The
motive for placing the Dance in such a place is unknown, and it is
difficult to conjecture what it was. It could hardly have been to
enforce the old adage,--Speak well of the bridge that carries you over.
* * * * *
While we have been thus endeavoring to discover the origin of the Dance
of Death, what it was, and what it meant, Holbein has been waiting more
patiently than he was wont, for us to see who he was, and why the Dance,
which was known three hundred years at least before he was born, is now
universally spoken of as his.
Hans Holbein, the greatest painter of the German school, came honestly
by his talent and his name. He was the son of Hans Holbein, a painter,
who was the son of another Hans Holbein, also a painter. The first Hans
was a poor painter; the second a good one; and the third so great, that
the world, when it speaks their common name, means only him. The father
and grandfather were born at Augsburg, in Bavaria, and of late years
it has been asserted by mousing antiquaries that the grandson was born
there too; but this, perhaps, is not quite certain; and it is much
pleasanter to adhere to the ancient faith, and believe that he was
born at that strange old Bale, in sight of that great Dance, the
reproduction, or rather recreation, of which was to make so great a part
of his fame,--especially as he was quite surely an inhabitant of the
town at such tender years, that the veriest Know-Nothing in the place
would not have deprived him of his citizenship.
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