ART. XVII. The Dance of Death, painted by H. Holbein, and en graved by W. Hollar. 8vo. l. 1s. Bound. Edwards.

THIS

"HIS curious and elegant volume is well adapted to gratify thofe who ftudy the antiquities of the arts. It contains a difquifition concerning the Dance of Death, which was one of the favourite religious pageants while the ftage was yet in the hands of the clergy. It is fometimes found represented by carvings in wood in the choirs of churches, and has been painted on the infide walls even of palaces. There exift also a fet of thirty wooden cuts of this fubject engraven by Wenceslaus Hollar, probably from the defigns for the paintings executed by Holbein at Whitehall, which are here ftruck off anew, and to each an explanation is annexed. Befide these are the portraits of Holbein, of Hollar, and of Lydgate; and Lydgate's poem, entitled the Daunce of Machabree," is fubjoined in black letters.

As the preliminary differtation, though very ingenious, by no means exhaufts the literature of the Dance of Death, and is laboured only fo far as refpects the painters and engravers who have chofen it for a theme, the book had perhaps been more complete if Lydgate's ftanzas had only been quoted in common. with thofe of Pierce the ploughman, and had not occupied fo disproportionate a space. We are told too (p. 9.) that Macabre was a German poet, but, by his tranflator, that he was a French doctor. If both thefe affertions be true, it was worth while to reconcile them. Some comments might also have been made on the 63d chapter of Don Quixote.

Those who have cultivated a tafte for the fine arts will not eafily be pleased with defigns in which Death is perfonified under the form of an animated skeleton. There cannot be a groffer abfurdity than that of attributing human motions and actions to a form which is without mufcles or any of the inftruments of motion. Yet the painter has not stopped here, but has attempt ed pathetic expreffion by varying the contour of the boney fockets in a manner analogous to the change of the living eye: he has done the fame with the mouth; and thus he has converted that which was intended for a folemn moral lecture into a laughable caricature. The rational artists of antiquity, wherever they have chofen to decorate a farchophagus with a skeleton*, represent it in a recumbent pofture, ftretched at full length; perfect repofe being effential to the very idea. If they had in view an emblematic or allegorical perfonification of Death, it is fometimes as the God + Hades, a harsh ftrong man with a * Gor. tom. I. p. 382.

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+ Spon. Mifcellan. p. 306, fig. 2. may ferve as one inftanee.

REV. FEB. 1794

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drawn fword, accompanied perhaps by his three-headed dog, and driving before him an unwilling Manes: fometimes, as one of the deftinies with fhears: fometimes, as the God Comus t, a youth leaning, his legs croffed, clofing his eye-lids with the one hand, and with the other quenching his torch which had illuminated the feftal hall, as if to intimate that "the banquet of life is over." This laft, from its frequent recurrence, with the occasional variety of a † garland, fuch as crowned the dead, feems to have been the favourite emblem, and is certainly a most beautiful one. It should be revived, and fhould fuperfede the Gothic monster of Holbein :-For it is not indifferent to the happiness of mankind, whether images of horror or of peace are affociated with the fatal bourne. The quantity of human mifery, which the fear of death has inflicted, is very confiderable; and the artift can much increase or diminish it, by familiarizing the painful or the tranquil impreffions.

For a more circumftantial and more fatisfactory account of this very curious publication, we must refer to the book itself, which will be its own best commentator: indeed it seems to us impoffible to convey an adequate idea of a work confifting chiefly of engravings, in a literary journal which affords only a letter-prefs representation.

ART. XVIII. A Convention the only Means of faving us from Ruin. In a Letter addressed to the People of England. By Jofeph Gerrald.. 8vo. pp. 124. 2s. 6d. Eaton. 1793.

DES

ESPERATE remedies, it is allowed, are to be used only in defperate cafes. If this principle be juft, and if Mr. GerFald be right in his affertion, that a convention is the only means of faving us from ruin, our fituation may be well confidered as truly alarming; for defperate, indeed, must be the public malady which nothing but a Convention can remove! We are not made of fuch ftuff as to be frightened by mere words; and therefore we premife that there is nothing in the found of the word convention which terrifies us; on the contrary, we are aware that to one convention we are indebted for the restoration of our conftitution; and to another for its prefervation:-but we confefs that there is fomething which may appal the ftouteft heart in the contemplation of what muff precede, and what may follow, the fitting of a convention. The

Gruter. infcript. p. 304. indeed thinks that the mutilated + Philoftrati op. p. 765, 66. Gorii infcrip. T. 1. p. 308,

Boiffard, topogr. tab. 48. Pighius hand held a feroll, and not fhears. edit. Olear.

Paffer. luc. Tom. 3. tab. 46, &c. meeting

meeting of fuch an affembly implies, in a great measure, the previous diffolution of government, or of the conftitution. This was not, indeed, the cafe in America; which, in point of fact, had not, before a convention met, what might be truly called a general or foederal conftitution for the whole of the thirteen ftates; though each ftate, in particular, had one: but, with respect to England, the obfervation is ftrictly founded in hiftorical truth. When Cromwell died, this country had no conftitution; it was freed, by his death, from a downright ufurpation, in his own perfon, of the rights and liberties of every description of the people. The convention, which met in confequence of the general cry for a free parliament, recalled the king, re-invefted the peers with their legislative character, and reftored the old conftitution of England. There was no other power at that time in the country to effect such a meafure, and therefore a convention was abfolutely neceffary.

