammatic satire he casts ridicule on the ancient orthodox religious beliefs of his time. Both his gods and dead are, of course, represented as quite anthropomorphic in their sentiments (even though the latter are pictured as skeletons), and the words Lucian puts into their mouths include much satire on the habits, manners, aims, ambi- tions and foibles of his fellow living human beings. Amongst his " Dialogues of the Dead " let us turn to that of Nireus, Thersites and Menippus (Firmin Didot edition of Lucian's works, Paris, 1867, p. 113, No. 25). The scene is in Hades. There, before the shade (skeleton) of the Cynic philosopher, Menippus, two other male shades (likewise represented of course as skeletons) are con- tending for the palm of beauty. They are Nireus, who, next to Achilles, had been during life considered the handsomest amongst the Greeks at Troy, and Thersites, who on the contrary was, according to Homer's Iliad, " the ugliest man amongst the Greeks who came to Troy." The shade of Nireus quotes Homer's Iliad about himself : o? KaWiaTos dvijp vtto "iXiov rjXdov. But Menippus cynically decides that in regard to beauty there is no 3 B 738 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. difference between two skulls, and that Hades is in that respect a democracy where each inhabitant is as good as any other. A pictorial (or rather, plastic) analogue to this is the relief from a sepulchral " cippus" (probably of the third century a.d.) in the British Museum, to which I have already referred in Part II. viii. and Part IV. i. It represents a skeleton stretched out at full length, and the accompanying inscription (above it) asks the passer-by whether from the bare skeleton he can tell if the living person had been beautiful like Hylas or ugly like Thersites. Hylas, who here takes the place given to Nireus in Lucian's dialogue, was said to have been so beautiful that the Naiads loved him, and once, when he went to get some water, drew him down into the well, so that he was never seen by mortal eyes again. Similarly, I believe, the skeleton-shades of the philo- sophers on the two famous silver wine-cups of the so-called Boscoreale treasure, in the Louvre Museum at Paris (see description in Part I. A. and Fig. 4), with the inscriptions accompanying them, really form a kind of pictorial (plastic) counterpart to literary scenes similar in character to those in Lucian's " Dialogues of the Dead." These cups are supposed to date from the first century of the Christian era, and therefore are probably nearly contemporaneous with Lucian's Dialogues. I would even suggest that they possibly represent scenes from some, now lost, literary work similar in style to Lucian's " Dialogues of the Dead." FINIS. INDEX.* (Numerals in Roman type refer to the pages of the Preface. German o and it are arranged as o and u.) The Abbas I, Shah of Persia, 608 Abeele, Peter van, xxi, 540 Aberdeen epitaph, 375 Abernethy, John, 163 " Abode of Bliss, The," 189 Abondio, Antonio, the younger, 502 Abou-Bekr, Caliph, 202 Abrahams, Israel, 309 n. Abramson of Berlin, 567 Abroad, Pear of dying, 438-439 Abu Midjan, 50 n. Abul Kasim Mansur (" Firdausi"), 204 Accolti, Francesco, 373 Achilles, 438, 458, 459, 627, 629, 630, 655, 657 Achtenhagen, W., 576 Activity of life, 217-218 Adam and Eve, 481, 497, 511, 515 Adam de Saint-Victor, 396 n. Adams, Rev. Thomas, 460 Adams, Dr. William, 368 Adderbury Church, 168 Addison, Joseph, 448 Addoeus, 440 Admonitory monuments, 102 (see also Gisant); medals and other objects, 102 ; epitaphs, 106 seqq. Adversity, xxv Aeneas, 437 Aeschylus, 213, 272, 334, 628 Aesculape, 106, 378 Aesculapius, 286, 295, 568, 569, 572, 658 Aesopus, 82, 168, 215, 458, 560 " Aeternitas," 191 Affre, Denis A., Archbishop of Paris, 336, 571 After-life. See Future Life Agamemnon, 673 Agatbias, 20, 21, 214, 308, 327 Agathon, 618 Agnes, St., 476 Agnostic view of death, 229 Agrate, Marco d', 115, 151 Agrippina, Empress, 319, 320 Aikman, William, 406 Ajanta Caves frescoes, 192 n. Ajax, Telamonian, 653 Akbar, Emperor, 52 Albany, Duke of (Prince Leopold), xx Albert II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar- Eisenach, 378, 527 Alboin, King of the Lombards, 104, 608 Alcestis, 652 Alcibiades, 618 Aleppo stones, 288 Alexander the Great, 210, 256, 270, 440, 653 Alexander II, Czar, 248 Alexander, King, and Queen Draga of Serbia, 248 Alexander III, Pope, 248 Alexander VII, Pope, 539 Alexander, Dr. J. H., 284 Alexandra Palace, 608 Alexandre, A., 148 n. Alexandria, Library of, 301 Alexis, 407 Ali bin Muhammad Al Tahamy, 233 Allan, Mr. John, 71, 445, 705 n. Allard (or Allardt), Hugo, 161 n. Allingham, William, 230 Allopathy and homoeopathy, 305, 314 Alms, Ceremonious distribution of, 361 Alnpeck, Andreas, 515 Alp Arslan, Sultan, 706 Alphonso the Wise, King, 374 Alsace, Historical Monuments Society of, 99 * I am indebted to Mr. J. Henry Quinn not only for this index, but likewise for several valuable corrections in the text. 3 b 2 740 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIC It AM. Altmann, W., 671 n. Alva, Duke of, 501 Amaravati Tope, 192 n. Ambition, Death and, 254 seqq.; reckless, 196 Amboise, Cardinal Georges d', 205, 513 Ambras collection, 486 Ambrose, St., 286 n. American Indians, war-paint, 244; (South) amulets, 290 American Journal of Psychology, 463 American War of Independence, xvi, 566 Ammann, Jost, 370 Ammianus, 307 Am-Mit, 656, 686 Amphorae, 592 seqq., 595, 630, 644 Amrou-ben-el-Ass, 202 Amsdorf, Nicolaus von, 194 Amsterdam medical garden, 469, 552; Museum, 153; Ryks Mu, seum, 504; Six Gallery, 288 n. " Amsterdamer Kabinets, Meister des," 71, 431 Amulets, 288 seqq., 666, 702; An- cient Egyptian, 192,685; against plague and epidemics, 291, 295, 506, 552, 570; for sailors, 291; hangman's, 305; Japanese, 467 Anabaptists, 275 Anacreon, 41, 42, 596 Anaesthesia, 280 Anamorphosis, 151 n. Anatolia, 192, 688 Anatomical dissections, &c, Pic- tures, &c, relating to, 130, 280; abhorrence of, 328; dread of, 402, 403 " Anatomized," 403 Anaxagoras, 232, 438, 461 n. Anchises, 437 Andragoras, 304 Andrews, Marian, 383 n. Andrieu, Jules, 150, 459 n. "Angels" (coin), 291 " Angels of Death " (sirens), 635, 636 Angers, 571 Angina pectoris, 462 n., 463 Anhai, Papyrus of, 369, 686 Ani, Papyrus of, 369, 637, 686, 689%. Animals and foreboding of death, 1-2 n. Anlaby, Thomas, 527 Anna of Hungary, A±l, 500 Anna Maria of Brandenburg, 517 Anna Maria, Duchess of Mecklen- burg-Schwerin, 520 Anna Sophia of Saxony, 551 Anne Boleyn, Queen, 293 Anne de Lorraine, 116 Anne of Austria, 528, 532 Anne of Brittany, 110 Annihilation, Death and, 11, 220 Annunzio, Gabriele d', 585 Anselm, Archbishop, 328, 397, 398, 402 Anselmus, Georgius, 303 Anstruther, 599 Antarctic expeditions, 336, 576 Anteshed, Alfred, 166 Anthony, St., the Hermit, 97 Anthropomorphism, 198 Anticipated events, medals, &c, of, xviii seqq. Anticipation of death, 355, 434 Antigone, 438 Antilochus, 459 Antinous, 338-339 Antipater of Thessalonica, 324 Antiquarian finds, Spurious, 249 Antoinette de Bourbon, 117 Antonius Thallus, 325 Antwerp, 256 Anxiety as to death, 449 Anyte of Tegea, 262 Apocalypse. See Revelation, Book of Apocrypha. See names of the Apocryphal Books Apollo, 73, 324, 471, 472, 555, 629 Apollo, Temple of, Delphi, 669,680 Apollodorus, 659 Apotheosis ideas, 186, 187, 664 Appian Way, 680, 682 Apuleius, 430 n., 559, 617,619,668 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 396 n. Arcadius, Emperor, 387 Archaeological Journal, 84 n. Archer, J. H. Lawrence, 252 Archias, 216, 411 Arcbilochus, 3S2 Arctic expeditions, 336, 576 Arginusae, 438 Argyle, Archibald, Earl of, x, 237, 548 Arii, The, 244 Aristogeiton, 247 Aristophanes, 444, 618, 628 Aristotle, 8, 170-?i., 363 Arkwrigbt, Dr. J. A., 732 INDEX. 741 Armand, A., 204 to., 373 n., 476 477, 479, 480, 485, 487, 492, 496 501, 502, 504, 512, 7:22 n. Arms of Death, by Diirer, 68; bv Holbein, 62 Armstrong, Sir Walter, 696 n., 702 n. Armstrong-Jones, Sir Robert, 450, 463 Arndt, Ernst M., 451 n. Arnold, E. L., 77 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 219, 371, 376, 413, 526, 609 Arnold, Matthew, 165, 217 Arondeaux, R., 548 "Arretine ware," 603 "Arrhae," xxi Arrius ridiculed by Catullus, 601 Ars Moriendi, 93 seqq., 162, 463 Art, Modern, Deatb represented in, 155 Art objects illustrative of funerals, &c, 441, 442- Arte, L', 4S2 Artemis, 471, 472 Asceticism, 351 Ashmolean Museum. See Oxford Asiatic masks, 288 Asclepiadae, The, 319 Asklepiades, 302 Asklepios. See Aesculapius. Assassination, Epigram on, 447 Assassins and rebels, Political, 246 Assyrians, The, and diseases, 285 Astallia, Giulia, 340, 487, 665 Astragali, 597 "Astral bodies," 193, 198 Astrology, 289 Athene, xi, 655 Athenian idea of death, 188 Athens, Coins, 247; bombard- ment, 609 n.; Polytechneion, 632 ; National Museum, 647 Athletic exercises, &c, in the after-life, 199 Atilia coins, 338 Atkins, James, 536, 565 n. Atkins, Rebecca, 154 Atonement by death, 243 Atropos, 90, 123, 124, 205, 341, 386 Attic sepulchral monuments, &c, 188; "parting scenes," 587 Aubert, Marcel, 341 Aubigne, T. A. d', 502 n. Aubrey, John, 329 n. Aubry, Ch., 285 Aucassin, 199 Augsburg, 128, 516 Augustine, St., of Hippo, 207, 210, 401 Augustus, Emperor, 265 Ausonius, 15..26, 75,109,168, 407, 733 Austin, Alfred, 211, 217, 366, 377 Austria and Italy, 584 " Auto-icons," 412, 443 Avarice and death, 453 Avignon Museum, 102 ; Celestine Convent, 111; Girard statue, 574 Avry (or Aury), 544 Azrael, "Angel of Death," 376, 639 Aztecs, 710 B B., I., Medal by, 269 B., I. G., Medal by, 541 Babcock, Maltbie D., 230 Babees Book, The, 155 Babelon, E., 474, 688 Babylonians, The, and diseases, 285 Bacchic emblems, 606 Bacchus, Indian, 703 Bacchylides, 407 Bacon, Francis, Lord, 6, 436, 452, 453, 525 Bacteria of dead bodies, 403 n. Badeigts de Laborde collection, 666 Badge of doctors, 297 ; of Paris medical students, 573; of pil- grims, &c, 248, 249 ; spurious, 249 " Bagdad sore," 288 Bailey, Philip J., 179, 219 Baillie, Matthew, 310, 312 Baker, Sir Richard, 216 Bakewell Church, 219, 734 w. Balanzano, Pietro, 492 Balbiani, Valentina, 105 Balbulus, Notker, 171 Baldwin I, Emperor, 608 Baldwin, Miss Agnes, 544 Ball, John, 276 Balloons in numismatics, xvii Bancroft, Thomas, 313 "Bande Nere" (condottieri), 251 Bandello, Matteo, 487 Banister, John, 281 Bank-note forgeries, Punishment IN ART AND EPICRAM. 742 ASPECTS OF DEATH for, x, 239, 240; satires on, 240- 242 "Banquets of After-Life," 187, 190, 636 " Baralong," cruiser, 585 Barbauld, Anna L., 19 Barber-Surgeons' Hall, 281 Barberini, Cardinal Fr., 107 Barcelona Cathedral, 158 Bargaining with Death, 275 Barham, R. H., 466 Barker, Daniel, 114 Bar-le-Duc, 117 Barnaeus, C. Tullius, 402 Barnard, F. P., 514, 528, 533, 539 Barneveldt, John van Olden, 246, 336, 518 Barnim XI, Duke of Pomerania, 517 Barre, J. J., 567 Barres, Maurice, 339, 579 Barrie, Sir James M., 380 Barry, Michael J., 331 to. Bartholin, Thomas, 521 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 281 Bartholome, Albert, 180, 220 Bartholomew, St., Statue of, 115, 151 Bartlett, J., 322, 382 Basel Cathedral, 492; Museum, 64, 491, 708 Basel " Moralische Pfenninge," 58, 171, 181, 470, 533, 534 Basel, Gross, Dominican ceme- tery, 80 . Basel, Klein, Klingenthal Con- vent, 80 Bath Abbey Church, 321 Bathgate, 191 Bathing, 601 Battersea enamel, 698 Battle Church, Sussex, 84, 261 Baudelaire, C. P., 112 " Bauernthaler," 556 Baumann, Jacob, 161 to. Baumgartner, Hieronymus von, 166 Bayard, The Chevalier, 376 to. Beaminster token, 542 Beard tax, Russian, xvi Beasts, Wild, and human bodies, 193 Beattie, James, 46 Beaumont, Francis, 270, 525 ----and John Fletcher, 136, 439, 461 to., 695 Beaumont, Joseph, 175, 377 Beauty and death, 112, 26-s, 269 Becket, Thomas a, Murder of, 218-249 Beckett, William, 294 n. Bede, The Ven., 104 Bedford, Dukes of, motto, 381 Bedford Bridge, 694 Bees as symbol, 625 Begeer, C. J., 576 Beggars' Benison Club, 599 Beham, Barthel, 126,166, 498, 537 Beham, Hans Sebald, 125, 268 n. Bebring, E. von, 287 Belgian jetton, 564 Belisarius, 414 Bell, Mr., 514 Bella, Stefano della, 147 Bellini, Giovanni, 722 Bellini, Jacopo, 84, 103, 127 Bells, Church, inscriptions, 222 n., 422, 732 n., 733, 734 ; hand bells, 537 ; " the passing bell," 733 Bembo, Cardinal, Pietro, 215, 303, 440 Benecke, E. F. M., 482 Benedict, St., amulets, 291, 552 Benham, W., 51, 353 n., 698 Benndorf, Otto, 632, 646 to., and R. Schone, 27 Benserade, Isaac de, 404 Bensly, Prof. E., 6, 261 Bentham, Jeremy, 442 Berenice II, Queen, 4^8 Berenson, Bernhard, 153 Berger, Dr. Ignacz, 578 Bergmann, Joseph, 494 Bergs0e, Vilhelm, 469, 573 Berkenhead, Sir John,329 Berkshire, charm ring, 294 Berlin Antiquarium, 604, 620; Museum, 187, 511; National Gallery, 137; vase collection, 647 Bermondsey Church, 321 Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, 113, 266, 393, 394, 395, 396 to. Bernard of Morlaix, 198, 394, 396, 678 Bernard, Claude, x n. Bernhardi, General F. A. J. von, 451 n. Bernstorff family motto, 88 Berry, Charles Ferdinand, due de, 248 Berthier of Orleans, 396 Bertram, R. A., 177 to. Best beloved, The, die young, 325 INDEX. 