His glee, as he leads forth his victims into the valley
where his shadow lies, is perceptible in every line of his angular
anatomy; his very toes curl up like those of a baby in its merriment.
In the fourth, Adam has begun to till the ground. The pioneer of his
race, he is uprooting a huge tree, all unconscious that another figure
is laboring at his side. It is not Eve, who sits in the background with
her first-born at her breast and her distaff by her side,--but Death,
who, with a huge lever in his bony gripe, goes at his work with a fierce
energy which puts the efforts of his muscular companion to shame. The
people of Holbein's day not only saw in this subject the beginning of
that toil which is the lot of humankind, but, as they looked upon the
common ancestors of all men, laboring for the means of life, they asked,
in the words of an old distich,--
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"
The fifth composition seems to represent a general rejoicing over the
Triumph of Death. It shows a churchyard and porch filled with skeletons,
who blow trumpets of all sorts and sizes; one beats frantically upon a
pair of kettle-drums, and another, wearing a woman's nightcap, with a
broad frill border, plays the hurdy-gurdy.
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