We come, then, to one of more value, “La Dança General,” or the Dance of Death, consisting of seventy-nine regular octave stanzas, preceded by a few words of introduction in prose, that do not seem to be by the same author.[146] It is founded on the well-known fiction, so often illustrated both in painting and in verse during the Middle Ages, that all men, of all conditions, are summoned to the Dance of Death; a kind of spiritual masquerade, in which the different ranks of society, from the Pope to the young child, appear dancing with the skeleton form of Death. In this Spanish version it is striking and picturesque,--more so, perhaps, than in any other,--the ghastly nature of the subject being brought into a very lively contrast with the festive tone of the verses, which frequently recalls some of the better parts of those flowing stories that now and then occur in the “Mirror for Magistrates.”[147] [146] Castro, Bibl. Española, Tom. I. p. 200. Sanchez, Tom. I. pp. 182-185, with Tom. IV. p. xii. I suspect the Spanish Dance of Death is an imitation from the French, because I find, in several of the early editions, the French Dance of Death is united, as the Spanish is in the manuscript of the Escurial, with the “Débat du Corps et de l’Ame,” just as the “Vows over the Peacock” seems, in both languages, to have been united to a poem on Alexander. [147] In what a vast number of forms this strange fiction occurs may be seen in the elaborate work of F. Douce, entitled “Dance of Death,” (London, 1833, 8vo,) and in the “Literatur der Todtentänze,” von H. F. Massmann (Leipzig, 1840, 8vo). To these, however, for our purpose, should be added notices from the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, (Berlin, 1792, Vol. CVI. p. 279,) and a series of prints that appeared at Lubec in 1783, folio, taken from the paintings there, which date from 1463, and which might well serve to illustrate the old Spanish poem. See also K. F. A. Scheller, Bücherkunde der Sässisch-niederdeutschen Sprache, Braunschweig, 1826, 8vo, p. 75. The whole immense series, whether existing in the paintings at Basle, Hamburg, etc., or in the old poems in all languages, one of which is by Lydgate, were undoubtedly intended for religious edification, just as the Spanish poem was. The first seven stanzas of the Spanish poem constitute a prologue, in which Death issues his summons partly in his own person, and partly in that of a preaching friar, ending thus:-- Come to the Dance of Death, all ye whose fate By birth is mortal, be ye great or small; And willing come, nor loitering, nor late, Else force shall bring you struggling to my thrall: For since yon friar hath uttered loud his call To penitence and godliness sincere, He that delays must hope no waiting here; For still the cry is, Haste! and, Haste to all!