743 Bethell, Mr. G., 311 Bethlem Hospital, 427 Betts, C. W., 237, 566 Bewick, Thomas and John, 80, 142 Bever (or Payer), Dr. Wenzel, 26, 287, 492-495 Beza, Theodore de, 339, 441, 486 Bichat, M. F. X., x n., 405 Bickerstaffe, Isaac, 216 Biener, Hans, 506 Bijnkershoek van Hoogstraten, Adrian van, 568 Billroth (Surgeon), 470 to. Bion, 228, 389 Birague, Chancellor de, 105 Birds, Human-headed, 634, 635 (see also Sirens) Birth and death, 68, 126 ; lament at birth, 410; the birth-rate, 410 ; and war, 410 Bismarck, Prince, 169 Bissing, F. W. von, 28 Blacas Collection, 705, 708 "Black Brunswickers," 251 Black death, The, xxix to. " Black-flag, The " (pirate), 243 " Black Hussars " (Prussian), 251 Blair, Robert, 141 Blake Collection, 708 Blake, William, xv, xxvi, 141,145, 198 n., 219, 424 Blakeney, General, 563 Bland, Robert, jun., 14 to., 214, 215, 216, 265, 411 Bland-Sutton, Sir John, 290 to., 323 Blavignac, J. D., 422, 543, 733 Bloch, Iwan, 601 Bloch, Oscar, 463 Blok, Ida, 550 Blum, Johann, xxi Blumenbach, J. F., 281, 569 Blumentbal, J., 224 Boats, Sepulchral (Egyptian), 686 Bode, W., 478, 718 Bodies, Dissolution of, 403 "Body-snatching," 403 Boecklin, Arnold, 137, 138, 231 Boethius, 10 Boethius, C. F., 166 Bogies, Greek, 668 Bohn, H. G., 309 Boil, Aleppo, 288 Boileau-Despreaux, N., 43 n., 234, 459 to. Boilly, L., 318 Boldu, Giovanni, 166, 349, 476, 537, 720, 721 Bologna, 123 Bona of Savoy, Regent of Milan, 488 Bone carvings, 589 Boniface, Count of Savoy, 254 Bonifacius, Balthasar, 371 Bontemps, Pierre, 110 Bonzagna, Frederigo (" Parmigi- ano "), 502 Book of Common Prayer, 195 Book, Closed, of the dead, 431 to. "Book of the Dead " (Egyptian), 637, 689 to. Bookplates (ex-libris), In., 165- 166 Books of Hours, 81, 85 n., 100 Boorde, Andrew, 293 Borbonius, Matthias, 439 n., 538 n. Borch, Elna, 149 Borgia, Lucrezia, 728 Borioni, 592 Borrel, Valetin M., 569 Boscher, W. H., 619 " Boscoreale cups," 34, 40, 92, 602, 605, 674, 678, 738 Boston, Mass., 567 Boswell, James, 162, 368 Boswitha, 349 Bottee, Louis A., 577 Bottles, Coffin-shaped, 257 Boufflers, Marshal de, 459 to. Boulton, Mr. M. P. W., 612, 616, 667, 726 Bourbon, Antoinette de, 378 Bourges, 704 to. Bourguignon amphora, 644, 646 Bovy, Hugues, 574 Bowcher, Frank, 575 Bower, George, 194 " Box-dollars," xxii Boyd, H., 119 n. Boyle, Robert, 337 n. Boyne, W., 542 Boyne, Battle of the, 339 " Bracteates," 687 n. " Bradburys," 16 Bradford token, 543 Bradley, Marv E., 413 Braemt, J. P., 570 Bramley, Frank, b.a., 424 Brand, John, 99 n., 196, 292, 294, 388, 464, 531, 735 Brannt, Sebastian, 68, 79, 82, 235 Brantome, Seigneur de, 376 Braun, Emile, 648 to. 744 ASPECTS OF DEATH I N ART AND EPICRAM. Brave, Death the reward of the, 413 Bread and wine, 598 Brearcliffe (or Briercliffe), John, 329, 541 Breasted, J. H., 33 to., 34 Breda, Capture of, 254, 505 Brenet, N. G. A., 463 Breslau, 564 Brettauer, Dr. J., 470 to. Brewer, E. C, 694 Brewers' Company, 731 Breze, Louis de, 105 Briconnet, Robert, Archbishop, xxiii, 373 Bride, Epitaph on a, 47 Bride of Death, 82 Bridegroom, Death as a, 324 Bridge, Life as a, 52 Bridges, Robert, 145, 370 "Brillen-Thaler," 504, 681 Briosco, Andrea, 485, 537 Bristowe, John Syer, 562 Bristowe prize-medal, 279 British, The, and neutral flags, 581; naval supremacy, 582 British Army as caricatured by Germans, 586 to. British coins, xxvi to. British Medical Journal, 434 to. British Museum. Sepulchral stele, 34; Egyptian papyri, 32, 369, 637, 689 to. ; Egyptian collec- tions, 100, 686 to. ; Egyptian amulets, 685; sarcophagi, 187, 368, 444, 622, 630, 634, 685 to. ; " Harpy tomb," 187, 635 ; Lycian tomb, 635 ; Greek cip- pus, 108, 269, 672, 738; classi- cal antiquities, 442; symbolic hands, 289; Greek coins, 471, 472, 473 ; tomb " furniture," 444 ; silvered terra-cotta ware, 444; vases (lecythi), 631, 634, 641, 642, 647; wine-cup (kylix), 636, 642, 645, 658; sculptured drum, 652 ; bronze head, 614 ; ivory diptych, 649 ; carved ivories, 712; Etruscan scara- baeus, 651; engravings and woodcuts, 81 to., 119, 120,417, 430 n., 719; Ars Moriendi, 94, 95 ; manuscripts, 90 to., 99, 674 ; finger-rings, 185, 297, 691, 692, 696, 697; medals, 280, 498, 503, 512, 536, 544, 547, 568, 579, 580, 581; engraved gem, 336 to. ; pendant, 357; memento mori jewels, 711, 726; skulls: jew- elled, 709, rock crystal, 708- 710, and marble, (J83; clock, 276; Japanese prints, 194 ; Buddhist tope, 192 n. Britten, F. J., 722, 725 Brodie, Sir Benjamin, 461 Brodnax, Joane, 185 to., 358 Bronte, Charlotte, 556 Bronte, Emily, 179 Brooches,'Mourning, 421, 423,424, 427, 727 Brou,383 Brouardel, Prof. P. C. H., 407 to. Brouardel, Paul, and Gilles de la Tourette, 502 to. Brouckere, Charles de, 570 Brougham, Lord, 25, 493 Brown, Dr. John, 50 Brown, Thomas E., xxiv, 374 Browne, Isaac H., 141, 204 Browne, Sir Thomas, 227, 328,388, 412, 439, 610 ; skull of, 329 Browne, William, 120, 322, 371 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 365 Browning, Robert, 3, 233,425, 455 Bruce, Robert the, 248 Brueghel, Peter, the Elder, 130 Brunn, Heinrich, 617 Brunswick - Luneberg, Christian, Duke of, 195 ; Francis, Duke of, 496 Brunswick (Grubenhagen), Philip, Duke of, 424, 506 Brunswick - Oels, Friedrich Wil- helm, Duke of, 251 Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, Antony Ulric, Duke of, 516; Augustus, Duke of, 168,169,541; Augustus, junior, Duke of, 518; Clara Maria, Duchess of, 518; Fer- dinand Albert, Duke of, 539; Julius, Duke of, 288 to., 504, 681; Henry Julius, Duke of, 169; Leopold Charles of, 539 Brussels, Wiertz Museum, 148 to. ; medal, 570 Brutus, 474, 497 Bruyere, La. See La Bruyere Bryant, William C, 21, 224, 326 Bubbles, Life as, 416, 417, 524, 525, 526, 540, 569 Bubonic plague, xxix to., 286, 539 Buchanan, Sir George, 574 Buchanan, Robert W., 233, 404 Buchheim, Johann, xxi INDEX. 745 Biichmann, Georg, 48, 49 204 421 to., 584 Buckingham, John Sheffield, Duke of, epitaph, 45 Buddhist scenes from the Jatakas, 192 to. Budge, E. A. Wallis, 31, 33, 34, 369 to., 656, 686 to., 689 to. Bullen, George, 94 Bundy, Edgar, 146 Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, 320 Bunyan, John, 385, 694 Buonarroti, Filippo, 619, 624 Burch, Edward, r.a., 561 Burckhardt, Jacob, 481 Burford (Sbrops.), 262 Burger, G. A., 137, 689 Burgkmair, Hans, 125 Burials, Customs, 403; the Greeks and Romans and, 437, 438; rites, 437; indifference to, 438; unburied dead, 438; in a foreign land, 438 ; intramural, 286, 564 Burke, Edmund, 527 Burlington Fine Arts Club, 165, 341 Burlington Magazine, 81, 84 to. Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, 293 Burns, Robert, 144, 218, 317, 374, 466 Burrell epitaph, 732 Burton, Dr., 308 Burton, Robert, 10 to., 26, 213, 286 to., 373 to., 418, 425, 451 Bury Monastery, 80 Butchell, Martin van, 443 Butler, Samuel, 225 Butterfly, The, as emblem of the soul, 191, 612 seqq., 663 Buttner, Johann G., 541 Buzaglo, A., 143 Byng, Admiral John, x, 237, 563 Byrkes, Robert, 358, 360 Byron, Lord, 1 to., 14, 222, 226, 409, 440, 461, 526 Byzantine Court, 704 Byzantine medalets, 476 C C, A., satirical epigram, 309 C. M., medallist, 506 Cabanes, Auguste, 463, 502 n. Cabrol, Fernand, 336 «., 476, 617 to., 664 n. Caedmon, 431 to. Caelius Aurelianus, 669 Caen, William tbe Conqueror and, 273 Caere sarcophagus, 630, 645, 646 Caesar, Julius, 195 n., 247, 301 to., 450, 474, 541 Caesarian operation, 321, 342, 367 Cahn, Mr. A. E., 524 Caius, Dr., 205, 513 Calcar, Jan von, 128, 130, 517, 524, 560 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 231 Calderon, P. H., 679 Calendrier des Bergers. ' See Shepherds' Calendar Callimachus, 327 Calventius Quietus, 672 Calverley, C. S., 325 Cambi, Andrea (" II Bombarda"), 504 Cambridge, Life of a don, 538 to., Fitzwilliam Museum, 715, 725; statue of Webb, 421 Camden, William, 44 Campion, Thomas, 51 Campbell, Thomas, 211, 252 Cancer, International Conference on, 578 Candia Museum sarcophagus, 187, 671 Candida, Jean de, xxiii, 373 Canterbury Cathedral, Becket shrine, 248; Chichele monu- ment, 102 Canton, City of the Dead, 445 Canute and the sea, 267 Capparoni, Dr. Pietro, 234, 431, 478, 555, 682 Capri, 683 Capricornus, 660 Capua, 644 Caracalla, Emperor, 477 Caradossa (medallist), 488 Caravaggio, Muzio, Marquis of, 507 Card players, Death and doctors as, 312, 313 Cards, " Tarot," 556 Carducci, G., xxv Caricatures of diseases and death, 285 Carl, Melchior, 506 Carlyle, J. D., 233, 308, 411 Carlyle, Thomas, 226, 356, 680 " Carmina de morte," 74 Carnelians, 704 to. Carnot, President, 248, 575 746 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. Carpenter, Edward, 379 Carphyllides, 221, 438 ' Carpi, Berengario da, 281 Carrel, Alexis, xxiii Carro, Dr. J. de, 494 Cars, chariots, &c, in numis- matics, xvii Carthagena, xix, 237 Carthago Novo. 341 Cartoons, War, 146 Carus, Paul, xxv Casanova de Seingalt, 26 Casement, Sir Roger, 586 Cassius, 474 Castellani, Aug., 597 Casting-counters. See Jettons Catacombs of Praetextatus, 637 Catharine I, Empress, xvi Catharine II, Empress, 725 Catherine de Medicis, Queen, 110 Catherine Howard, Queen, 731 Catholic Church, The, and terrors of deatb, &c, 61 Catiline conspirators, The, 44 Cato major, 134, 299 Cato " Uticensis," 20 " Cat's eyes," 288 Cats, Jacob, 145 Catullus, 55, 228, 601 Caulfeild, Miss S. F. A., 156,171 to., 354, 367 to., 733 Cauls as protections from drown- ing, 291, 292 Cavaignac, General, 571 Cavendish, Lord Frederick C, 248 Cavendish, George, 731 Cavendish Lecture, 416 Caylus, Comte de, 660 "Cemetery," 47, 229 Cephalus, 634 Cerberus, 430 to., 654 Cervetri, 368, 635 Cervantes Saavedra, M. de, 486 Cesarione, 480 Cestianus, L. Plaetorius, 474 Chaplain, J. C, 577 Character, Personal, predominat- ing in death, 163 " Characts," 292 Charcot's School, Paris, 312 Chariots, 186, 187, 189, 660 Charitable gifts as possessions, 358 seqq. Charitable institutions, Growth of, in England, 362 Charity as a virtue (Ancient Egypt), 361; (Mediaeval), 361 Charles I, King, 186, 247, 337, 528, 529, 697, 699, 700 Charles II, King, xix, 351, 530, 547, 548 Charles V, Emperor, 256, 351, 421, 436 Charles VII, King of France, 704 to. Charles IX, King of France, 502- 503 Charles XI, King of Sweden, 550 Charles, Duke of Orleans, 529 Charles Ferdinand, due de Berry, 248 Charles Gustave X, King of Sweden, 540 Charles of Anjou, 248 Charlottenburg Beuth - Schinkel Museum, 708 " Charms," 288,467, 531. See also Amulets Charnel-houses. 112 Charon, 526, 591, 632, 633, 655, 657, 679 " Charon's money," 192, 687-688 Charun (Etruscan), 61 to., 105 to., 638, 639, 640, 654 Chastelard, Pierre de, 376 Chastity, Lucretia as emblem of, 340 " Chastity " (in Flemish tapestry), 123, 124, 340 Chaucer, Geoffrey, xxiv to., 248 Chauliac, Guy de, 281 Cheltenham Churchyard, 322 ; waters, 321 Cheselden, William, 557, 559 Cheselden prize-medal, 279 Chess-player, The Devil as, 141; Death as, 312 Chester, Rev. G. F., 157 Chesterfield, Lord, 163 Chevalier, A., 572 Chichele, Henry, Archbishop, 102, 268, 469 to. Chichele, William and Beatrice, 106 Chichester, 531 Chichester Cathedral, 173 Chiemsee, Arsenius, Provost, &c, of, 166 Child birth, 341, 366 Childeric I, 402, 446 Children, Epitaphs on, 322 Chilon, 680 Chimney-tax, xvi INDEX. 747 Chinese art (grotesques), 465, 711; masks, 244. Chinese Mystic, A, 71 Chinese poetry, 54 Chinese " token-money," 445 Chiusi, 651 Chivalry, 158, 200 Chodowiecki, D. N., 314 Cholera epidemics medals, 569, 570, 572,573 Chorea, Epidemic, 76 Chosroes I, the Great, 389, 448, 704, 705, 706 Christ and the dead dog, 117 ; triumph of, over death, 183,184, 509, 510, 511; the crucifixion, 331, 515; symbols, 332; the pelican as emblem of tbe resur- rection, 532; and bread and wine, 598; Orpheus as a type of, 661; and life, 674 Christian I, Elector of Saxony, 506 Christian III of Denmark, 357 Christian IV of Denmark, 505, 522, 524 Christian, Duke of Holstein- Glucksburg, 543 Christian, Death and the, 180 Christian intolerance, Mediaeval, 194 Christian nations and the aid of God in war, 210 to. Christian symbols, 332 Christiana, Duchess of Saxe- Weimar, 525 Christianity, Mediaeval, corrup- tion of, 61; " gambling spirit," 160, 164 Christina, Queen of Sweden, 478 Christoforis, Dr. Malachia de, 575 Christy rock-crystal skull, 709 Chronicles, Book of, 526 Chrysapha stele, 187, 658 Chrysostom, St. John, 292, 378, 387 Chuang Tzu, 71, 711 Church, Sir A. H., 310, 608 Church, Rev. A. J., 310 Church, Power exercised by the, 93, 245; gifts to the, 324 to. Church of England Burial Service, 526, 692 ; Collect, 175 Chyzer, Dr. Cornelius, 578 Cicero, 7, 10, 11, 24, 25, 37, 44, 50, 134, 177, 216, 220, 299, 327, 334, 354, 357, 363, 373, 399, 407, 425, 611 Cilicia, 604 Civilization, Martyrs of, 336 Civitella d'Arno, 614 Clapham, St. Paul's Church, 154 Clarke, Rev. William, 172 Claude de France, 110 Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, 117 Claudian, 126, 261 Claudius, Emperor, 195 to., 319, 320 Claudius, Mathias, 223 Clazomenae sarcophagus, 187, 634 Clement V, Pope, 159 .Cleombrotus, 20, 327 Cleopatra, 590 Clerkenwell, St. James' Church, 105 Clermont, Council of, 173 Clifford, Prof. W. K., 389 Clinch, George, 249 to., 419 to., 733 Clough, Arthur H., 287, 409 Clotho, 36, 90, 92, 123, 124, 205, 341 Clytaemnestra, 340 Cobbett, William, 242 Cobden, Richard, xvi Coddington, Edward, 542 Codrington, Dr. Oliver, 54, 705 n. Coeur, Jacques, 704 to. Coeur, Jean, Archbishop of Bourges, 703 Cohen, H., 474 Coin mottoes, Christian, 184 to. ; German, 335 ; inscriptions, 171 Coins, Morphology of, xxvi to. ; Roman imperial, 191; Roman, symbolic of eternity, 664; Roman mortuary, 442; as charms, 290, 291; Cos, 319; with the labarum, 332; Greek, 338; in mouths of the dead, 192,193,687, 688 ; German, 356, 442 ; for funeral offerings, &c, 445 ; Indian " battle-axe type," 277, 475; of Selinus, 283, 471; of Eleusis, 473; of murder of Julius Caesar, 474 ; of Alex- ander de' Medici, 475 ; Milanese, 488; "Schlick" thaler, 495; mortuary thaler, 506; of Philip, Duke of Brunswick, 424, 506; Halberstadt, 507; of Syracuse, 634 ; of Commodus, 638; " Con- secratio," 664 ; " bracteate," G87 to. See also Sterbethaler Coleman, Ellen, 180 748 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. Coleridge, Samuel T., 45, 144, 317, 414 Colet, John, Dean, 105 Collect, The, for Good Fridav, 195 Collins, W. Lucas, 9,216 to., 232 to., 355 n., 406 to., 413 to., 452, 457 Colman, George, jun., 317 Colman, Walter, 262 Cologne, 530, 531 Colonna marble, 648 Colophon, 135 Colton, Charles C, 232 Colvin, Sir Sidney, 119 to. Combe, Charles, 463 Combe, William, 143, 315 Commodus, Emperor, 683; coin of, 638 " Communion" feast, 636 Company of Barber Surgeons, 560 Company of Surgeons (London), 239 to., 282, 558, 560 Comparetti, Domenico, 482 Comper, F. M. M., 94 to. Complainte de la Demoiselle, 113 Comstock, J. H. and A. B., 626 Comyn, John, 248 Confucius, Odes of, 67 Congreve, Mr. G., 94 n. Congreve, William, 5 Conington, John, 626 Conjugal happiness in the after life, 368, 369 Conqueror, Death as, 261 seqq. Conradin, 248 " Consecratio coins," 664 Consolation, Philosophic, 23, 172, 389, 424, 425; of dying before the loss of friends, 23 to. Consolatory epitaphs, 16, 23 Constantine the Great, 210 to., 332, 665 Constantinople, Coronation cus- tom, 267 Constantius Chlorus, Emperor, 649 Contemplacyon of Synners, 86 Contemplative life, The, 349 Contempt of death, 9, 355 Contempt of the world, 393 seqq. Conti, Nicolo, 288 to. Contughi, Fra Cesario, 350, 479 Cook, Capt. James, 337, 577 Cook, Theodore A., 159 Cooper, Richard, 146 Copenhagen Royal Collection, 521, 522 ; University badge, 470 Coppre, Jehan,111 Corby Hall, 156 Cordus, Euricius, 161 to. Corlieu, A., 502 to. Corn as emblem of resurrection, 181, 521, 543 Corn Laws, Repeal of the, xvi Cornwall, Sir Edward, 262 Coronation custom, Eastern Em- pire, 267 Corpses depicted on sepulchral monuments, 102 seqq. See also Gisant Corpus Inscriptionum Graccarum, 15, 23 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 48, 134, 215, 362, 637 to. Cortes, Hernando, 710 Corunna, 339 Cory, William Johnson, 200, 346 Cos coins, 319 Costa, Lorenzo, 123 Cotton, Charles, 175, 377, 452 Cotton, Nathaniel, 156 Coucy, Barons of, 383; Chateau of, xxix Counters, Roman death's-head, 682. See also Jettons Country life emblems, 684 Courtenay Family, The, 362 to. Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, epitaph, 358, 359, 362 Cousteau, —, 129 Covenanters, The Scottish, 337 Cowards and death, 448 Cowper, William, 17, 449, 459 Cox, Lancelot, 542 " Cramp-rings," 290, 292, 293 Crassus, M. Licinius, 608 Crates, 363, 407 Crawfurd, Raymond, 291, 294 to., 303 to. Cremation, 286, 328, 436, 610; medals, 463, 575 Creon, King of Thebes, 438 Crests, Family, 248 Crethon, 272 Crime, Punishment of, 238 seqq. Criminals as sacrifices, 195 n. ; for dissection, 238 to. Crinagoras, 302 Criton, 439 Croesus, King of Lydia, 202, 488, 509 Cross, Tbe, and conquest, 332 Crossed legs and arms in ancient art, 590 DEX. "49 IN Crowley, Aleister, 372 " Crown of Death, A," 379 Croydon, Archiepiscopal Palace, 80 Crucifixion, The, 331, 515 Cruciger, Kaspar, 367, 731 Cruikshank, George, x, 238-241 Cruikshank, Isaac, 143 Cruikshank, Robert, 318 Cruikshank, W. C, 443 Crusaders, The, and the cross, 332; and hymns, 396; cross- legged effigies, 591 Crusades, The, 173, 249 Crusius, 0., 628, 629, 632 to., 637 Ctesiphon, 704 Cuckfield Church, 75, 704, 732 Cumae tomb reliefs, 670 Cumberland, Richard, Bishop, 356 Cumberland, Richard, 277 Cuming, Mr. H. S., 311 Cumont, Franz, 297 Cunimund, King of the Gepidae, 608 Cupid, 611 seqq. Cupid-like figure as "genius of death," 588-591 Cupid and Psyche as a Christian emblem, 622 Cups, &c, Memento-mori allusions, 606, 607 Curtis, George W., 222 Curtius, Marcus, 338, 485, 492, 493, 495 Cust, Lionel, 65, 93, 385, 415 Custos, Dominik, 166 Cuthbert, John, epitaph, 262 Cynical attitude to death, 387 seqq. " Cynicus" (Martin Anderson), 313 "Cvpselus, Coffer of," 590, 642, 643, 647, 656 Cyrenaeic wine-cup, 636 Cyrus, 11, 202, 488, 509 D Dabbs, Dr. G. H. R., 462 to. Dadd, William, 427 Dadler, Sebastian, xxi, 378, 519, 520, 527 Dagger handles, &c, 708 Dagley, Richard, 2 to., 78 to., 79, 112,144,146, 286, 417, 589 n., 719 Dale, Thomas, 203 Dalrymple, Sir James, 171 to. Dalton, O. M., 691 Damagoras, 307 Damian Father, 336 to. Damon and Pythias, 39 Danace, 687, 688 "Dance of Death," 62 seqq., 71 seqq.; probable origin, 76; list of books, 81; influence of, 82 ; " Macaber Dance," 84, 85; de- signs, 128, 131, 275; modern examples, 141 seqq.; morality plays, 246, 465; medals, 510; on dagger, 708 Dance of Deatb poem, 75 Dancing in the open air, 75; mania, 76 Dancing skeletons, 600 Daniel, Samuel, 56, 228, 643 Daniels, C. E., 161 to. Danish medals, 520, 521, 543 Danse Macabre. See Dance of Death Danse Macabre (Cousteau), 129 Danse Macabre des Hommes, 81 to. Dante, 245 to., 393, 455, 655, 692 ; illustrations to, 145; medal, 480; portrait, 481; Naples bust, 481 Daremberg, Saglio, and Pottier, 441, 619, 668, 675 to. Darwin, Charles R., 578 Dashwood, Sir Francis, 600 Dastre, A., x, 405 Daubeny, Dr. C. G. B., 356, 562 Daudet, Leon, 312 Daumier, Henri, 313 D'Avenant, Sir William, 1 David, 414 David d'Angers, P. J., 238, 570 David, Louis, 571 Davidson, J. F., 42, 57, 597 Davies, G. S., 227 Dead, Sanitary disposal of the, 286 Death. See " Table of Contents " Death-penalty for trivial offences, 241 Death's-head emblems and badges, 2, 135, 242, 243, 329, 470; mili- tary, 251, 252 ; rings, 691 seqq. Debrosses, Charles, 111 " Deceased, The," 47 Deity. See God Dekker, Thomas, 274 Delft, Guild of Physicians, &c, 469, 527, 703 "Delhi boil," 28S 750 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. Delhi coinage, xviii Della Robbia, Girolamo, 110 Delphi, 73, 648, 654, 669, 670,680 Delphian guides, 670 Demeter, 473 Demetrius Phalereus, 188 Demons, Mediaeval, 93; Etruscan, 105 n.; diseases as, 284, 285 Denew, James, 549 Denham, Sir John, 452 Denis, Paul, 117 to., 378 to. Dennis, G., 640 to. Dennis, G. R., 166 Dennys, Richard, 180 Denon, D., xviii "Departed one, The," 47 Derby, 14th Earl of, 630 Desbois (French sculptor), 149 Destiny, Confidence in, 196 De Tabley, Lord, 218 Devil, The, xxv; as goat, 385 to. " Devil, The, was sick, &c," 160 to. Devonshire, Charms used in, 292, 294 De Witt, Jan and Cornelius, 246, 336, 544 Diane de Poitiers, 105, 694 Diaulus, 303 Dickens, Charles, 157, 292 Dicksee, Frank, r.a., 256, 332 Dictionary of National Biography, 400 Dielitz, J., 254 to., 342 to. Dies Irae, 228 Dinteville, Jean de, Lord of Polisy, 151, 470, 692. 711 Diodorus, 21, 277 Diogenes, 210, 270 Diogenes Laertius, 37, 176, 220, 232, 327, 408, 472 Dion Cassius, 474 Dionysius, 409 Dioscorides, 253 Diphtheria, 325 Discs, Sacred, 289 Diseases, Deadly effects of, 146, 284; death as a release from. 214 ; death and the study of, 279 ; represented as demons, 284, 285 ; from heaven, 284; charms and, 290; early theory of infectious disease, 297 DTsraeli, Isaac, xi, xii, 47, 57, 61, 77, 79, 163, 590, 616 Dissection. See Anatomical dis- sections Dit, Le, des Trois Morts, vii to. Ditchingham Church, 84 Dives, (JOS Dmochowski (Polish medallist), 571 Doane, William C, 27 to. Dockler, D. S., 545 Doctor, Death and the, 128, 129 Doctors. See Medical profession Dodd, H. P. (Epigrammatists), ix, 25, 57, 59, 132 to., 141 to., 149, 154, 170, 173, 17Sto., 202, 214, 218 to., 235, 253, 269, 272, 277, 302, 303 to., 304, 305, 308, 309, 313, 322, 360, 361, 370, 371, 400, 404, 411, 423, 441, 447, 449, 450, 452, 453, 486, 487, 705 to. Doddridge, Philip, 345 Dodgson, Campbell, 386, 430 to., 719 , Dolet, Etienne, 611 " Dollars," 495 Domanig, Karl, 291, 494, 500, 502 Domenico da Pescia, Fra, 479 Donatello, 730 Donatus, 482 Doncaster Church, 358, 360 Doneau, Hugues (Hugo Donellus), 505 Donebauer, Max, 506, 509, 510, 511 Donne, John, 229, 277, 453 Doom. See Ker Door-handle, 486 j Doppelganger tales, 73 I Doria Family, 537 Dorothea of Denmark, Queen, 500 Dorpfeld, W., 604 Douce, Francis, 77 to., 81, 95, 708 n. Douglas Collection, 708 Drake, Sir Francis, 446 Dream, Life a, 231 Dreams, Death and, 225 Drinking and death, 41 seqq., in- scriptions, 58 to., " Epicurean," 600 " Drinking song," Mediaeval, 49 Druids, Tbe, 195 to. Drummond, R. B., 492 to. Drummond, William, of Haw- thornden, 226, 525 Drunkenness, Dangers of, 327 Dryden, John, 45, 50, 225, 234, 273, 453, 456, 610 Dublin Rebellion of 1916, 247 Ducher, Hans, 156 Dufour, 513 Dugdale, Sir William, 80 to. INDEX. 751 Dugniolle, J. F., 484 Dulaure, J. A., 333 n. Dumfries, 248 Dunbar, William, 87, 263. 392 434 Dunipace, 197 to. Dunscombe, John, 310 Dupre, Augustin, 566 Durand, Anthony, 505, 557, 561, 569 Diiren, Inscription at, 2 to. Diirer, Albrecht, Engravings de- picting death, 65-68; "The Knight, Death, and the Devil," 88, 166, 343, 384-386, 454; " St. Jerome," 194; "Death and a Fool," 235; "Death as a Ra- visher," 324; "Melencolia," 415; Lucretia, 486 to. ; Eras- mus, 490 Durham Cathedral, Bede tomb, 104 Dutch independence medalets, 196 Dutch jetons inscriptions, 168, 234 Dutch lady, Mortuary medal of a, 378 Duty, Death for the sake of, 332; individual sense of, 344 Duty of life, The, 355 seqq. Dying, Death and the, 3, 461 seqq.; ending death, 13, 182, 183; during sleep, 226 Dying but once, Proverbs, &c, on, 448 E Eadulph, Bishop of Devon, 108 Eagle, The, 664 Easingwold token, 543 " Eater of the Dead " (Egyptian), 656 Eberbach, W., 580, 582, 583, 584, 585 Eberhardt, Frederick, Count of Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, 556 Ebernburg Castle, 386 Ecclesiastes, Book of, 1, 219, 261, 353, 410, 414, 524, 527, 538, 548, 731 Ecclesiasticus, 8, 15, 32, 49, 107, 135, 168, 202, 213, 234, 353, 424, 429, 433, 458, 484, 697 to., 712 Eckhel, Joseph H., 474 Ecorche figures in sculpture, 151 Eddlesborough Church, 359 Edelestand du Meril, 53 Eden, H. K. F., 733 Edinburgh. Greyfriars Church- yard, 108 to., 183; Grassmarket, 530 ; inscriptions on houses, 231, 521, 691, 697 to., St. Giles Cathedral, 530 Edmonds, C. R., 354 Edward the Confessor, 293 Edward II, 159 Edward III, 586 Edward IV, 294 Edward VI, 293 Edward VII, xx, 159 Edward, the Black Prince, xxi, 106 Edwin, John, 388 Egmont, Count Lamoral, 501 Egypt, 581 Egyptian silver coins, 488 Egyptian "Eater of the Dead," 656 Egyptians, Ancient, view of life, 31; advice on preparation for death, 33; guide books to the other world, 100; ideas of a future life, 34, 192, 369, 686 ; amulets and scarabs, 192, 685; land of the blessed, 197, 199 ; food, &c, in tombs, 595. See also Ani, Papyrus of; " Book of the Dead" Ehrlich, Paul, 286, 287, 577 Einsiedeln, Abbot of, 26 Eisler, Robert, 192, 661 Eitner, G., 425 to. Elbogen, 494, 495 Eldred, Anne, 544 Electrocution, 306 Electrum, 295 Eleonora Dorothea, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, 541 Eleusinian Mysteries, 186, 191, 473 Eleusis, Attica, Coins of, 473, 687 Elginbrod (or Elmrod), Martin, 378 Elias, N., 288 to. Elijah, 189 "Eliot, George," 388 Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, 248 Elisabeth Charlotte of Branden- burg, 184, 540 Elizabeth, St., of Hungary, 361 Elizabeth, Queen, 295 Elliott, Ebenezer, 326 Ellis, Havelock, xxv, 15, 150, 157, 224, 351, 529, 564 to. IN ART AND EPIGRAM. 752 ASPECTS OF DEATH : Ellis, Mrs. Havelock, xxiv to. Ellis, Sir Henry, 196, 292, 464 Else, Joseph, 560 Elsum, John, 486 Elworthy, F. T., 289 Elysian Fields, The (Elysium), 21, 100, 197, 199, 603, 607, 659, 670, 676, 678 Embalmed bodies, 443 Emerson, Ralph W., 157, 216, 335, 354, 456 Empedocles, 472, 473 Emperor and Empress, Roman, Deification of, 664 Emperors and Kings, Mortality of, 267 Empusae, 668 Endymion, 229 Enemies, Skulls of, as cups, &c, 608 England, Punishment of (German medal), 585 Engravings, Memento mori, 126 seqq.; of death, 429 (see also Woodcuts) Ennius, 204 Eos, 628, 629, 645, 651 Ephesus, Temple of Artemis, 652 Epictetus, 73, 379 Epicurean ideas of life, 31, 34 seqq., 33, 39, 47 to., 345, 347, 592, 593, 596, 598, 599, 600, 601, 604, 606, 620, 678 " Epicurean moods," 54 Epicurean poetry, 598 Epicureanism, Lecky on, 38 ; best form of, 355 Epicurus, 12, 36, 37, 38, 44, 408, 566 Epidemics (plagues) allegorically represented, 70, 131, 282; de- vastating mortality of, 131, 158, 172 ; as punishments, 246, 283, 553; charms against, 291, 295, 506, 507, 552; medals, 246, 283, 291, 533, 545, 546, 552, 553, 554, 569, 570, 572, 573, 574; and the Great European War, xxix Epigrams, satirical, 161 to. ; on the famous dead, 302 Epilepsy, Ring charms as cure, 294, 295 Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, 49 Epitaphs, Latin and Greek, 14 seqq., 109; memento mori, 16; pseudo-epitaph, 17 ; addressed to the passer-by, 17 ; comparing life to an inn, 51; punning, 104 ; admonitory, 106 seqq., 732 ; influence of Petrarch on, 120; false impressions in, 201; cynical, 234 Erasistratus, 669 Erasmus, Desiderius, 132,153,166, 397, 441, 469, 702, 703 ; medals, 488-492 ; seal, 492 Eretria, 631, 645 Erfurt, 519, 545, 555 Erichsen, Sir John, 280, 568 Erk, Ludwig and F. M. Bohme, 52 Erman, Adolf, 475, 501, 506, 508 Ermine, The, 343 to. Ernsthuyse, Tomas, 524 Erskine, Thomas, Lord, 374 Eryximachus, 618 Escorial, The, 351 Esdras, Book of, 169 Essling, Prince d', 119 to., 121 to., 122 w., 123 to., 124 to., 205 to., 206 to., 307, 514 Este, Annibale d', 512 Este Tassoni, Alfonso d', 512 Eteocles, 654, 657 Eternity, Roman symbols of, 664, 665 Eton College, 701 Etruscan art, Death in, 61 to., bronzes, xxvii; cistae, &c, 648, 649 ; death-scenes, 640; funeral scene, 635 ; Medusa masks, 655; mirror, 652 ; scarabaei, 649; sarcophagus, 368; tombs, 105, 639. See also Charon Eudoxia, Empress, 387 Eue, F., xix to. Eugenics, xxvii, 410 Euphemius, 370 " Euphoria," 342 Euripides, 42, 176, 220, 231, 232, 334, 367, 373, 438, 652 Europe, Southern, and the " evil eye," 289 European War, The Great, medi- cine and surgery and, xxix; medals, xix to., 248 to., 258, 339, 579-586; cartoons, 142, 255, 448 ; death's-head device, 251; soldiers' charms, 292; song sung by British soldiers, 183; poem, 178; posthumous awards, 339,610; substitutes for "mourn- ing," 427 Eurynomus, 654, 670 INDEX. 753 Evans, Sir Arthur, 190, 580, 582, 583 Evans, Sir John, xxvi, 536, 545, 691, 697 Evans, Lady, 185, 545, 549, 607, 608, 726 Evans, Lewis, 272 Evelyn, John, 701 " Everyman," 88 Evil, xxv "Evil eye," The, 196, 288, 289, 290, 297, 298 Evolution, Aspects of, xxii seqq. Evreux Cathedral, 731 Ewald, Prof. C. A., 462 Executioners and physicians, 304, 305 Executions, Public, 158, 436 to. ; for heresy, 194; medals, &c, commemorating, 237 seqq. ; scientists and, 306 Exeter Cathedral inscriptions, 103, 104, 108; GuildhaU, 154 Exorcism, 196 Explorers, 336 Explosives, Manufacture of, 257, 258 Eyam Church, 172 Eyck, Hubert and Jan van, 111 Eye-agates, &c, 288 " Eye-glass Thaler," 504, 505, 681 Eye testing, 505 F F. F., 533 P., H. R., 513 Fables, 22 to. Fabrey, Wilhelm, 329 Fabricius Hildanus, 329 Fabriczy, Cornelius von, 476, 479 Fainting and deatb, 2 to. Fairbairn, James, 530 Fairholt, F. W., 340, 691, 694,696, 699, 722, 726 to. Fakirs, 77 Falernian wine, 29 Falke, Gustav, xxiii Fame and death, medals on, 203; epigrams, 204 ; engravings, 205, 206 ; tapestries, 124, 206 ; minia- ture, 206 ; pursuit of, 207 ; pos- thumous, 210, 610, 611; Greeks and Romans and, 210 "Fame triumphing over Death," 119 Family mottoes, 342 Famous persons, Deaths of, 463 Fannius, 450 Fano, Pietro da, 477 Fansbawe, Sir Richard, 454 Faraboeuf, Prof. L. H., 578 Fatalistic attitude towards deatb, 381 Fate, 3S6 Fates, The Three, 18, 90,123,124, 205, 206, 341, 386 Faustina, 664 Fawkes, Francis, 41, 596, 601 Fear of death, xii seqq., 2 to., 3, 157, 243, 351, 403, 429 seqq.; Dr. Johnson's, 368 Fear of life, 456 Fearlessness of death, 454 seqq. Feasts, Memento mori devices at, 28 seqq. Fechter, Friedrich, 533 Feet washing at court, 361 Felton, John, 447 Ferdinand I, Emperor, 421, 500 Ferguson, M. W., W. F., and H. D., 108 Fergusson, Lieut.