Caddy Buddy books

To this is added an ornamental tail-piece called Death's Arms. It shows
a skull in a battered shield, which has for a crest a regal helmet
surmounted by an hour-glass and two bony arms grasping a stone. The
supporters to the shield are a gentleman and lady richly dressed,--said
to represent Holbein and his wife.
It is not known, positively, when Holbein drew these designs upon the
blocks (for of course he did not engrave them); and it has even been
disputed by one or two eminent antiquarian critics, that he designed
them at all. But there does not appear to be a single valid reason for
thus diminishing his fame. He probably was engaged on them between
1531, the date of his first return to Bale, and 1538, when they were
published,--the year in which he refused the solicitation of his
townsmen to return to the home of his childhood and the bosom of his
family.
Holbein continued to live in London until the year 1554, when that city
suffered a visitation of the plague, similar to that which was the
occasion of the painting of the Great Dance of Death at Bale.


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