The book, in spite of the false theory on which it is based, displays much careful if misplaced research, and as, for this reason, it is apt to mislead those who have made no serious study of Holbein’s work, its arguments have been briefly dealt with here. Mr. Dickes, however, is not alone in refusing to accept Jean de Dinteville and George de Selve as the two ambassadors. Mrs. G. Fortescue, in her book on the painter,[98] holds that both Miss Hervey and Mr. Dickes are wrong; but she brings forward no names to take the place of those she condemns, and merely suggests, somewhat mysteriously, that later on she will produce facts which will provide the correct solution. Footnote 98: _Holbein_ (“Little Books on Art”), 1904, p. 149. Turning again to the picture itself, it is evident that the accessories, with which the table is crowded, both from their unusual number and character, were not collected at haphazard merely to afford an opportunity for displaying Holbein’s skill in depicting minutiæ, but that they represent the tastes and learned pursuits of the two sitters, and were selected and arranged by Dinteville himself. The prevailing love of allegory and symbolism, of the emblem or “devise,” which was a marked characteristic of that age, is apparent in many of the picture’s details, in some of them to be read plainly, in others so obscurely that it is now impossible to explain them satisfactorily. Miss Hervey has described them with care, and has elucidated much of their meaning and purpose. The appearance of the Death’s-head twice over in the picture—in the hat-medal worn by Dinteville and in the distorted skull in the foreground—seems to indicate that the ambassador had adopted it as his personal badge or _devise_. The picture, indeed, in its general arrangement bears considerable likeness to the woodcut in the “Dance of Death” series known as “The Arms of Death” (“Die Wappen des Todes”), as was first pointed out by Mr. Wornum.[99] This suggests the possibility that Dinteville had been shown, perhaps by Holbein himself, a proof set of the “Dance of Death” woodcuts, and that he had been greatly impressed by them. He suffered much from ill-health while in England, which may have had something to do with his choice of a device of so gloomy a nature. Footnote 99: Wornum, p. 181.