-Col. A., 600 Ferrara, 480 Ferrers, Lawrence Shirley, Earl of, 45 Fiala, Eduard, 356 to., 475 Fiamma, Gabrielle, 504 Ficbte, J. G., 374 Fick, August, 643 Ficoroni, F. de', 340, 615, 622 Fiddler, Death as a, 137 Field, Claud, 233, 705 w. Field, James, 239 Fielding, Henry, 239 " Fig, The," 289 Figdor, Albert, Collection, 169 Fildes, Luke, 287 Finance, Aspects of, xvi ' Finger-rings. See Rings Firdausi, 204 "Fire of life," 52 Fiske, Prof. John, 2 to., 220, 439 Fish, The, as Christian emblem, 624 Fisher, Lord, 582 Fishmongers' Co., 731 FitzArthur, Asselin, 273 Fitzgerald, Edward, 53, 389, 598 Fitz-Stephens, Thomas, 328 Fivizzano, —, 115 Flagellants, 77, 246 Flax-spinning machine, 574 Fleas in bubonic plague, xxix to. 3 c 754 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. Fleemin, Elenor, 542 Flegel, J. G., 141 " Flora," Wax bust of, 718 , Florence. Bargello Museum, 114; Pazzi conspiracy, 247 ; Duomo, 478, 481; mystery plays, 481; printing, 481; Bargello Chapel, 481 Flowers and death, 59, 154, 538, 556 Flying-machines, Early, xvii Fol Collection, 651 Fonrobert Collection, 536 Fontaine, La. See La Fontaine Fool, Death and a, 78, 79, 82, 235 Fool substituted for figure of Death, 62 Foot, Winged, as emblem of deatb, 638 Fordun, John, 197 to. Fordyce, James, 450 Forgeries, Bank-note, 239, 240 Forrer, Mr. L., 252, 475, 499, 523, 524, 556, 559 Forrer, R., 516 Forsdyke, Mr. E. J., 444 to., 604 Forster, Fried. C, 386 Fort Chagre, 237 "Fortunate Isles, The," 21, 603, 659 Fortune, Pursuit of, 137 Foster, Dr. M. G., 25 Foster, Sir Michael, 499 Fothergill, Anthony, 568 Fothergillian medal, 280 Fouche, Joseph, 229 Foucquet, Jean, 111 Foxe, John, 222 France, Anatole, 69, 372 Francis I, King, 110, 333 Francis II, Duke of Saxe-Lauen- burg, 518 Francis, St., of Assisi, 706 Franco-German War, 332 Franco, Goffredo, 501 Francois (Italian artist), 111 Frankfurt-am-Main, 645 Franklin, Benjamin, 229, 280, 356, 566 Franklin, Sir John, 336, 577 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 248 Frazer, J. G., 643 to., 647, 648, 654 to., 657, 669 to. Frederick the Great, 143, 251 Frederick Augustus I, King of Poland, 551 Frederick V of Bohemia, 540 Frederick William, " Great Elec- tor," 540 Frederick William I of Prussia, 169 Frellon, Jean, 142 French Black Hussars, 251 French poetry on death, vii to. French Revolution, The, 197, 247, 565, 566; of 1848, 571 French sepulchral monuments, 105 French writers in the European War, 579 Frere, John Hookbam, 334, 406, 437 Frescoes, Pisa, 84, 85; Subiaco, 86 Freud, Sigmund, 669 Freyberg, Saxony, 515 Friedlaender, J., 487 Friedlaender, Max, 48 Friedrich Wilhelm I, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, 185 to. Friend, Death as a, 222, 223, 234, 235 Friend, John, 303 Friess, Johann, 500 Frimmel, Dr. Theodor, 81, 90 Fritel, P., 254 Friuli, 585 Frobenius, Jerome, 132, 153, 491 Frobenius, Leo, 192, 609 Frohman, Charles, 380 Frohman, Daniel, 380 to. Froment, Nicolas, 111, 113 " Fronde," The, 539 Fruit gathered, Deatb as, 134, 217, 299 Funeral banquets and offerings, 187, 190, 423; coins and medals, 442, 464; customs, 403; rites and ceremonies, 436, 437 ; fur- niture, Greek and Roman, 443, 444; in ancient works of art, 441; funeral pomp and the fear of deatb, 452 Funeral memorial rings, 695 seqq. Furies, Etruscan, 655 Furtwangler, Adolf, 191, 195 to., 473, 593, 594, 596, 598, 614, 615, 618, 621, 626, 627 to., 636 to., 640, 641, 645, 649, 661, 662, 663, 683, 684, 685 to. Future life, Conceptions of, primi- tive and classical, 186 Future-life delights, 190 in: g G., W. E., 315 Gaedechens, 0. C, 554 Galeaz, John, Duke of Milan, 487 Galen, 282, 302, 399, 559 Galeotti, Pietro Paulo, 501, 507 Galicia massacres, 238, 570 Gall, F. J., 281, 5>)7 Gallipoli Expedition, 581 Galton, Sir Francis, xxvi Galvani, Aloisio, 181, 567 Gamelin, J., 147 Ganymede, 189 Garaye, La. See La Garaye Gardiner, Bishop, 293 Gardner, Percy, 187 to., 189 to., 441, 632 to., 658 Garfield, President J. A., 248, 379 Garland, The festive, 598 Garnett, Richard, 49 Garth, Sir Samuel, 310 Gatty, Mrs. Alfred, 156 to., 157, 390, 419 to., 733 "Gaudeamus," 52, 592 Gaudin, Paul, 606 Gauls, The, and human sacrifices, 195 to. Gautby Hall, xix Gautier, Theophile, vii to. Gay, John, 333, 391, 392; epitaph, 38 Gazette Archeologique, 657 Gazoldo, Count of, 541 Gebert, Mr. C. F., 523 Gebhardt, Eduard von, 166 Gela (Sicily), 595 Gelimer, 414 Gelle, Johannes, 161 to. Gellert, Christian F., 7 Geminus, 440 Gems, Engraved, 191, 195, 473; Roman and Greek, 587 seqq. Generation, Spontaneous,of worms from dead bodies, 429 Genesis, Book of, 275 Geneva Cremation Society, 576 " Genius of Death, The," 372, 376 Gennadius, 307 Genoa. Campo Santo, 149 Gentleman's Magazine, 294, 311, 531 George, St., 553 George I, King, 609 to. George I, King of Greece, 248 George III, King, 312 ■George IV, King, 600 755 George William of Brandenburg, 540 " Georgsthaler," 291 Gerhard, E., 629, 648 to., 651 to., 652 to. Germ-plasm and immortality, 282, 367, 663 German Anthropological Society, 578 German coins and medals inscrip- tions, 168,169 ; mortuary coins, 442; satirical medals, European War, 579-586 German patriotic substitute for " mourning," 427 German poets, 439 to. German students' song, 48 Gerson, Jean, 94 Gervaise de Blois, Abbot, 262 Gervase of Tilbury, 482 Gessner, Hans Jakob, 555 Gesta Romanorum, 358 Gethin, Lady, xi Ghent, 256 Gherus, R., 439 to. Gheyn, J. de, 129 Ghosts, 90, 92, 629, 663 ; of mur- dered persons, &c, 193. See also Larvae Gibbon, Edward, 164, 195 to., 225, 244, 255, 256 to., 301 to., 362, 414 to., 608 to., 706 Gidley, Bartholomew, 547 Gifford, W., 407 Gifts to the departed, 40; gifts as a possession, 358 seqq. Gilbert, Alfred, r.a., 369 Gillray, James, 285, 565 Gimlette, J. D., 290 Giorgione. 486 Giotto, 114, 481 Giovanni, Bertoldo di, 478 Girard, Bernard de, 264 Girard, Philippe de, 205, 574 Gisant devices and figures, 101 seqq., 151, 268, 275, 383, 469 to., 484, 712, 713; medals, 524 Gisors, 8, 107 Gisze, Georg, xxv Glasgow, Hunterian Library, 281 Glass, Stained, Deatb depicted in, 115 Glaukos, 658, 659 Globe Theatre, 39 " Glockenthaler," 169, 541 Glory, Death or, 252, 256, 331-344 ; military, 254-256, 332; "Old 3 C 2 N APT AND EPICRAM. 756 ASPECTS OF DEATH Glory," 256; " price of glory," • 254 Gnats, 46 Gnostic amulets, 297, 683 Gobineau, Comte J. A. de, 196 God, Man's conception of, 199, 374, 375; and pain, 374; the help of in war, 210 n., 332 Godfrey, Sir Edmundbury, 194 Godman, Thomas, 545 Gods (classic) Jealousv of the, 324 Goethe, J. W. von, xx"iii, 300, 353, 356, 393, 408, 421, 477, 720 Goette, Alexander, 81, 708 to. Goetz, K., 578, 579, 581, 582, 585, 586 " Going West," 55 " Golden City, The," 198 to. Goldsmith, Oliver, 366 Golgoi (Cyprus) sarcophagus, 187 Gollancz, I., 55 Goloubew, Victor, 127 Goltzius, Henry, 161 to. Gonelli, Giuseppi, 323 to. Gonzaga, Marquis Lodovico, 477 Good and evil, xxv " Good Fame." 124 Goodhardt, Sir J. F., 462 Gordon, General C. G., xx, 337, 577 Gorgas, W. C, 287 Gorgon's head, 244, 288, 655 Gori, A. F., 601 to., 665, 683 Gorton, Mr., 311 Goslar, 504 Gothe. See Goethe Gottorp, John Adolph, Bishop of, 520 Gouda, 82 Gough, Richard, 102 to., 105, 360 Goujon, Jean, 8,107 Gould, G. M., 249 Gourmont, R. de, 529 Gournay, Marie de, 424 Gout caricatured, 285; physicians and,309 Gower, John, 359 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 84 to. Graces, The three, 112 Graeco-Roman ghosts and skele- tons. See Larvae Graeme crest, 530 Graeven, Hans, 648 to., 649 to. Grande Danse Macabre, 112 Grandval, Barthelemi de Ligni- eres, Chevalier de, 237, 550 Grandville, J.I., 147, 285 Granville, George, Baron Lans- downe, 270 Gratz Cathedral, 121 to. ; coin, 504 Graves, Richard, 170 Graveyards, Crowded, 112 Gray, Thomas, 1, 67, 255, 274, 391 Greece, Seven wise men of, 488 Greek Anthology, TJie, Epigrams, ix, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 38, 40, 41, 47, 59, 65 to., 135, 154, 203, 214, 215, 221, 253, 262, 302, 304, 306, 307, 324, 327, 3(12, 363, 370, 382, 387, 388, 39S, 402, 407, 408, 409, 411, 438, 440, 447, 449, 453, 4(il to., 473, 568 to., 596, 597,601, 602, 617, 621, 672 Greek archaic tombs, 635 ; burial libations, 593 ; burial rites, 436 ; coins, 471 seqq.; coins of Anti- nous, 338; epitaphs, 15, 23; funeral "furniture," 443, 444; patriotic heroes, 337 ; pottery illustrating death, xxvii; sepul- chral monuments, 105 to., 188, 192; vases, 627 seqq.; Psychos- tasia scenes, 386; " Charon " scenes, 591 (see also " Parting scenes ") Greek verses by Roman authors, 19 Greeks and Romans, Beliefs in a future existence, 18, 20 Greene, T. Whitcombe, 480, 481 Greenstreet, W. J., 405 Gregorovius, F., 19, 227 to. Gregory Nazianzen, St., 370, 402, 447 Gregory XIII, Pope, 502 Gregory, R. A., 337 to. Grellet, Stephen, 353 to. Greuter, Math., 718 Grey, Sir Edward, 581 Grey, Lady Jane, 10 n., 697 Greyfriars, Edinburgh. See Edin- burgh Grief for the dead, 421 seqq.; protracted, 424 Grignan, Mde. de, 157 Grigri (amulets), 296 Grillparzer, Franz, 231 w. Gronov, James, 622 Groombridge Place, 526, 529 Grose, Francis, 292 Grotesque art, Chinese and Japanese, 465 Gruppe, O., 661 " Gryllus," 592 Gube, Heinrich, 569 INDEX. 757 Guelders coins, 197 to. Guiart, Prof. Jules, 101, 106, 110, 113, 115 to., 116, 117, 147, 149, 150, 268, 378 to., 429, 604, 725 to. Guicciardini, Francesco, 450,459 to. Guillotin, Dr. Joseph I., 306 Guillotine, The, 306 Guise, Duke of, 378 Guise, Sir John, pseudo-epitaph, 17 Gull, Sir William, 462 Giinther, Aemilia, Countess of Schwarzburg, 541 Giinther, Anna, of Schwarzburg, 527 Giinther, R. T., 482 Gusman, Pierre, 29 Gustavus Adolphus, King, 181, 339, 519, 520 Gutknecht, Jobst, 82 Guvon, J. C. Felix, 577 H H., I., 550 Habicb, Georg, 500 Hachten, David G. von, 554 Haddon, A. C, xxvi Haddon Hall, 219 to. Hades, 18, 193, 438, 603, 652, 654, 655, 659, 663, 737 Hadrian, Emperor, 18, 19, 338, 339, 379 Hagenmauer, Friedrich, 500 Haghia Triada sarcophagus, 187, 189, 660 Hague Gallery, 288 to. Hague Peace Conference, 258, 576 Hahnrei, 681 Hakluyt Society, 290 to. Halberstadt, 195, 507 Hale, Lieut.-Col. John, 252 Halford, Sir Henrv, 461 Halifax (Brearcliffe) token, 329, 541 Halke, H., 507 Hall, G. Stanley, xxiv, 3,367, 403, 463 Hall, Bishop Joseph, 126,170, 201, 272 Hall, Micah, epitaph, 16 Hals, Agnes, 692 Hambleton, 734 Hamburg plague medals, 553, 554, 573 Hamburg " Kunsthalle," 256 Hamerani, Giovanni, 549 Hamerani medallists, 555 Hamilton, Mrs. G. W., 476 Hamlet, 112 Hammer of Charun, 639 Hammer - Purgstall, Freiherr, 680 to., 705 to. Hampstead, Mount Vernon, 237 Hampton Court Palace tapestry, 121, 124, 206, 341; inscription in "Haunted Gallery," 731 Handclasp of the dying, 368 Handles, Memento mori, for walk- ing-sticks, &c, 730 Hands, Symbolic, 289 Handscbuchsheim, 82, 325 Hannibal, 27 Happiness and death, 202; and pain, 420; and heredity, 420 " Happy Warrior, The," 140 Hapsburg dynasty, The (Spanish), 351 Harden, Maximilian, 142 to. Hare, Christopher, 383 to. Hargrave, General William, 148 Harington, Dr. Henry, 321 Harington, John, 25 Harmodios, 247 Harold II, King, 273 Haroun-al-Rascbid, 705 Harpies, 635 "Harpy tomb," 187, 635 Harrich, Christoph, 714 Harris, Mr. F. Leverton, 537 Harris, James, 225 Harrison, Miss Jane E., 633, 658, 661 Hartig, A., 248 to. Harvard University, 345 Harvey, William, 212 Hat jewels, 711 Hata, S., 286, 577 Hatton, Lord Chancellor, 295 Hautskelett, 63, 64, 70, 71, 82, 90, 92, 245, 417, 430, 674 Havana, 237 " Have-been," A, 409 Hawes, Stephen, 222 Hawk, Human-headed, 637 Hawkins, Charles, 461 to. Hawkins, Rev. W. B., 693 Hay, William, 361, 438, 451 Haydon Bridge Church, 419 to. Hayley, William, 173 Hayman, Robert, 411 Head, B. V., 472 Health and life, 216, 456, 457 Hearne, Thomas, 45 IN ART AND EPKlPAM. 758 ASPECTS OF DEATH Hearse cloths, 730 Hearth-tax, Dutch, xvi Heath, Henry, 324 Heath, John, 218 Heaven, 197 seqq.. 678 Heberden, William, jun., 310, 312 Hecate, 668 Heckethorn, C. W., 304, 374 Hector, 438, 627, 629, 630, 648, 657 Hedonism. See Epicurean Heemskerk, Marten van, 123 Hegesippus, 18 Heidelberg University, 279 Heine, Heinrich, 222, 387, 408 Heine, Th., 305, 314 Heinemann, Kurt, 641, 642, 644 seqq. Heiss, A., 476, 477, 480, 722 to. Helbing, Otto, 517, 524 Helen of Troy, 486 Helinant de Froidmont, vii to., 264 Heliodorus, 297 Hell, 195, 198, 200, 430 to. ; terror of, depicted, 61, 245. See also Hell-Fire Club, 600 Heller, Joseph, 386 Helmstedt University, 626 Hemans, Mrs. Felicia D., 56, 215 Henderson, G. F. R., 357 Henley, W. E., 381, 382 Henneberg, R., 137, 417 Henrietta Maria, Queen, 262 Henry I, King, 273 Henry II, King, 103, 272 Henry II of France, 694 Henry III of France, 725 Henry VIII, 134, 159, 160, 293, 560, 731 Henry, Matthew, 698 Hense, 0., 698 to. Henshaw, Bishop Joseph, 51 Henslow, T. G. W., 733 Heracles. See Hercules Herbert, George, 7, 407 to., 547 Hercules, 149, 472, 614, 639; as emblem of medical science, 287 Herder, J. G., 49 Heredity, xxvii Heriot, George, 183 Hermes, 191, 192, 526, 626, 627, 628, 629, 646, 647, 652, 657, 661, 662, 703. See also Mercury Hermes-like beads, 613-616 Hermes Psychopompos, 633, 638 Hermocrates, 303 Hermogenes (physician), 307 Herodias, 336 to. Herodotus, 14, 28, 202, 410 Heroes, Legendary, 206 Heroic sacrifice, 331 Heron de Villefosse, A., 34 Herrade von Landsberg, Abbess, 195 Herrick, Robert, 47, 55, 56, 204 Herringham, Lady, 192 n. Herverle, 104 Hervey, Mary S., 153 to. Hesiod, 324, 643, 657, 659 Hesse, Philip IX, Landgraf of, 335 Hesse, Moritz, Landgraf of, 520 Hesse-Cassel, 551 Hessian Landgraf's motto, 168 Hesychius, 688 Heudebouville, 602 Hexham, 80 Hieron II of Syracuse, 488 " Higgins, Tom," 285 Higham Ferrers Church, 106 Highlanders in German carica- tures, 586 Hild, J. A., 619 to., 668, 675 to. Hildanus, Fabricius, 329 Hildburgb, W. L., 289, 344 to. Hill, Aaron, 121 Hill, Mr. G. F., 446, 480, 482 Hill, John, 542 Hillel, Rabbi, ix Hilton, John, xxiv Hilton, William, r.a., 417, 525 Himyarite coins, xxvi to. Hind, A. M., 119 to., 165, 481 Hindhead Common cross, 228 Hindenburg, Field-Marshal von, 254 to., 578 Hindu mythology, 656 Hinton, James, xxiv Hippocrates, 73, 170 to., 448, 562, 563, 669 Hirth, G., 165, 537 Hiss, E., 491 to., 708 to. History on medals, 205 Hjarne, Urban, 546 Hodgkin, John E. and Edith, 607 Hogarth, Mr. D. G., 514, 625 Hogarth, William, 145, 238, 239, 286, 313, 328, 403 Hohenauer, Michael, 475, 495 Hohenlohe - Neuenstein, John Frederick, Count of, 169 Hohenlohe pieces, 556 Hojer, George, 7 to., 350, 543 INDEX. 