When James II. fled, he left no one behind him to exercise the royal functions, nor to carry on the executive government; the conftitution, as far as lay in him, was deftroyed; there was no parliament in being, and there was no conftitutional authority for calling one: all the powers of the state were paralyfed. In fuch a cafe, alfo, a convention was abfolutely neceffary; for it was such an affembly alone that could apply an adequate remedy to the public difeafe.

What, however, is there in our prefent condition, on account of which a convention is the only means of faving us from ruin? The answer is, that the people are not fairly and fully represented in parliament; and that the crown and the peers. have an overbearing influence in the house of commons. Were we to deny the truth of this anfwer, we should belie all our own opinions, so often repeated and enforced in our publications for many years paft. We have always afferted, and we will continue to affert, that the people have an exclufive right to elect their own representatives; that the interference of the crown or the peerage to influence either the electors or the elected is illegal and unconftitutional; that the reprefentation of the people ought to be fo fair, fo full, and fo adequate, that there fhould neceffarily exift an identity of interefts between those who represent and those who are reprefented: fo that the house of commons might be truly, what the conftitution intended that it fhould be, the organ through which the genuine voice of the people fhould be conveyed to the throne:-but what is there in the prefent pofture of affairs, which renders it impoffible that fuch a representation of the people fhould be established, excepting by a convention? Surely, nothing. Our conftitution is of that plaftic nature, that it can be adapted to circum

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ftances, and to times. It is competent to enfranchife and disfranchise towns and diftricts, to leffen and to augment the number of electors and of the elected; it has embraced the whole kingdom of Scotland, and has received the legiflature of that country into its bofom; it has broken through election monopolies in boroughs, when the abufe of the franchife has been proved; and it has punished the monopolifts, by extending the right of voting to the freeholders of adjacent hundreds. Who, then, can pretend to fay that the reprefentation of the people can only be improved by a convention? It may be urged that parliament, though equal to the work, will not only not undertake it, but will abfolutely and determinedly fet its face against the propofal. When it appears that parliament difregards the voice and wishes of the people, and would rather hazard the public tranquillity than confent to any reform of the popular representation in the houfe of commons, it will be then time enough to talk of conventions. We are disposed to believe that parliament will be too wife, and too mindful of its own intereft, fyftematically to oppofe what fhall appear to be the public wifh; and that even the borough-mongers, from whom the greatest oppofition might be apprehended, will deem it prudent and expedient to bow to the general fenfe of the nation. We are confident, in a word, that every defeription of perfons in the kingdom will concur in rational plans of reform, fooner than furnith a pretext for the meeting of a body, whofe powers are undefined; whofe authority knows no bounds; whofe will, fhould it be directed to evil, cannot be checked nor controuled; whofe fittings may be permanent (for who is to prorogue a convention?) to the utter deftruction of executive government; and whofe very existence gives the idea of the proftration of all other authority at the feet of this paramount body. Such a body might pull down what a great part of the nation may venerate, and may fet up what it may dislike and even execrate: the confequence might be a civil war; and thus the only means of faving us from ruin,' might make this happy country one vaft theatre of blood and flaughter. If genuine liberty could not be afferted without carnage, we can honeftly affert that we feel the pure flame burn fo ftrongly within us, that we would not hefitate to fay, "Liberty or Death:"-but we fear that a convention would dig the grave of liberty; and this is our reafon for deprecating fuch a meeting, and for adhering to the conftitution of England; which may, by parliament, be fo improved as to fecure to the people every bleffing that a free citizen is capable of enjoying.

In ftating the grounds on which he builds his declaration, • that a convention is the only means of faving us from ruin,*

Mr. Gerrald mentions the wars which have defolated Europe for the laft hundred years: they arofe not, (he fays,) from the jarring interefts of the people, but from the ambition of courts. Whether, in order to prevent fuch confequences in future, he would abolish courts entirely, (that is to fay, monarchy,) or would merely take from them the power of making war, he leaves to his readers to infer from the general tenor of his arguments, for he speaks not openly and decidedly on that fubject. That the people, whofe blood and treasure must flow in war, ought to have the right of judging and pronouncing whether it fhould be undertaken or not, no honest and reasonable man will deny; and perhaps it would be wife to enact that the crown fhould not be at liberty to declare war, without the confent of the reprefentatives of the people previously expreffed: we fay perhaps only, because we think that a minifter would scarcely venture to go to war, if he had not reason to believe that, in the measure, he carried with him the sense of the people. This appeared very ftrikingly at the time of the Ruffian armament, when Mr. Pitt abandoned his project of hoftilities, on finding that it was not relished by the nation. If then the fenfe of the people had fo much weight with the crown, even under the prefent conftitution of the house of commons, what might it not be expected to have under an improved and adequate ftate of reprefentation? It must be admitted, at the fame time, that, if ever the neceffity of a reform were proved by fact, it was on that occafion; when the fenfe of the people at large was found to be in direct oppofition to that of their representatives.

Mr. Gerrald begins with King William's war, which preceded the peace of Ryfwick, and which, he fays, was undertaken to make France acknowledge that king, and to recover Hudson's Bay.' The latter part of the object of that war was furely popular, if it were for the recovery of part of the empire wrefted from it by France: the former was ftill more fo; for it was to affert the right of the people to new model their government, to break the old hereditary line of fucceffion to the crown, and to fet afide a fovereign who, though bound to maintain the conftitution, had endeavoured to place himself above it. France continued to acknowlege the depofed monarch; refused to give the title of King to William; that is to fay, in other words, refused to recognize the character which the people of England had given to him; and, by ftill affecting to call him only Prince of Oranges ftigmatized, as far as it could, the glorious Revolution win the name of rebellion, and ftamped on every Englishman, who concurred in it, the name of traitor. Surely, then, this war was not fo much a war of the

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