ewhere loosely
called "_painctre_," this title cannot refer to Holbein, who was so far
from being dead that he survived until 1543. The only indication of the
woodcutter's name is supplied by the monogram, "HL" upon the bedstead
in No. 36 ("The Duchess"); and these initials have been supposed to
indicate one Hans Lutzelburger, or Hans of Luxemburg, "otherwise Franck,"
a form-cutter ("formschneider"), whose full name is to be found attached
to the so-called "Little Dance of Death," an alphabet by Holbein,
impressions of which are in the British Museum. His signature ("H. L. F.
1522") is also found appended to another alphabet; to a cut of a fight
in a forest, dated also 1522; and to an engraved title-page in a German
New Testament of the year following. This is all we know with certainty
concerning his work, though the investigations of Dr. Edouard His have
established the fact that a "formschneider" named Hans, who had business
transactions with the Trechsels of Lyons, had died at Basle before June,
1526; and it is conjectured, though absolute proof is not forthcoming,
that this must have been the "H. L.," or Hans of Luxemburg, who cut
Holbein's designs upon the wood. In any case, unless we must assume
another woodcutter of equal merit, it is probable that the same man cut
the signed Alphabet in the British Museum and the initialed _Dance of
Death_. But why the cuts of the latter, which, as we have shown above,
were printed _circa_ 1526, were not published at Lyons until 1538;
and why Holbein's name was withheld in the Preface to the book of that
year, are still unexplained. The generally accepted supposition is that
motives of timidity, arising from the satirical and fearlessly unsparing
character of the designs, may be answerable both for delay in the
publication and mystification in the "Preface." And if intentional
mystification be admitted, the doors of enquiry, after three hundred
and fifty years, are practically sealed to the critical picklock.

=Other Reproductions=

The _Dance of Death_ has been frequently copied. Mr. W. J. Linton
enumerates a Venice reproduction of 1545; and a set (enlarged) by Jobst
Dienecker of Augsburg in 1554. Then there is the free copy, once popular
with our great grandfathers, by Bewick's younger brother John, which
Hodgson of Newcastle published in 1789 under the title of _Emblems of
Mortality_. Wenceslaus Hollar etched thirty of the designs in 1651,
and in 1788 forty-six of them we