759 Hokusai, 194 Holbein, Hans, " Dance of Death," 02, 112, 128 ; portrait of Gisze, xxv ; portrait of Tuke, 133,137; " The Ambassadors," 151, 153, 470, 492, 692, 711; Erasmus, 441 ; " terminus " device, 491; Henry VIII giving charter, 560 ; dagger-sheath design, 708 " Holbein series " Dance of Deatb, 62, 80, 142 Holbein Society, 81, 94 Holland, W.,143 Hollander, Dr. Eugen, 161 to., 280, 285, 309, 313, 604, 682 Hollar, Wenceslaus, 80 Hollstein-Glucksburg, Sibylla Ur- sula, Duchess of, 543 Holmes, Edmond G. A., ix, 230, 365, 689 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 73, 301 Holty, L. H. C, 419 Holtzhey, Martin, 501 Holweg, Admiral Carl, 451 to. Holyrood Palace, 349 Homer, Iliad, 24, 134, 161 to., 224, 225, 261, 300, 438, 526, 627, 628, 629, 630, 639, 641, 643, 644, 657, 673, 737; Odyssey, 458, 654 Homeric conception of the dead, 188 Homoeopathy, 305 Hone, William, x, 240, 242 Hong-Kong, 286, 574 Honorius, Emperor, 446 Honour, Crimes in the name of, 196 ; and death, 333 seqq., 453 Hood, Thomas, 144, 232 Hooghe, Romain de, 148 Hooper, Wynnard, 358 to. Hoorn, Philip, Count von, 501 Hope, 333-334, 417 Hopkinson, William, 543 Hoplomachus, 304 Hoppner, John, 312 Horace, xxii to., 5, 6, 7, 18, 19, 22 to., 37, 42, 43-47, 51, 123, 129, 130, 167, 204, 228, 254, 263, 264, 265, 339, 437, 45S, 491, 514, 526, 551, 587, 592, 595, 638, 699, 723 Horatius Codes, 338 Horemans, Jan, 161 to. Horrors of death and hell de- picted, 245 Horse, Tbe, as symbol, 660, 661 Hortus Deliciarum, 99 Horus, 685 Hospinian, 293 Hotham, Sir John, 180 Hotspur, 271 Houasse, Rene A., 115 Houff, 108 Hour-glass emblem, 126 seqq., 191 Houris, 197, 199 House of Lords epigram, 173 Howard, Sir Francis, 156 Howard, Sir Robert, 456 Hrotsuit, 349 Hudson, Henry, 336, 577 Hugh, St., Bishop of Lincoln, 706 Hugo, Victor, vii to. Huguenots, The, 336, 502, 503, 548 Hull, 527 Hull, Edward, 143 Hullmandel, Charles, 143 Humbert, King, of Italy, 248, 572 Humble, Alderman Richard, 59 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 374 Hume, David, 275 Humphry, Sir G. M., 56 Humphry, Mrs. H., 285 Hungarian Physicians, &c, Con- gress, 578 Hunger, xxiv to. Hunt, Henrv, 242 Hunt, J. H.Leigh, 228 Hunter, John, 463 Hunter, William, 443, 463, 560, 561 Huss, John, 336, 475 Huth, A. H., Bequest, 81, 90 Hutten, Ulrich von, 49, 134, 541 Huxley, Prof. Thomas H., 229 Hygieia, 66, 295 Hygiene, Advance in, xv, 287; medals relating to, 283 seqq. Hylas, 269, 672, 738 Hymen, 589 to. Hymns, Mediaeval Latin, 266, 392 seqq. Hypnos, xxviii, 191, 590, 614, 615, 630, 639, 642, 644 seqq. Hypsas, 472 I Ibn-al-Kifty, 54 Icon Basilike, 529 "Icones mortis," 80 Iconography of death, vii to. ; Books on, 81 Ideas of deatb derived from aspects of life, x 760 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. Igel Monuments, Treves, 187, 189 Ignorance, 1 Ilchester, Earl of, 693 " Ilium, Sack of," 64S Illuminated MSS., dissection re- presented in, 281 to. ; miniatures in,83, 84 Illusion and life, 416 " Imagines mortis," 80 " Immortal fame," 203 Immortality, Evidence for, xiv; Cicero on, 11; beliefs on, among the Greeks and Romans, 18, 20; aspects of, 175 seqq.; Plato and, 191; illustrations of ideas of, 197; through offspring, 367; the human race and, 416; Roman allusion to, 615; of germ-plasm, xiv, 663 "In the midst of life we are in death," 171 Incas, The, 710 Incendiary, Cupid as, 617 India, Coins, 277,475; "sutteeism," 193, 195 ; fakirs, 77 Indians, American, " happy hunt- ing-grounds," 197, 199 Inexorableness of death, 275 Infantile mortality, 146 Infectious diseases, 284, 285. See also Epidemics Influence of human lives, 212 Initiation ceremonies, 683 Inn, Life compared to an, 50-51 Innocent HI, Pope, 398 Inquisition, The, 194, 195 Insurance, State, xvi International rivalry, 410 Interpretation of death, 375 Intolerance, 194, 197 Iphigenia, 195 to. Ipswich, St. Stephen's Church, 360 Ireland, Dr. W. W., xviii Iris, 642, 645, 652 Irish Rebellion of 1916, 585 Irish Surplus Revenue Dispute, xvi Ironmongers' Company, 731 Isaiah, Book of, 42, 276, 719 Isis, 685 "Islands of the Blessed," 21, 188, 603, 659 Ismayl Pasha, 296 " Italian," 683 to. Italian Geographical Society, 577 Italy and the " evil eye," 289; and the War, 584 Ivories, Carved, 711 seqq. J Jacks, L. P., 176 Jackson, William, 530 Jacobs, Joseph, 157, 158 Jacopone (Jacopo da Todi), 396 n., 402 Jacot-Guillarmod, A., 576 Jacques, Jacques, 77 Jade charms, 290 Jahn, Otto, 648 James, St., Epistle of, 526 James I, King, 722 James II, King, 548 James, Montague Rhodes, 586 James, Mr. T. E., 559 Janssen, Peter, 166 " Janua Vitae," 180, 184 Janus, 161 to. Japanese art objects (grotesques), 465-467 ; ghosts, 194 ; " net- sukes," prints, &c, 710-711 Jastrow, Prof. Morris, 285 to. Jatakas, The, 192 to. " Jaws of Deatn, The," 430 to. Jeaffreson, J. C, 311 Jean de France, Due de Berry, 85, 114 Jeanne de Bourbon, 116 Jebb, Prof. R. C, 407 Jekyll, Joseph, 310 Jelliffe, —, 3, 367, 403 Jenner, Edward, 287 Jerome, St., 6, 194 "Jerusalem, The New," the Golden, 198 to. Jervays, The, of Boghall, 191 Jettons, Dutch, 484; German, 514, 515, 533; French, 528, 539 Jeuffroy, R. V., xviii Jewellery in tombs, 446; funeral, 443, 444 ; spurious Macabre jewels, 727 ; memento mori, 726 seqq. Jews, Intolerance towards, 195 Joachimsthal, 291, 331 " Joachimsthaler," 495, 506 n., 507 Joan of Arc, 113, 338 Joannice, Bulgarian King, 608 Job, Book of, 110, 134, 387, 514, 516, 519, 522, 527, 540, 556, 731 " Jockeys of death," 78 Johann Udalrich, Prince of Eggen- berg zu Ehrenhausen, 519 John, St., 99; Gospel of, 353, 356, 517, 554, 692 INDEX. 761 John III, King of Sweden, 169 John, Duke of Holstein, 518 John Frederic, Elector of Saxony, 498 John George IV, Elector of Saxony, 551 Johnson, Bartholomew, 421 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, xi, 50, 58, 162, 284, 345, 356, 367, 368, 404 Johnston, David, 19 Joinville (Haute-Marne), 117, 378 Jolivet, Miss Rita, 380 Jonah's whale as emblem, 431 to., 509 Jones, H. S., 643 Jones, Inigo, 560 Jones, W. H. S., 473 Jones, Sir William, 221, 411 Jones, William, 691, 694, 702 Jonghelinck, Jacques, 727 Jonson, Ben, 310, 371, 663; epitaph by, 113 to. Jorio, A. de, 670 Jortin, J., 492, 703 Jouin, H., 571 Judges, Book of, 626 Judgment on life, 393 Jugend, 285 Julian, Emperor, 164 Julianus -ZEgyptus, 41 Juno, 664 Jupiter, 664 Juste, Jean, 110 Justice, Aspects of, xv ; crimes in the name of, 196 Justinian, Emperor, 414, 704 Juvenal, 168, 270, 343, 399, 401, 407, 680 K Kabir, 145, 370 Kais. Deut Archdol. Instituts, Jahrbuch, 633 Kali, 61 to., 656 Kalyvia stele, 188 Kapo, Hawaiian goddess, xxv Karlsbad waters, 494 Karlsteen, A., 547 Kastner, Georges, 58, 81, 533, 588 to., 601 n., 666, 683 Kaulbacb, W. von, 142 Keary, C. F., xxvi, 479, 586 Keats, John, 210, 233 Keere, H. van den, 170 n. Keller, A. von, 140 Kelly, 372 Kemmler, William, 306 Ken, Bishop Thomas, 6 Kent, Men of, 249 Kenyon, James B., 382 Ker, Keres, 386, 631, 633, 634, 636, 637, 654, 656, 657 Kerensky (Russian democrat), 333 to. Kerner, A. Justinus, 419 Kerrn, Hans, 496 Kertch, 625 Kestner, H., 675 to. " Ketch, Jack," 240 Keyes, Dr. E. L., 2 to. Kidd, Capt. William, 243 Kilian, Lucas, 166 Killyngworth, John, 359 Kilmer, Miss J., 54, 706 Kindleben, Christian W., 48 King, C. W., 13, 92, 232, 244, 296, 297, 336 to., 372, 446 to., 473, 588 seqq., 610 seqq., 637 seqq., 655, 656, 659, 660, 661, 662, 673 to., 683, 684, 728 King, Henry, Bishop, 400 King, Henry, 176 "King Stephen," trawler, 585 King's evil, Touching for the, 291 Kings, Cupidity of, and executions, 159 Kingsley, Charles, xv Kippermunzen, 356 Kirkpatrick crest, 248 Kirmis, M., xxii " Kismet" attitude, 381, 383, 708 Klein, R., 578 Kleinert, Friedrich, 550 Kluck, General von, xix to. Kliigmann, A., 444 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, epitaph, 303 Knight, Charles, 85 Knight, S., 241 Knight, The, and Death, Diirer's, 88, 384-386 Knighthood, 158 Knight-Hospitaller of Winck- bourne, 334, 699 Knights Templars, The, 159 " Know thyself," 680-681 Knowledge, 1 to. Knowledge of death, 1 seqq. Knox, John, 132 Koberger, Anthony, 92 Koch, Kilian, 521 Koch, Robert, 287 Konigsmarck, Counts von, 609 to. Korean warriors, 244 762 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. Korn, Ferdinand, xix to. Korn, Onophrius, 501 Kounitzky, Franz, 577 Krain, W'illibald, 285 Kraus, F. X., 71, 476 Krauwinckel, Hans, 485, 514, 515, 524, 533 Kristeller, Paul, 130 Kritanta, 277 Kritios, 247 Kubin, Alfred, 255, 711 Kuenstle, Carl, 81 Kunz, G. F., 169, 288 to., 289, 290 to., 292, 293, 323 to., 691, 699, 701, 702, 708, 709 L Labarum, The, 332 La Bruyere, Jean de, 215, 373, 405, 457 Lacbesis, 90, 123, 124, 205, 341 Lacroix, Paul, 696 to., 702 to. Lady, Death and the, 268 Lafaye, Georges, 617 La Fontaine, Jean de, 149, 150, 224, 459 La Garaye, The Lady of, 362 Lagrange, Cardinal, 102 " La Hire " (E. de Vignolles), 374 Lais, 303 " Lake of Fire " (Egyptian), 656 Lallemand, Marcel, 116 Lambeth Delft ware, 607 Lambinus, 431 to. Lamiae, 668 La Motte-Fouque, H. de, 65 to., 386 La Mousse, Abbe, 157 Lamps, Roman, Skeletons on, 74 seqq. Lancelot-Croce, Madame Marcelle R., 572 Landor, Walter Savage, 23 to., 52, 137, 201, 225, 275, 448 Landsberg, Abbess Herrade von, 99 Landseer, Thomas, 318 Lane-Poole, Stanley, xviii Lang, Andrew, 677 Langland, William, 274 Langlois, E. H., 81, 110, 732 to. Langton, Bennet, 367, 368 Langton, Stephen, Archbishop, 400 Lanna Collection, 492, 680 Laodicean coin, 295 Laomedon, 648 Lapis nephriticus, 290 Lares, 612 to. Larmand, Leon, vii to., 112 La Rochefoucauld, Due de, xi to., 454 "Larvae," 34 to., 40, 92, 193, 592, 602, 611 to., 612 to., 666, 667, 668, 674, 689 Latin Anthology, 26, 27 Latin epitaphs, 14, 15, 23 Latin verse, Mediaeval, 394 seqq., 396 to. La Tour, H. de, 373 Laufer, Hans, 515 Laurentius, Andreas, 460 to. Lavalee, J., 147 Lavolte (Rhone), 367 Law, Aspects of, xv Law, Mr. Ernest, 731 Law, John, xvi Lawrence, St., 476 Lawson, J. C, 688 Lawton, Richard, 322 Laying-out scenes, Greek, 631, 632, 657 Lazarus, Resurrection of, pictures, 113, 114 Leadbetter, Charles, xvi, xxiv to., 44, 526 to., 733 Leal, Juan de Valdes. SeeValdes Leaves, Death as, 134 Le Blant, Edmond, 593, 597, 601, 620, 675, 676, 683 Lecky, W. E. H., 6,10 w., 209,355, 611 w. Le Clerc, Gabriel, 551 Lecythi, Sepulchral, 423, 444, 593, 599, 631, 632, 641, 642, 646 Lee, Sir Sidney, 56 to., 329 to., 440 Leeds token, 543 Leek Parish Church, 360 Le Fanu, J. S., 224, 460 Legh, Gerard, 62 Legion d'Honneur epigram, 333 to. Leiden, Anatomical theatre, 129 Leighton, E. Blair, 146 Leighton, Robert, Archbishop, 50 Leiningen, Count, 166 Leipoldt, Dr. C. F. L., 73 Leipzig, 554 " Leishmania tropica," 288 Leland, John, 134 Le Maistre, Amsterdam, 528 Le Mans, 333 " Lemures." See "Larvae" | Lenthall, W., Speaker, 185, 701 INDEX. 763 Leo X, Pope, 251 Leonardo da Vinci, xvii, xxv, 221, 281, 718 Leoni, Leone, 512 Leonidas, King, 253 Leonidas of Tarentum, 253, 272, 672 " Leonine" epitaphs, 103, 104 Le Sage, A. R., 25 Lessing, G. E., 40, 225, 303, 589, 674 to. Lessing, Julius, 641 Le Tellier, Michel, 544 Lethaby, W. R., 622, 623, 652 to. Lettsom, John C, 310, 311 Leveller, Death as, 101, 261 seqq., 268 seqq. ; not a complete leveller, 276 Le Vigoureux, Charles, 124, 205 Lewin, Col. T. H., 220 to., 462 Leyburn, Inscription at, 354 Liberty, Crimes in the name of, 195 to., 196,197; death and, 276; emblems of, 474, 475 ; figure of, 571 Lice in typhus fever, xxix to. Licentius, 75, 733 Life as a pilgrimage, 52; as a bubble, 416, 524-526; as a sleep and as a dream, 231; as a shadow, 526; a resistance to death, 405; as vain, 406; our hold on, 407 to. ; illusions and, 416; as a tragedy, 390 ; deatb the crown of, 203, 219, 377, 379 ; activity of, 217-218; influence of the thought of death on, 157, 172, 377; Epicurean view of, 345 ; ephemeral, 45 ; death an escape from the troubles of, 24 ; shortness of, a favour, 412; life is death and deatb life, 231 seqq.; best use of, while it lasts, '653 seqq.; pessimistic view of, 393, 477 ; uncertainty of, in tbe Middle Ages, 158 ; pain and grief in, 374; danger to, sym- bolized by skeleton, 665 -667 ; only one life, 448; fear of, 456 Life and death. See "Table of Contents " Life and Death as wrestlers, 145 " Life is a stage," 38 Life-saving medals, &c, 280, 287, 331 Lightbody, John, 318 Lightning-conductors, 280, 566 Lights at death-beds, funerals, &c, 99 to. Lilburne, John, 536 Lily, William, 26, 387 Limpridius, 683 Lincoln, Abraham, 248, 376 Lincoln's Inn, 44 Linley, George, 698 Lions, 683 Lippe zu Bracke, August, Graf von, 551 Lippert, P. D., 599, 680 •Lipscombe, George, 600 Lipsius, Justus, 424 Lister, Charles, 52 Lister, Lord, 287 Litta, Alberto, 501 Liverpool Museum, 589 Living and dying, 220, 231 seqq.; holy living and holy dying, 162 Livingstone, David, 336, 577 Livy, 341 Lloyd, Eleanor, 733 Loane, Mr. George G., 430 to. Lodge, Sir Oliver, 22 Loewental, A., xix to. Logau, Friedrich von, 23 n., 213, 222, 263, 354, 425 Londesborough Collection, 699, 700, 722, 726 to. London Bridge, 159, 357 London, Guildhall Museum, 250 ; University College Museum, 443 London Medical and Physical Journal, 294 London, Tudor, 159; amulets, charms, &c, 292 ; tokens, 542 Longfellow, Henry W., 177, 211, 263, 266, 354, 356, 381, 388, 706, 721 Longono, Giov. Cristoforo, 680 Longpaon, 732 to. Longperier, A. de, 29, 669 Loon, G. van, xvi, 518, 524, 544, 549 Loos, Gottfried, 569 Lorenzetti, Pietro, 84, 85 Lorraine, Claude de, Duke of Guise, 378 Loseley Hall, 7 Lothair I, Emperor, 538 to. " Loti, Pierre," 1 Lotto, Lorenzo, 153 Louis II, of Hungary, 495 Louis IX (St. Louis), 249, 706 Louis XII, 110 Louis XIV, xx, 528, 548, 549 764 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICPAM. Louis XVI, 247 Louis le Debonnaire, xxi Louis, Antoine, 306 Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France, 564 "Louisette" (the guillotine), 306 Louvois, Marquis de, 459 to. Louvre Museum. Sepulchral monuments, 103, 105, 116 ; me- mento mori design, 127; Piot amphora, 644; Caere krater, 645, 646; Greek vase, 655 ; kylix, 628, 636; lecythus, 632 ; slabs, 635; cup, 606 (see also Boscoreale cups) Lovat, Simon Fraser, Lord, 254 to., 699 Lovatelli, Contessa E. Caetani, ix, 15, 22, 23, 29, 43 to., 264, 267 to., 602, 603 to., 608 to, 619, 620, 622 to., 641, 659, 681 Love, Aspects of, xx; and death, 46, 47, 365 seqq., 453; and friendship, 346; survival of, after deatb, 368; beyond the grave, 420 ; killing Death, 371; debased, 196 Love (Cupid and Psyche) and the soul, 612 seqq., 617, 622, 663 Lovelace, Richard, 343 Lovers and death, 370 Lovett, Mr. Edward, 292 Low Countries, The, 237 Lowell, James Russell, 222, 259, 383 Lowestoft, St. Margaret's Church, 212 Lucan, 18 to., 259, 261, 377, 383, 412, 413, 439, 513 Lucas, E. V., 183 Lucas, Richard C, 718 Lucian, 36, 192, 210, 244, 270, 308, 361, 459, 526, 668, 673, 687, 737- 738 Lucifer, 431 to. Lucilius, 132 to., 302, 304, 307, 308, 449 Lucio, Lodovico, 485 Luckius (Luck), J. J., 204 Lucretia, 339, 485, 486, 699 Lucretius, 12, 13, 14, 31, 37, 51, 109, 195, 431 to., 587, 621 Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, 142 Ludlow, J. M., 249 to., 396 to., 706 Ludwig der Treue, Landgraf of Hesse, 520 Lugen-Thaler, 169 Luke, St., Gospel of, 299 Lunardi, V., xvii Lupton, Thomas, 294 Lurking Death, 67 "Lusitania" medal, 258, 579 Lust, 196 Luther, Martin, 48, 171, 182, 194, 356, 367, 692 Luttrell, Henry, 322, 705 Lutz, O., 169 Liitzen, Battle of, 339 Luxembourg Museum, 574 Luynes vase, 628 Lycia, 635, 641 Lycon, 641 Lydgate, John, 80 Lydia coins, 295 Lyman, Darius, 451 Lyons Faculty of Medicine, 149 Lytton, Earl (" Owen Meredith "), 680 Lytton, Lord Bulwer, 68, 177 to., 365 M M., E. D. (token), 542 M., R. D. (token), 542 Mabillon, J., 266, 394 Macaber dance. See Dance of Deatb " Macabre," 85 MacAlister, Mr. J. Y. W., 310 " Macarius," 85 Macarius, St., 85 " Macaroni" and " macaroon," 423 to. Macaulay, Lord, 254 to., 529 McCreery, J. L., 177, 326 Macdonald, George, xxvi to, MaoDonald, George, 375 Mackail, J. W., 40 to. MacKenna, Dr. R. W., 3, 353 to., 462 to. McKinley, President William, 248 Maclaine, James, 239 Macloghlin, E. P. P., 369 Macphail, Dr. Andrew, vii to., 416 Macrobius, 232 Madai, D. S., 168 to., 169 to., 335, 496, 504, 506, 511, 513, 516, 517, 518, 519, 520, 525, 540, 541, 544, 546, 551, 552, 556, 626 Madrid. Museo del Prado, 130, 717 ; Royal Palace tapestry, 121, 123, 206 ; Royal Library, 629 Madruzzo, Cardinal Cristofero, 496 INDEX. 