the poor widow with her youngest child, who waves his hand sorrowfully, while the mother and the sister vainly answer; or the old man, to whom Death is playing on a psaltery, seems anxious that his withered fingers should once more touch the strings, while he is carried off in calm tranquillity. The greater part of these subjects of death are, however, ludicrous; and it may be a question, whether the spectators of these Dances of Death did not find their mirth more excited than their religious emotions. Ignorant and terrified as the people were at the view of the skeleton, even the grossest simplicity could not fail to laugh at some of those domestic scenes and familiar persons drawn from among themselves. The skeleton, skeleton as it is, in the creation of genius, gesticulates and mimics, while even its hideous skull is made to express every diversified character, and the result is hard to describe; for we are at once amused and disgusted with so much genius founded on so much barbarism.[140] When the artist succeeded in conveying to the eye the most ludicrous notions of death, the poets also discovered in it a fertile source of the burlesque. The curious collector is acquainted with many volumes where the most extraordinary topics have been combined with this subject. They made the body and the soul debate together, and ridicule the complaints of a damned soul! The greater part of the poets of the time were always composing on the subject of Death in their humorous pieces.[141] Such historical records of the public mind, historians, intent on political events, have rarely noticed. Of a work of this nature, a popular favourite was long the one entitled "_Le faut mourir, et les Excuses Inutiles qu'on apporte a cette Necessite; Le tout en vers burlesques, 1658_." Jacques Jacques, a canon of Ambrun, was the writer, who humorously says of himself that he gives his thoughts just as they lie on his heart, without dissimulation--"For I have nothing double about me except my name! I tell thee some of the most important truths in laughing; it is for thee _d'y penser tout a bon_." This little volume was procured for me with some difficulty in France; and it is considered as one of the happiest of this class of death-poems, of which I know not of any in our literature. Our canon of Ambrun, in facetious rhymes, and with the _naivete_ of expression which belongs to his age, and an idiomatic turn fatal to a translator, excels in pleasantry; his haughty hero condescends to hold very amusing dialogues with all classes of society, and delights to confound their "excuses inutiles." The most miserable of men, the galley-slave, the mendicant, alike would escape when he appears to them. "Were I not absolute over them," Death exclaims, "they would confound me with their long speeches; but I have business, and must gallop on!" His geographical rhymes are droll.