765 Maeconas, 439, 458 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 10 to., 177, 179, 375, 587 Magdeburg, 546 Magdeburger, Hieronymus, 475 Magi, Adoration of the, 530 Magic (necromancy), 662 ; sympa- thetic, 190, 444 Magic discs, 289 Magnus (physician), 302 Magus Muir, 337 Mahommedan. See Mohammedan Mainz, 129 Mainz, Archbishop Elector of, 528 Maitland, Charles, 402 " Makaris," 87 Makart, Hans, 256 Malaria. Ancient Greece, 473 Malay charm-cures, 290 Male, Emil, 81, 102 to., 107 to. Maler, Christian, 268, 523, 524 Malouvre, of Senlis, 341 Maltbusianism, 410 " Manes," 21, 612 to. Manfredi, Bartolomeo, 281 Manfredi, Hieronymo, 281 Manicheans, 385 to. Manilius, 10, 12, 37, 126, 130, 166, 170, 180, 480, 499, 508, 537, 566 Manister, Stephen, 360 Manners, Sir George, 219 Manners, Sir John, 219 to. Manrique, Jorge, 263 Mansfeld, Friedrich Christian, Count of, 169 Mansfeld, Henry II, Count of, 335 Manson, Patrick, 287 Maori charms, 290 Mapes (or Map), Walter, 49, 75, 266 to., 394 to. Marathon, 203 March, H. C, xxvi Marchand, Guiot, 81,100, 112, 417, 430 to. Marcosson, I. F., 380 to. Marcus Aurelius, xii, 10 to., 11, 22 to., 24, 44, 134, 177, 210, 300, 388, 425, 526, 611 Marcus Curtius. See Curtius Marcus (physician), 307 Margaret of Austria, 383 Marguerite de Valois, 297 Maria Theresa, Empress, 226 Marie Antoinette, 247 Marie Christine and Albert of Saxe-Teschen, 564 Marie de Medicis, 532 Maries, The four, 723 Mariette, J. P., 638 Marlborough Collection, 616 Marot, Clement, 58 Marriage medals, xxi Married life, Renewal of, after death, 368 Marscball, R. F., 248 to. Marshall, F. H., 641 to. Marston, John, 694 Marsyas, 324 " Martelli" mirror, 730 Martial, 5, 26, 43, 47, 210, 216, 265, 303, 304, 357, 361, 450, 454, 457, 516, 610 Martin, St., 362 Martin, Sir Theodore, xxii to., 19 Martyrdom, 186,194, 378; political, 247 ; death as involuntary mar- tyrdom, 331 Martyrs, Medals, &c, of, 336, 378, 476 Marvell, Andrew, 138 Mary I, Queen, 293 Mary, Queen of Scots, 132, 376 to., 693, 723 ; watch of, 263 Marzi, Galeotto, 180, 480 Mascots, 291 Maskell, Mr. Alfred, 715 Maskell, W., 63, 715 to., 717 to. "Mask of terror," Death's, 365, 366 Masks, Warriors', 244, 288; fune ral, 442 ; Japanese, 710 Masonic medal, 567 Mass for the dead, 228, 392 Massachusetts Historical Society, 558 Massinger, Philip, 218, 694 Matthew, St., Gospel of, 44, 681, 727 Matthias Corvinus, King of Hun- gary, 480 Mattingley, Mr. Harold, 512 Maudsley, Henry, 117 Maurice, Prince, of Nassau, 254, 505 Mausolus, King, 210, 270 Maximilian 1, Emperor, 62, 383 Maxwell, Sir W. Stirling, 150 Mayer, Dr. Paul, 494 Mayer, W., 169 Mayer, W., and F. Wilhelm, 575 Maynard, Thomas, 241 Mazarin, Cardinal, 539 Mazerolle, F., 503 Mazois, F., 672 to. 766 ASPECTS OF DEATH 1 X ART AND EPIGRAM. Mazzuchellianum, Museum, 491 Mead-Allen, Rev. C. J., 450, 459, 463 Mechel, Christian von, 80 " MedaiUeur a la Fortune, Le," 485 "Medallic anticipation," xviii, xix TO. Medallic Illustrations of British History, xvi, xix, xx, 194, 243, 536 to., 545, 547, 548, 550, 558, 563, 600 Medals. Representing executions, &c, x, 194, 237 ; " toy-shop," x, xix, 237, 243; law and justice, xv; finance and taxes, xvi; treaties of peace, cars, chariots, railways, balloons, air-ships, mental peculiarities, xvii; Great European War, xix to., 258, 579-586 ; marriage, xxi; admonitory, 102 ; memento mori devices, 128, 165, 469 seqq.; mortuary, 180, 184, 205, 422; anti-papal, 194 ; on fame, 203; of epidemics as punishments, 246; political executions, &c, 246-248 ; patriotic mottoes on, 253-254 ; English political, 243 ; medical; commemorating life- saving discoveries, 280; with skull, &c, devices, 281-282, 329 ; public health, &c, 283 seqq.; pestilences, 283 ; disposal of the dead, 286 ; vaccination, 287 ; of physicians and medical societies, 355 seqq., 577-578; illustrating the fleeting glory of the world, 268; levelling by death, 269; as charms against plague, 291; of the Crucifixion, 331-332 ; for honour, 333to., 334; of martyrs, 335 ; patriotism, 337 ; Greek and Roman patriotic, 337-339; of deeds of valour, 338; of the contemplative life, 349-350 ; of founders and donors, 357; of the 15th century, 373 ; illustra- ting death as the crown of life, 378 ; pessimistic, 416 ; opti- mistic, 418; memorial, 421 seqq., 479 seqq., 549 seqq.; funeral medalets, 442, 464; cremation and reinterment, 463, 575, 576 ; by Boldu of Venice, 476-478, 720, 721; moral and religious, 470, 485, 497, 498, 509-511, 527, 530; explorers, &c, 577. (-See also the names of persons and events) Mediaeval ideas of death, &c, 61 seqq. " Medical" amulets, 296, 297 Medical bookplates, 166 Medical Congress, International, 572 Medical consultations, Caricatures of, 318 Medical discovery and progress, 287 Medical epitaphs, 320 seqq. Medical medals, &c, 280 seqq., 355 seqq., 470 to., 577-578 Medical profession, Epigrams, gibes, &c, against, 160-161 to., 298, 300 seqq.; compliments, 302; and executioners, 304-305 Medical Society of London, 310, 312, 450, 463 Medici, Alessandro de', 247, 475, 496 Medici, Catherine de', 110 Medici, Giovanni de', 251 Medici, Giuliano de', 247, 478 Medici, Lorenzo de', 247, 475, 478, 497 Medici, Marie de', 532 Medicine in numismatics, xvii (see also Medical medals); in the War, xxix ; and death, 298, 299 Meditation on death, 350 Medley, Samuel, 312 Medmenham Club, 600 Medusa masks, 655 Megnin, —, 403 to. "Meister von 1480," 71 Meineke, J. A. F. A., 37 Melancholic ideas and poetry, 413 Melancholy, 414 Melanesian Islanders, 186 Meleager, 47, 324, 648 Memento mori of the Middle Ages, 2 ; at the feasts of the ancients, 27 seqq. ; Roman, 92 ; tombs, 101; devices, 126 seqq., 153, 154, 158, 170, 691 ; object of, 245; the "memento mori age," 131; objects in English literature, 135; bookplates, 166; panel- picture, 234 ; skulls as, 349; re- ligious art, 431; Italian picture, 431-433; medals, 469 seqq.; horse's head as, 661; inscrip- tions, &c, 691; finger-rings, 691 seqq.; seals, 702 INDEX. 767 Memling, Hans, 128, 245 Memnon, xxviii, 627, 629, 642, 645 Memorials, ghastly, Reason for, 116 Memory of departed friends, 211 Menaeceus, 408 Menander, 21, 37, 325, 407, 680 Menas, St., of Alexandria, 476 Mendelssohn, Moses, 564 Menippus, 270, 737' Mental pain, 420 Mental peculiarities in numis- matics, xvii Menzel, Adolf von, 314 Mercandetti, Tommaso, 205, 279, 557, 558 Merchant Taylors' Company, 731 Mercier, C. A., 351 Mercury, 591, 637, 638, 656, 662, 679. See also Hermes Meredith, George, 369 Meril, Edelestand du, 395 Merivale, Charles, 19, 272 Merivale, J. H., 407, 423, 596 Merkel, Carl G., 141 Merriam, G. S., 162 Merrifield, 517 Mersey, P. R., 351 Merzbacher, E., 499 Metempsychosis, 176, 192, 625, 661, 663 Metternich, Prince, 570 Metrodorus, 407 Metsys, Quentin, 491 Mexican death's-head, 708, 709; imitation dollars, 445 ; temples, 710 MeydenbaCh, Jacob, 128 Meyer, Conrad F., 24, 134 Meyer of Stuttgart, xix Meyer, Rudolph and Conrad, 183, 510 "Micawber, William" (Dickens), 157 Michael the Archangel, 555 Michael, St., 570 Michael Angelo, 115, 281 Michel, Wilhelm, 194 Michelino, Domenico di, 481 Micro-organisms as demons, 284 Middelburg Medical Guild, 469, 552 Mieris, Frans van, 153 Migne, J. P., 75, 397, 398, 733 to. Milan, 115, 151 Milanesi, G., 479 Military ambition and glory, 255, | 256; emblems, 244; death's-head badges, 251-252; heroes, 339; mottoes, 253-254; standards, 211 TO. Miller, Edward, 360 Millin, A. L., 628, 629 Millingen, James, 628, 634 to. Milton, John, xxv, 24, 134, 175, 193, 210, 229, 300, 401, 434, 454 Mimnermus of Colophon, 46, 135, 265, 657 Mind, Thomas, epitaph, 10 to. Minorca, Loss of, medal, x, 237,563 Minos, King, 659 Mionnet, Theodore E., 295 to. Miracle plays. See Morality plays Mirrors, 728, 730; distorting, 151 TO. Miser, Death and the, 150 Misery, Death a release from, 213 Miskolcz, 578 Mitchell, Sir A., 224 Mitchell, S. Weir, 280, 391 to. Mithraic amulets, 297, 683 Mithraism, 625 Moawinyah II, Caliph, 705 Moderation, 197 Moderno (sculptor), 485 Mohacs, 495 Mohammedan, descriptions of death, 47; paradise, 197, 199 fatalism, 381 Moirae. See Fates, The Mola, Gaspare, 539 Molay, Grand Master of Templars, 159 Moliere, J. B. P., 275, 312 Moll, W. F., 165 Moltke, Count von, xxii Molza, Francesco, 439 Mompesson, Catherine, 172 Monastic chant, Latin, 392 Monastic ideals, 349 Mondeville, Henri de, 281 Mondino, 281 Monkish life, 131 Monmouth, James, Duke of, x, 237, 548 Montaigne, Michel de, xii, 8, 50, 138, 215, 220, 231, 232, 276, 355, 372, 405, 413, 424, 449, 452, 457 Monteleone bronze chariot, 186 Monteverde, Jules, 149 Montez, Lola, 142 Montezuma II, 710 Montfaucon, Bernard de, 229, 442, 679 768 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICRAM. Montgolfier Brothers, xvii Montmorency, T. de (Thibaud de Marly), vii «. Montrose, James Graham, Marquis of, 246, 336, 529-530, 532 Monuments for religious teaching, 101; and memory, 401; Ben- tham's suggestion for, 442. See also Gisant Monza (Italy), 390 Moon, The, 625 Moore, Sir John, 339 Moore, Thomas, 26, 325, 326, 460, 698 " Moralische Pfenninge," 171,181, 533 Morality, A system of, xiv Morality, miracle, &c, plays, 73, 76, 78, 88, 111, 246, 431 to., Italian, 481 Morbid brooding on death, 350 More family, The, 7 More, Hannah, 52, 400 More, Sir Thomas, 26, 132, 164, 304, 309, 387, 449, 493 Moro, Tommaso, 496 Morgagni, J. B., 279, 558 Morgan, J. Pierpont, Collection, 537, 606,715, 716 Morgan, Octavius, 297 Moritz, Landgraf of Hesse, 520 Morley, Lord, 440 Mormo, 668 Mormolyceia, 668 Morocco, Emperor of, 47 Morosini, Francesco, 609 to. Morris, Sir Henry, 560 " Mors janua vitae," 175 seqq. Mortality of others, 449, 450 Mortality, Skull as emblem of, 618 Mortifiement de Vaine Plaisance, 111 Morton, Sir Albertus, 424 Mortuary medals, 205 ; device for, 377 Mortuary Thaler. See Sterbe- thaler Moschus, 228, 389 Motherhood, Consolations of, 366 Mother's love, 178 Motte, C, 318 Motte-Fouque, La. See La Motte-Fouque Mottoes, Military, 254 ; personal and family, 254, 342. See also Rings, Finger; Sun-dials Mouchon, Louis Eugene, 205, 417, 574 Moulins Cathedral, 107 Mount Vernon, 237 Mourn, To, man's nature, 374 Mourning, Protracted, 424 Mourning rings, &c, 185, 421, 423, 424, 427, 695 seqq. Mourning scenes, Greek vases, 423 ; art generally, 423 Mousse, La. See La Mousse Miichler, Carl, 48 Muhammad ibn Ibrahim, 267 Muhammad ibn Taghlak, xviii Muller, P., 575, 576 Miiller, Philipp H., 550 Muller sale, 556, 557 Mummies, 192, 443 ; images of, at feasts, 28 ; amulets and, 685 Munich chclera, &c, charms, 552, 570 Munich Pinakothek, 133, 140 Munk, Cathrina, 522, 524 Munk, Christina, 522 Munk, Dr. William, 226, 462 Munro, H. A. J., 431 to., 638 Miinster, Peace of, 501, 528 Miinsterberg-Oels, Duke Julius Sigismund, 546 Miintz, Eugene, 119 to., 121 to., 122 to., 123 to., 124 to., 205 to., 206 to., 370 Muratori, L. A., 205, 557 Murders, Sham, 683 Murillo, Bartolome, 114, 150 Murner, Thomas, 235 Murray, A. S., 368 to., 62S, 630 n., 631 to., 634 to., 642, 647 to., 658 Murray, Gilbert, 658, 661 Muscle-man figures, 151. See also Gisant Mustelidae, 343 to., 507 Muther, R., 165, 537 Mycenae Acropolis, 190 " Mysteries," Eleusinian, &c, 186 Mystery plays. See Morality plays N Nadrowski, R., xix, 195 Naiads, The, and Hylas, 672 Nantes, Revocation of the Edict of, 548, 549 Napier, John, xvii Naples, Cholera medal, 572 ; Dante bust, 481; Virgil tomb, INDE 482; National Museum, 630, 671, 682 Napoleon, xviii, 196, 243, 249, 253, 304, 333 n., 357, 381, 382, 463, 701, 705 Napoleon II, 569 Napoleon III, "Finis Germaniae" medal, xviii-xix to. Nashe, Thomas, 266 Nass, Lucien, 113 to., 147, 318 National Debt, The, 362 National Gallery, London, pic- tures, 151, 470, 680 National Gallery of British Art. See Tate Gallery Naturalists, Medals of, 470 to. Nature, Conception of, 199; and pain, 374 ; mastery over, 375 Naumburg, 194 Naval heroes, 339 Naval supremacy, British, 582 Navarra Collection, 646 Navigation of the dead, 659 Neale, J. M., 198, 394, 678 Neaves, Lord, ix, 20, 41, 59, 203, 214,215, 253,382,398,410,439 to., 440 to., 449, 454, 461 to., 597 Neckam, Alexander, Abbot of Cirencester, 400 Necromancy, 662, 684 Neercassel, J. van, 185, 350, 394 Nelson, Lord, 173, 339; Trafalgar signal, 252 Nelson, Harold, 166 Nemesis, 479 "Nephrite," 290 Nereides, 655 Nero, 474 Nesiotes, 247 Netherlands hearth-tax, xvi ; jetons, 484 " Netsukes," 465, 467 Neuenaar, Hermann, Graf von, 2 TO. Neufarer, Ludwig, 475, 495, 509 Neumann, Josef, 485, 515, 521 to., 533 Neutral flags, 581 New York Metropolitan Museum, 187,588 ; Douglas Collection, 708 Newbolt, Sir Henry, 331 to., 344 Newburv token, 542 Newcastle Apothecary, The, 315-317 Newgate, 238 to. Newland, Abraham, epitaph, 16 Newman, Cardinal J. H., 434 to., 435, 462 to. 769 Nicarchus, 304, 306, 307, 453 Nicettas (physician), 307 Nichols, John, 173 "Nicolaus," 304 Nicole, G., 619 Micolson, Josias, 545 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 196 Nightingale monument, West- minster Abbey, 148 Nike, 634 Nimbus, 652 Nireus, 270, 673, 737 Nirvana, 198 Nobles, The, and gifts to the Church, 324 to. Nocq, Henri, 339, 579 " Non fueram—non sum," 109 Northmen " ship-tomb," 446 Norton, Hon. C. E. S. (Lady Maxwell), 45, 145, 175, 362, 698 Norwich Museum, 329 " Nosce teipsum," 680-681 " Not lost, but gone before," 698 Notes and Queries, 26, 57, 311, 453 to., 699, 732 to. Nothnagel, Prof. Hermann, 462 Nourredin, Sultan, 706 Nubian cemeteries, 595 Numismatic Chronicle, vii, 166,545 Nuremberg Chronicle, 92 Nuremberg counters, 250, 524 Nuremberg (Nurnberg), 82, 166, 506, 515, 555 Nut (goddess), 685 0 Obituary notices and epitaphs, 201 Obulus, 687 Occo, Adolph III, 181, 182, 516 Occo family, 128 Ockley, Simon, 50 to., 202 O'Connor, T. P., 705 Odd Fellows, 575 Oddie, Joseph, 543 Odin, 657 Offerings, Funeral, 444; to the dead, 595, 596, 678 Ogre, 430 to. Oil, Use of, 599 Old age, 217,265, 299, 399, 406, 458, 460 Oldvs. William, 57 Olfers, J. Fr. M. von, 671 to. Olivier, Alexandre, 503 Olivieri, A., 27 3 D 770 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGPA.M. Olpe, J. Bergmann von, 68 Olympia, 642, 656 Omar I, Caliph, 202, 301 to. Omar Khayyam, 53, 54, 274, 390, 598, 706 "Omnibus" epitaph, 322 Onuphrio, Cardinal, 107 Ophthalmia, 298 Oporinus, J., 128, 130, 560 Oppenheimer, Mr. Henry, 164-165, 715 Optimistic views of life, 419 Orcagna, Andrea, 84, 85 Orcus, 430 to., 637 Orelli, J. C, 27 Orestes, 340 Orleans Museum, 602, 659 Ornament, Evolution of, xxvi Orodes I, Parthian King, 608 Orpheus, 622, 624, 661, 684 Orphic doctrines of the soul, 192, 661 Ortenburg, Gabriel, Count of, 168 Osborn, Max, 48 Osborn, Thomas, 360 Oseberg tumulus, 446 Osiris, 656, 685, 686 Osier, Sir William, 309, 457, 462 " Ouida " (L. de la Ramee), xxv, 414, 443 Overbeck, J. A., 628 Overbeke, Geldolphus van, 556 Ovid, 13, 43 to., 44, 112, 176, 182, 204, 227, 264, 265, 495, 509, 538, 550, 558, 611 to., 626, 666, 668, 723 Owen, John ("Johannes Audoe- nus "), 6, 411 Oxford, All Souls' College, 102; Ashmolean Museum, 281, 513, 580, 582, 583, 625, 632, 715; Douce Collection, 95 ; Wadham College, 517 P Paaw (or Pauw), Pieter, 129 Pacchioni, Antonio, 555 Padua University, 127 Paenderen, Egbert van, 161 to. Page, Dame Mary, 320 Pain, xxiii-xxiv; death a release from, 214, 457, 458; death a recompense for, 219, 220; con- solation of, 366; mystery of pain and death, 374 ; and happiness, 420; modern medical relief of, 397 Paine, Thomas, 238, 242, 565 Palermo, Palazzo Sclafani, 458; vase, 634 Palinurus, 437 Palladas, 38, 41, 307, 387, 388, 397, 621 Palls, Funeral, 730, 731 Pamphaios kylix, 642, 645 Pandareus, 636 Pandora's Box, 633 Pannonius, Janus, 26, 387 Paracelsus, 228, 295 Paradin, M. C, 72, 261 to., 267 to., 378 to., 487, 521 to. Paradis de Moncrif, Francois A. de, xii Paradise, The Christian. See Heaven Parcae. See Fates, The Pare, Ambroise, 299 Parents, Regret at marriage of, 409 Paribeni, R., 187 Paris. Cholera medals, 286, 569,, 570; Bibliotheque Nationale, 206; Cluny Museum, 725; Cimetiere des Saints-Innocents, 116; Hotel Drouot, 590; medical societies, 563; medical students' badges, 573; Monastery of the Innocents, 80; Pere Lachaise, 180, 220; Trocadero Museum, 709 ; cameo in National collec- tion, 664 (see also Louvre) Parker, E. H., 379 Parmenion, 324 Parmigiano, Lorenzo, 496 Parnell, Thomas, 175 Parthenon, The, 609 to. "Parting scenes," Greek, 61 to., 105 to., 422, 423, 587 Passions, The, and death, 453 Pasteur, Louis, 287 Pasti, Matteo de', xvii Pastorino of Siena, 512 Pathological Society, 279 Patmore, Coventry K. D., 332 Paton, W. R , 221, 325 to., 363, 408, 447, 672 to. Patriotism, Crimes in the name of, 196; death and, 448; medals, &c, 337 ; tokens of, 427 Patrix, Peter, 101, 268 Patroclus, 629, 630, 689 to. Paul, St., Epistle to the Romans, INDEX. 771 1S4, 496, 505, 693 ; Corinthians, 42, 171, 182, 183, 227, 345, 400, 510, 513, 692 ; Philippians, 181, 516, 520, 540, 541; Timothy, 387; Hebrews, 279 Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, 75, 732 Pauly, A. F. von, and Georg Wissowa, 319 to. Pausanias, 73, 618, 642, 647, 648, 654, 656, 657, 668, 670 Pavia, Battle of, 333 ; Certosa di, 350, 477 Pavitt, W. T. and Kate, 289 Payer (or Bayer), Dr. Wenzel, 492-495 Pavne, John, 487 Payne, Sir Ralph, 374 Pazzi Conspiracy, 247, 478 Peace, Count von Moltke on, xxii; treaties of, in numismatics, xvii; International Peace Con- ference, 258, 576 Peace-maker, Death as, 277 Peacock as symbol of immortality, 191, 624, 663, 664 Pearse, P. H., 247 Peattie, E. W., 53 w., 177 w. Peladan, Joseph, 148 Pelican, The, 184, 528, 531, 532 Pella, 604 Pelletier (highwayman), 306 Pembroke, Mary, Countess of, epitaph, 120, 371 Pembroke, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of, 371 Pendants, Coffin-shaped, 726 Pepys, Samuel, 701 Perceval, Spencer, 248 Perche, Countess de la, 327 Percy, Thomas, 137 to. Pere Lachaise Cemetery. See Paris " Perfidious Albion," 249 Pericles, 440 Perrault, Charles, 430 to. Perrenot de Granville, Cardinal A., 512 Pers, Ciro di, 323 Persephone, 324, 473 Perseus, xi Persia, Shah of, story, 159 Persian epigram, 411 Persius, 21, 22, 43, 610, 611 Personality, Dual, 73 Perugia Museum, 265, 390 Peruvian pottery, 604, 710 Pessimistic attitude to death, 387 seqq.; moods and poetry, 413 Pessimists and circumstances, 404 Pestilence. See Epidemics " Pest-Pfennige," 507, 533 " Pestthaler," 291, 331, 506 "Pest-tokens," 573 Peter, St., 539 Peter the Great, xvi Peterborough Cathedral, Worme epitaph, 7 Peters, Hermann, 69 to., 161 to. Petrarch, 90, 119 seqq., 168, 205, 211, 217, 328, 379, 401, 402 Petre, Sir William, 517 Petronius, 5, 29, 39, 399 to., 602 Pettigrew, T. J., 45, 106, 108, 184, 262, 289, 293, 294, 295, 329, 359, 402, 530 " Pfaffenfeindthaler," 195 Pfeiffer, L., and C. Ruland, 283, 291, 331, 507, 539, 546, 552, 553, 554, 564, 569, 570 Pflug, Christoph, 546 Phaedrus, 618 Phallic " charms," 290 ; figures, 599, 606, 607 Pharmakowsky, 606 to. Phaylus, 73, 668, 669 Pherecrates, 688 Phido, 304 " Philanthropos, Theophilus," 318, 329 Philatory, 295 Philip II of Spain, 351 Philip IV of France, 159 Philip, Duke of Orleans, 528 Philip, A. P. Wilson, 226 Philippus (Greek Anthology), 325, 407, 440 Philistis, Queen, 488 Phillips, Stephen, 273 Philosopher, The, and life and death, 678, 679 Philosophic ideas of the ancients concerning death, 5 Philosophy, A system of, xiv Phoenician scarabs, 660 Phoenix, The, 181, 487, 488, 496, 506, 535, 556, 665 Phrenology, 567 Phylactery, 295 Physician and Surgeon, The, 443 to. Physicians. See Medical pro- fession Picardy, 111 Picque, Camille, 516 3 D 2 772 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. Pictorial art and religion, 94 " Pietist movement," 681 Pierpoint, R., 732 n. Pig, Epicurus and the, 36, 37 Pigalle, J. B., 149 Pilgrimage, Life a, 52 Pilgrims' badges, 248; spurious badges, 249 ; relics of Becket, 249 ; medalets, 291, 552; terra- cotta flasks, 476 Pilon, Germain, 105, 110, 116 Pinchbeck metal, 237 Pindar, 190, 231, 526, 634, 659, 677 " Pindar, Peter," 226 Pingo, Thomas, 558, 580 Piot amphora, 644, 646 Piping man, 665-666 Pirates, 243 Pisa. Campo Santo fresco, 84, 85, 132, 218, 220, 349, 457; Museo Civica, 89 Pisistratus, 188 Pitstone Church, 359 Pitt, William, Medals of, xvi Pitt-Rivers, A. H. Lane Fox, xxvi Pity, 375 Plagues. See Epidemics Plaques, Italian bronze, 485 Plato, 7, 11, 20, 176, 177, 187 to., 191, 193, 194, 220, 221, 229, 232, 327, 413, 439, 457, 618, 689; winged heads, 613, 614 Platonists, 232 Plautus, 325, 343, 671 to. Playfair, Sir Lyon, 224 Pleasure and pain, xxiv, xxv; life a mixture of, 374 Pleasure, Life given to, 354, 355 ; stimulated, 346 Plimsoll, Samuel, 257, 572 Pliny, 14, 73, 109, 347, 412, 429 Plon, Eugene, 512 Plutarch, 17, 32, 44, 202, 373, 488, 509 Pluto, 656 Poe, Edgar Allan, 323*, 466 Poey d'Avant, Faustin, xxi Poetry, Pessimism and, 413 Poison rings, 702 Poisons, Charms against, 292 Poland, Austrian, 570 Polemon, King, 597, 602 Political ambition, 256; execu- tions, &c, 246-248; "toy-shop " medals, 257 ; strife, xiv Pollajuolo, Antonio del, 478 Pollux, 687 Polycrates, 324 Polydore Virgil, 293 Polygnotus, 648, 654, 670 Polyidos, 658, 659 Polynices, 438, (>")4, 657 Pomander boxes, 726 Pomedello of Verona, 496 Pomerania, 517 Pomp of death, 436, 443 Pomperian "discus," 590 Pompeii, 29, 347, 672 Pompey, 439 Poole, Dr. Robert, 318, 329 Poole, R. S., 534 Pope, Alexander, 59, 183, 261 to., 303, 318, 334 Pope, The, and death (drawing), 86 Popes. Anti-papal medals, &c, 194 Porcellian Club, Harvard, 345 Porphyrius, 625 Porson, Richard, 317, 538 to. Port of refuge, Death a, 25 Porto Bello medals, 237, 563 Portraits on medals, &c, 471 Posidippus, 407 Postgate, Prof. J. P., 430 to. Post-mortem conditions, 403 " Posy-rings," 698 Potidaea, 22 Pottery, 604 seqq. Pottier, E., 606 to., 631, 636 to., 644 to. Powell, Sir R. Douglas, 212 Power, D'Arcy, 281 to., 443, 560 Pozzi, J. H., 356, 562 Pozzi, Samuel J., 577 Prague, 554 Praise of death, 375, 376 Praun Collection, 680 Praxagoras, 302 Preacher, The. See Ecclesiastes Predestination, 381 seqq. ; in classical literature, 386 Premature death, 425 Preparation for death by medita- tion, 350 Present, The, 354 Presland, John, 180 Preston, E. Carter, 586 Priam, 438 Priapus, 663 Prideaux, H. C, 431 to. Prince, John, 441 Prior, Matthew, 307, 408 Procris, 634 Procter, Adelaide A., 224 INDEX. Procuresses of Elizabethan period, 694 Progress, xxii to.; "progress by evolution," xxiii Progress of the race, Death necessary for, 371, 372, 373 Prometheus, 324, 673 Propertius, 4, 21, 24, 168, 458 Proverbs against doctors, 309 Proverbs, Book of, 49 Prudentius, 172 to., 179, 264 Priim, Benedictine Abbey of, 538 to. Prussian "death's-head" regi- ments, 251 Psalms, Book of, 8, 32, 49, 117, 212, 353, 390, 391 to., 522, 526, 552, 556, 693 ; pessimism . in the, 414 Psyche, xx, 340, 612 seqq., 659 Psychasthenic breakdown, xiii "Psychopompos," 307, 591 " Psychotasia," xxviii, 386, 627, 628, 629 Ptah-hetep, 33 Publius Syrus, 44, 451 Puerperal fever, 341 Puget, Pierre de, 341, 367 Punishment, Death as, 14, 238 seqq. ; eternal, 94; future, 392 Punning epitaphs, 7, 104 Puritans', English, rings, 694 " Puzzle-verses," 732 to. Pyle, W. L., 249 Pyrenees, snakes, 658 Pyrrho, 176, 220, 232 Pythagoras, 210, 615, 680 Pythagorean doctrines, 192 Quare, Daniel, 725 Quarles, Francis, 135, 360, 452 Quatrefages, de, 111 Quebec, Capture of, 338 Quilter, Harry, 172, 333 to. Quintus Smyrnaeus, 628 Quivil, Bishop Peter de, 104 R Rabelais, Francois, 113 n., 453 Radcliffe, John, 303 Radowitz, J. M. von, 2 n. Rae, James, 463 Raemaekers, Louis, 142 Rahn, Heinrich, 555 Raigersperg, Nicolas G. de, 350, 528 Railways in numismatics, xvii Raimondi, Marcantonio, 127, 340 Raimund, Ferdinand, 418, 466 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 39, 164, 274, 290, 536 Ranby, John, 239 to. Rantzow, Frantz, 522 Raoul-Rochette, D., 630 to. Raphael, 303, 440, 619 Raspe, R. E., 680 Ravisher, Death as, 65, 82, 324 Raymond, Rossiter, W., 178 Read, Sir C. H., x-xvi, 692 to., 694 Ready epitaph, 7 Ready, Mr. W. T., 496, 698, 719 Realistic representations of corpses, &c, 113 seqq. Reaper, Death as, 134 Reber, Burkhard, 576 Recluse, Ideals of the, 349 Recruiting notice on cemetery, 150 Regnault, Dr. Felix, 148 to., 604 Regulus, 338 Reichstadt, Duke of, 569 " Reigns of Terror," 197 Reinach, Salomon, 29, 128, 245, 588, 592, 616, 628, 629, 644 to., 653 to., 661, 665 Reinaud, J. T., 705 to., 708 to. Reinhard, Hans, 332, 497 Re-interments, medals, 463 Religion, A system of, xiv ; crimes in the name of, 195 ; human race and, 416 Religious belief, old-time, 160 Religious strife and intolerance, xiv, 194 Rembrandt, 280, 288 Remenyi, J., 578 Renaissance, The, 119 ; poets, 439 to. ; tombs, 227 Renan, Ernst, 414 Rene of Anjou, King, 111 Rene de Chalon, Prince of Orange, 116 Repentance, Death-bed, 160 Repose, Crossed legs and arms as emblems of, 590 Republican, Anti, note, 241-242 Reputation, Posthumous, 209,611 Resistance, Necessity for, xxiii IN ART AND EPKiRAM. 774 ASPECTS OF DEATH "Respice finem," 167 Rest, Deatb as a, 216 seqq.; eternal rest, 228 ; mottoes on, 356 Resurrection emblems, 181, 185, 521 "Resurrectionists," 328, 403 Rethel, Alfred, 141, 222, 285 Retzscb, Moritz, 141, 312 Reunion after death, 175 Reuss, 520 Reuter, Herbert, Baron de, 407 to. Revelation, Book of, 65 to., 88,183, 198 to., 274, 317 to., 378, 418, 430 to., 455, 528, 543 Revenge and death, 453 Revolutions, Medals commemo- rating, 247 Revue Archeologique, 660 Rewards and punishments, xiv Riano, J. F., 703 to. Ribblesdale, Lord, 52 Riccio, Domenico, 479 Rice-Oxley, Dr. A. J., 310 Richard II, King, 332; speech (Shakespeare), 271-272 to. Richarme, L. Deriard, 484 Richelieu, Due de, 563 Richer, Paul, 84 to., 105, 110 w., 114, 117, 151, 718 to. Richet, Charles, 220 to. Richier, Ligier, 116, 117, 378 Richmond, Dukes of, Inscription on vault, 173 Richmond, Mr. A., 485 Richter, Ludwig, 141 Ridgeway, William, xxvi to. Right, Individual sense of, 344 Rings, Finger. Inscriptions and mottoes, 169, 171, 184, 185, 334, 357, 416,457, 663; " toad-stones " in, 292; "cramp-rings," 292, 293 ; for superstitious purposes, 294 ; devices, 590, 620, 691 seqq.; antique leaden, 444; Italian niello, 486; Graeco-Scythian, 625 (see also Mourning rings) Risdon, Tristram, 359 Ritchie, Lady Anne 1,150, 157 w., 459 to. Rivers, W. H. R., xiii, 186, 285 to. Robert, Carl, 641 Robespierre, Maximilien, 235 Rochefoucauld, Due de la. See La Rochefoucauld Rochus, St., 552 Rogat, E., 569 Roger of Sicily, 482 Rogers, Rev. E., 445 n. Rogers, Samuel, 698, 705 Rohan family, 383 Rohde, Erwin, 20, 619 Roland, Madame, 195 n. Rolleston, Dr. J. D., 302,306, 307, 326, 327, 363, 473, 601 Roman, Joseph, 704 to. Roman. Representations of skele- tons, 40; ghosts, 92; lights in sepulchral monuments, 99 11. ; epitaphs, 109; apotheosis scenes, 187; deification of emperors, 191; patriotic heroes, 338 ; en- graved gems, &c, 345, 587seqq.; consecratio coins, 442; murder of Caesar coins, 474; funeral " furniture," 443, 444 ; burial rites, 436 Roman Catholic antiphon, 182, 692; mass for the dead, 228 Romans, The, and fame, 209, 210; avoidance of tbe word death, 436 Romanus, Giulio, 619 Rome. St. Peter's, 539; Church of the Cappuccini, 107; Church of S. Lorenzo in Panisperna, 26 ; Farnese Palace, 619; Museo Kircheriano, 649; Museo Na- zionale, 682 ; Villa Borghese, 153 Rome. Instit. di Corrisp. Arche- olog., 629, 632 to., 635, 645 to., 649 to. Ronsard, Pierre de, 55 to., 112, 153, 376 Roper, Margaret, 132 Roper, William, 132 to. Rops, Felicien, 148, 286, 466 Ros, Adam de, 245 to. Rosamund, The Fair, 103 Rosamunda, Lombard Queen, 104 Rosary beads, Memento mori, 715, 716,717 Roscber, W. H., 628,630 to., 632 to., 635 to., 636 to., 661 Rosenbaum, Conrad, 499 Rosenbaum, Lorenz, 498, 499 Rosenborg Palace, 523 Roses as emblems of life, 59, 153, 154 Ross, Dr. E. D., 54 Ross, Ronald, 287 Rossetti, Christina, 229 Rossetti, Dante G., 73, 140 Rossi, G. B. de, 108, 617 to. Rothschild, Baron Ferdinand, 375 to. DEX. 775 IN Rothwell, Richard, 312 Roty, Louis O., 380, 575, 578 Roubiliac, J. F., 148 Rouen Horrors of, 159; Cathedral, 105, 109, 205, 513; Church of St. Vincent, 115 Roumelia, 192, 688 Rowbotham, J. F., 245 to. " Rowlandson, Thomas, 143, 238, 285, 314, 315, 451, 568 Royal Academy, 561 Royal College of Physicians, 239 Royal College of Surgeons, 114, 282, 369, 443, 558, -560 Royal Humane Society, 280, 286, 568 Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 216, 457 Royal Society, 574 Royal Society of Medicine, 281 to. Rudolph of Hapsburg, 324 to. Rudolph II, Emperor, 725 Rudolph, Prince of Anhalt, 518 Rudolphi, C. A., 493, 508, 516, 547, 555, 558, 562, 563, 567 Rufinus, 59, 154, 601 Ruggiero, Prof. E. De, 682 Ruigh, Cornelia Willems, 540 Ruin and destruction, Death as, 287 Ruland, C, 283, 291, 331, 507, 539 See also Pfeiffer, L. Rushforth, G. McN., 99 to. Russells, The, Motto of, 381 Russian Revolution of 1917,195 to. Rutland, Dukes of, 219 to. Rylands, W. H., 94 S S., E., The master (Meister of 1466), 93 to., 95 S., L., 45 S., W. (wood-engraver), 194 Sabina, 664 Sachs, Hans, 168, 299 Sackville.-Thomas, Earl of Dorset, 430 n. Sacrifice for others, 331 Sacrificial death, 193 Sacrifices, Human, 195, 685; Aztec, 710 Saddlers' Company, 731 Saglio, E., 441 Sailor*' amulets, &c, 291, 292 St. Andrews, 337 St. Albans, St. Peter's Church, 359 St. Bartholomew Priory, 84 St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 502, 503 Saint-Denis, 110 Saint-Dizier, 116 St. George's School of Medicine, London,561 St. John, Knights of, 105, 693. See also Knight Hospitaller St. Jude's Church, East London, mosaic, 140 St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, 329 St. Olave's Church, Minories, 359 St. Paul's Cathedral, epitaphs, 10 to., 44 ; Dean Colet's monu- ment, 105; Dance of Death pictures, 80; phoenix on, 665 St. Paul's Cross, 419 n. St. Petersburg Museum, 115 St. Thomas's Hospital, 279, 557, 562 St. Vitus's dance, 76 to., 292 Saints (except in regard to geo- graphical or family names). See their names Saladin, 706 Salamanca Cathedral, 158 Salisbury, Earl of, 249 Salisbury Cathedral, 80; (Sarum) token, 542 Sallust, 548 Salvarsan, 577 Salviati, Francesco, Archbishop of Pisa, 478 Samson, 626 Samudragupta, King, 277, 475 Samuel, Book of, 166, 554 Sandys, Sir J. E., 441 Sanitary Conference, Inter- national, 578 Sanitation, Medals relating to, 283 Santo, Rabbi, 75 Sappho, 413 Saracens, The, 50 to. Sarcophagi, Etruscan sculptured, 630; painted terra-cotta, 634; Ancient Egyptian, 686 Sardanapalus, King, 362 " Sargpfennige," 507 Sarpedon, xxviii, 641, 644 Satan, xxiv Sattler, Joseph, 141 Saturn, 592 Saunders, J., 10 w, Savonarola, 479 776 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPICPAM. Savory, Sir W. S., 405, 462 Saxe-Weimar, William Edward, Duke of, 204 Saxon MS., 674 Scandinavian Valhalla, The, 197, 199 Scarabs, Egyptian, 192; Etruscan, 615, 627, 649, 661, 662, 684 Scarf-pins, 727 Schadow, Paul, 633 to. Schafer, Hans, 422 Schaffhausen, 422, 734 Schatzgeyer, Kaspar, 584 Schedel, Hartmann, 92 Schildo, Eustachius, 48 Schiller, J. C. F. von, 45, 89 to., 344, 373, 385, 422, 454, 538, 584, 734 Schlick, Count Stephan, 475, 495 Schliemann Collection, 603, 604 Schlosser, Julius von, 128, 165 to., 486, 717 Schmidt, Kaspar, 196 Schomberg, Marshal, 185, 339, 549 Schomberg, Johann Georg, 551 Sch0nau, F. C, 523 n. Schopenhauer, A., 408 " Schraubthaler," xxii Schrott, J. J., 524, Schulthess-Rechberg, K. G. von, 519, 520 Schuster, Alfred, 677 Schuster, Rose, 379 Science, xv ; martyrs of, 336 Scientific attitude towards death, 279 seqq. Scipio Africanus Major, 341 Scot, John, 88 Scott, Captain R. F., 336, 577 Scott, T. B., ISO, 299, 462 to. Scott, Sir Walter, 137 to., 217, 243 to., 357, 723 Scottish clans, 608 Sculptures of death, vii to. Scythe emblem of death, 123, 127, 134 Sea-serpent emblem, 660 Seals, Memento mori devices on, 702 seqq. Sears, G. E., 81 Seaton, Mary, 723 Sebastian, St., 552, 553 Second, Jean, 491 Second and third deatbs(Petrarch), 211, 328, 401, 402 Secundinii, The, 187, 189 Sedgemoor, 548 Sedley, Sir Charles, 458 Seelmann, W., 81 Sekhethetep, 100, 369, 686 Self-preservation, 351 Seligmann, S., 289, 711 to. Selinus (Sicily), Coins of, 283, 471, 472 Seljukian Turks, 706 Seneca, xi to., xxiv, 5, 10, 12, 14, 43, 356, 373, 412, 440, 451, 458, 611 to., 668, 687 n., 698 Senior, George, of Sheffield, 409 Senlis, 321, 341, 367 Sepulchral monuments, Dance of Death and, 82; for religious teaching, 101; non-Christian inscriptions on Christian monu- ments, 172; incorrect impres- sions from, 201 ; illustrating social rank and death, 268 Serapis, 638 Serpent, The, as emblem of eternity, 538 Servetus, Michel, 212 Servius, 628 17th Lancers (" Deatb or Glory "), 252, 256 to. Sevigne, Mde. de, 383, 459 to. Sevigne, Francoise M. de, 157 Seville. Caridad Hospital picture, 114, 150, 171 Seward, William, 10 to. Sextus Empiricus, 232 Sextus Tarquinius, 340 Sforza, Faustina, 334, 507 " Shades," 35. See also Larvae Shadow, Life as a, 526 Shakespeare, William, 21; Hack- neyed quotations on uncertainty of life, 136; characters pre- dominating in death, 163; his epitaphs, 329, 401, 440 ; bequest for memorial rings, 701; As You Like It, 39, 391; Cymbeline, 262, 299, 487, 665; Hamlet, 10 to., 212, 225, 269, 421, 455 to. ; Henry IV (Part 1), 79, 135, 271, 695 ; Henry IV(Part 2), 31, 135, 290, 447, 448, 542, 695; Henry VI, 213, 271; Julius Caesar, 447, 448. 450; King John, 214; King Lear, 134, 217, 300, 459; Love's Labour's Lost, 135, 694; Measure for Measure, 78, 434, 447; Macbeth, 221, 391; Mer- chant of Venice, 135; Pericles, 78; Richard II, 79, 212, 271, INDEX. It i 335 to. ; Romeo and Juliet, 47 ; The Tempest, 39, 231, 243; Timon of Athens, 17; Troilus and Cressida, 276, 343, 413; Twelfth Night, 699; Venus and Ado?iis, 79; Sonnets, 13, 169, 182,558 Shallow, Justice, 31 Sharp, Archbishop James, 337 Shattock, Mr. S. G., 626 Sheldon, John, 443 Shell-shock, xiii Shelley, Frances, Lady, 225 to. Shelley, Percy B., 182, 233, 404 Shenstone, William, 50 Shepherds' Calendar, The, 81, 100, 104, 417, 430 w. Sherborn, Charles W., 166 Shesmu, 656 " Shih-Ching," The, 54 Sbillington, 734 Ship-tomb, Oseberg, 446 Shipley, A. E., 46 Ships, &c, in numismatics, xvii; " Coffin-ships," 257, 572 Shipwreck, Charms against, 291 Shirley, James, 88, 262, 273, 422, 435,547 Shoreditch, St. Leonard's Church, 26 Shorthouse, J. H., 344 Sickingen, Franz von, 386 Sickness and death, 457 Sidney, Sir Philip, 120, 371, 453 Siemens, Dr. C. W., 625 Sigismund, Emperor, 495 " Sign of Health," 297 Signs of inns, &c, Death and, 543 Silenus, 665 Silius Italicus, 265 Silvester, H. R., 568 Silvestre, L. C, 170 to., 204 Simmons, S. F., 463 n. Simon, 306 Simonides, 9, 135, 167, 203, 253, 363, 370, 388 Simonis, Julien, 488, 489, 491 Simplicissimus, 258 Simpson, Eve B., 191 Simpson, Sir James Y., 191 Singer, Charles, 280, 281 Sirach, Jesus, son of, The Wisdom of. See Ecclesiasticus Sirens, 183, 634, 635, 636 Sisson, G. H.,709 Siva (or Shiva), 61 n., 656 Skeleton-fakirs, 77 Skeleton-like disguises, 246 Skeletons at the feast, 29 seqq.; in Greek art, 40; on cups, &c, 34 seqq., 602, 603, 604, 606; Death as, 90, 92; wax models of, 114; orchestra of, 147; on bookplates, 166; on medical medals, 329 ; mistakes in draw- ing, 429-430; in Japanese, &c, art, 465; skeleton-dance, 466; in early times, 559; Roman art, 592 ; significance of (Greek and Roman), 667 seqq.; devices on finger-rings, 694 seqq. See also Hautskelett Skin and bone figures. See Gisant; Hautskelett; Larvae Skull and crossed bones. See Death's-head Skulls in engravings, 126; on bookplates, 166; devices on medals, 281, 329; as Memento mori, 349 ; in grotesque art, 465; as cups, &c, 608, 609, 610 ; rock- crystal, 709; watches, 722-725 Sleep, Death as, 220 seqq., 389; dying during, 226, 639 ; in rela- tion to death, 224, 225; life as a sleep, 233; confusion between death and, 639 " Sleep, Genius of," 589, 614. See also Hypnos Smart, Frank, Collection, 725 Smith, A. H., 108 to., 613 to., 622, 631 to., 642, 647 to., 651 to., 658 Smith, Charles John, 723 Smith, D. L., 267 to. Smith, Goldwin, 253 Smith, H. Clifford, 691, 692, 693, 696 n., 702 to., 726 Smith, James, 235 Smith, Sir Thomas, 295 Smollett, Tobias G., 238 to. Smyrna, 604 Snakes (worms) and the dead, 429 ; on Greek tombs, &c, 658 Snarford Church, 731 Snuff-box illustrating Death as leveller, 269 ; phrenological, 567 Sobieski, John, xix Society of Antiquaries, London, 288 n. Socrates, 7, 10, 11, 164, 177, 193, 221, 229, 232, 413, 439, 614, 618, 689 Soissons, 669 Solades, 659 778 ASPECTS OF DEATH IN ART AND EPIGRAM. Solario, 680. Solde, Heinrich, 161 to. Soldiers, Dr. Johnson on, 163 Soldiers' charms, 292 Solis, Virgil, 161 to. Solomon, 414 Solomon's Seal, 297 Solon, 164, 202, 387, 423, 460, 488, 509 " Song of the Harper," 32, 33 Sonnino, Baron Sidney, 584 Sophia Dorothea of Celle, 609 to. Sophocles, 203, 272, 407, 438, 596 Sorcery, 196 Sorel, Agnes, 704 to. " Sorrow," Design representing, 427 Sortin-Dorigny, A., 688 Sotheby, Messrs., 540 Soul, Absorption of the, into the air, 18, 22; emblems of the soul's transit, 189,660; solution of the, 198 ; death and its de- velopment, 379 ; deatb of tbe, 389; purifying tbe, by mortify- ing the body, 402 ; as figured in early Christian art, 476; in Christian sepulchral art, 631; in Egyptian mythology, 686. See also Immortality, Psyche Souls, Evolution of, 377 South, J. F., 560 South Sea Bubble, xvi Southampton Museum, 700 Southey, Robert, 144, 317 Soutbwark Cathedral epitaph, 59 Southwark token, 542 Southwell, Robert, 695 Southwell Church, 699 Spaniards, The, and thought of death, 150, 158 ; and jade amu- lets, 290 Spanish sovereigns and their royal mausoleum, 351 Sparta, Acropolis of, 643 Spartans, The, 253 Spartianus, 18, 19 Speculum Humanae Salvationis, 430 to. Spence, Joseph, 141 to. Spenser, Edmund, 55 to., 59, 221, 303, 412, 413 Sperandio, 350, 480 " Spielmann," Death as a, 141 Spink & Son, Messrs., 524, 559 Spinoza, B. de, 2 "Spiritual death" (life) and "spiritual birth " (death), 232 Stackelberg, O. M., Baron von, 591 to., 632 to. Stael, Mde. de, 375 Stair, Lord, 171 to. Staley, Edgcumbe, 111 Stamp act, xvi Stanley, Thomas, 370 Stapeldon, Bishop, 103 Stargardt, A., 141 State-control of charitable in- stitutions, 362 Statius, 13 Statues altered, xix Statuettes, emblematical of death, 63, 64, 165, 537, 718 Steen, Jan, 504 Steiner, Hans Georg, 555 Stelae, Attic sepulchral, 187, 188, 190; Egyptian, 361, 686; from Chrysapha, 658 Stephen, St., 507 Stephen, King, 262 Stephen II, Bottskai, of Transyl- vania, 516 Stepmother, Epigram on a, 327 "Sterbemiinzen," 221, 268, 378, 442 " Sterbethaler," 181, 182, 184, 205, 505, 506, 513, 517, 518, 520, 525, 540, 541, 546, 556 Stere, George and Elizabeth, 608 Sterling, John, 370 Sternsee, Carolus von, 712 Stevenson, Robert Louis, xxiii, 112, 217 Stilicho, 446 Stirling, William Alexander, Earl of, 25, 216 Stirner, Max, 196 Stobaeus, Joannes, 232, 423 Stock, Andreas, 129 Stoddard, R. H., 179 Stoddard, Dr. W. H. B., 427 Stoic philosophers and death, xii, 6, 355 Stolberg-Wernigerode, Count of, 544 Stolpe, Hjalmar, xxvi Stone, The (renal calculus), 323 Storck, W. F., 73, 74, 81, 83, 84, 89 Storer, Dr. H. R., 287, 484, 504, 516, 524, 527, 530, 550, 552, 556, 557, 562, 563, 564, 567, 569, 570, 573, 575, 576, 577 INDEX. 779 Storer, Dr. Malcolm, 345 to., 558 Strabo, 158 Strassburg, Siege of, 99; Church of St. Thomas, 149; Cathedral, 578 Strato, 59 Stringfellow, F., xvii Stroehlin Collection, 556 Strong, Mrs. Arthur, ix, 20, 99 to., 186, 187 to., 188, 189, 190,192 to., 442, 445, 633, 636, 658, 660, 664 Strozzi, Filippo, 497 Strzygowski, Josef, 589 Stuck, Franz von, 255 Students' badges, Paris, 573 Students' songs, 48, 52, 53 Studniczka, Franz, 636 Sturm, Prof. G., 576 Stuttgart Crematorium, 575 ; Museum, 151 "Sub rosa," 598 Subiaco fresco, 86, 730 Submarine warfare, 451 to. Sudden death, 462 to. ; emblems, 171, 172 Sudboff, Prof. Karl, 669 Suffield, Lord, 159 Suicide as a means of revenge, &c, 193,194 ; as an escape, 213; the right of, 408 ; opinions on, 413 Sun, Life compared to the, 55 Sun-dial as emblem, 595; books on sun-dials, 733; inscriptions and mottoes, xvi, 6, 43 to., 44, 58, 155-157, 169, 171, 231, 265, 346, 357, 39J, 419, 458, 501, 526, 595, 663, 727, 733 " Supermen," 196 Superstition, Survival of, 196 Superstitions connected with future life, 193 ; religious, 195 Surenas, 608 Surgeons' Hall, Old Bailey, 238 "Survival of the fittest," xxii n. Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 454 Sutherland, Duke of, 160 " Sutteeism," 193, 195 Sviatoslav I, Prince, 608 Swaan, J. S., 572 Swan, Charles, 358 n. Swanenburg, W., 129 Swantzfager, 560 Swinburne, Algernon C, 182, 201, 216, 229, 344, 377, 412 Swiss (Basel) medalets, 533, 534 Sword handle as Christian emblem, 332; with memento mori devices, 708 Sydenham, Thomas, 309 Sylke, Prior, 108 • Symbols of death, terror inspiring use of, 244 Symeoni, Gabriello, 72, 261, 267, 378, 521 Symonds, John A., 13 Sympathy, Human, 414 Syracuse coins, 488, 634 Syrphidae, The, 626 Szela, L. de, 571 Szirmai, Tony A., 578 T Tacitus, 21, 207, 244, 319, 320,334, 347, 508, 665 Tagore, Sir Rabindranath, 145, 370, 388 Tails, Englishmen and, 249 Talismans, 288, 289, 296, 683, 704 to. See also Amulets, Charms Talleyrand, Prince de, 304 Talpa, Bartolo, 487 Tankerfield, George, 222 "Tanks" foreshadowed, xvii Tapers, Lighted, 99 n. Tapestries. " Triumph of Death," 121,123,124; " Macaber Dance," 77 to,; "Triumph of Fame," 206; " Triumph of Valour," 514 " Tarantella," 76 to. Tarentism, 76 to. Tasso, Torquato, 56, 228 Tate and Bradv's Psalms, 547 Tate Gallerv, The, 138, 256, 360, 370, 416, 417, 424, 525 Tavern or inn, Life as a, 50 Taylor, A. E., 37 Taylor, Jeremy, Bishop, 43 to., 116, 162, 227, 359, 399, 400, 526 Taylor, Dr. Seymour, 73, 462 to. Teeth of physicians as amulets, 296 Temple, Sir Richard, 5 Temple Bar, 159 Tenniel, Sir John, xx, 572 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 78, 179, 246, 253 to., 366, 407 to., 409, 422, 456 Tentzel, W. E., 498 Terence, 44, 232, 399, 485, 506 Terentianus Maurus, 168 IX ART AND EPIGRAM. 780 ASPECTS OF DEATH " Terminus," 191, 491, 613, 614 Terra-cotta ware, silvered, 444 Terror of death. See Fear of death Terrors, The, of death as depicted in Etruscan tombs, 61 to. ; in mediaeval Europe, 61 seqq. ; in pictures, 243; of the symbols of death, 244 Tertullian, 198 to., 437, 656, 665 Teutonic Heaven, The, 199 Thackeray, F. St. John, 179 Thackeray, W. M., 48 " Thalers," 495 Thales of Miletus, 680 Thalia. 336 to. Thanatophilia, 351 Thanatophobia. See Fear of death Thanatos, xxviii, 590, 630, 640, 641, 642, 644 seqq.; list of books, 641 Thanunia, Seianti, 444 That-I-em-hetep, 34 Thebes, 32 Themistocles, 37, 440 Theocritus, 334 Theognis, 334, 437, 406, 408, 409 Theophilus, Archbishop of Alex- andria, 301 to. Theophrastus, 170 to., 460 Therapeutics, Advance in, 287 " There is no deatb," 177-180 Thermopylae, 203, 253 Thersites, 269, 270, 672, 673, 737, 738 Thetis, 628, 629, 655 Thibaud de Marly, vii to., 261, 264 Thomas of Celano, 228,392, 396 to., 435 Thomas a Kempis, 357, 367, 501, 722, 731 Thomas, James, 406 Thompson, Mr. C. J. S., 146 to., 718 Thompson, Francis, 404 Thornby, 156 " Though lost to sight," 698 Thought, Survival of, 212 Thoughts of death, 449 Thracian view of life, 14, 410 Three Kings and three Dead, 83, 84 Three Kings of Cologne, 530, 531 " Three Living and Three Dead." See Trois Morts Three Sisters, The. See Fates Thurston, Hubert, xxi Thuthu, 686 Thynne, Thomas, 609 n. Tiberius, Emperor, 195 to., 664 Tiberius, Villa of, Capri, 683 Tibullus, 265 Tiepolo, G. B., 147 Tillier, Claude, 460 Timbs, John, 45 Time and Death, 371; time con- quering all things, 169; march- of time, 265; figure of Time, 592; misuse of time, 722; mottoes on, 357 Timocreon of Rhodes, 363 Timon's epitaph, 17, 18 Tithonus, 218 Titian, 128, 130 Tiverton Church, Devon, 359 "Toad-stones," 292 Toads and death, 429 seqq. " Todtentanz." See Dance of Deatb Tokens, 542-543; on Thomas Paine, 238 " Tokens of spousage," xxi Toledo, 16, 107 " Tomb furniture," 190, 443, 444 Tombs used for religious teaching, 101; violation of, 401-402, 447 ; treasure in, 446, 447 ; opening of, 447 Tonsberg, 446 Tooth, Cannibal and, story, 609 Torcello Cathedral, 193 Torquatus, 338 Torre, Marcantonio della, 281 Torture, 194 Tott family, 546 "Touch-pieces," 291 Tour, La. See La Tour Tournaments, 78 Touse, Robert, 109 Toussaint, Claude, Comte de la Garaye, 362 Tower of London, 77 to., 132, 159, 548 " Toy-shop " medals, 237; political, 565 Trafalgar, Battle of, 339 Trajan, Emperor, 256 Transmigration of souls. See Metempsychosis Transylvanian medal, 339 Treasure in heaven, 360 " Treizain," xxi Trench, Archbishop R. C, 231 Trento, 584 INDEX. 781 Tresor