'Holbein is more particularly recorded as having employed his pencil upon a work of this kind; but, without entering into a detail of those masters who have treated the subject of the _Dance of Death_, the present object is merely to attract the public attention to the subject itself. Few remains are now visible of the original paintings which represented it, but they have been perpetuated by the more durable skill of the engraver, and the volumes which contain them in the latter form are to be found on the shelves of the learned and curious collector. The subject is the same in them all, but varied according to the fancy of the painters, or perhaps from local circumstances attached to the places which they were respectively intended to decorate. The predominant feature is, without exception, the representation of one or more skeletons, sometimes indeed in grotesque attitudes, and with rather a comic effect, conducting persons of all ranks, conditions, and ages to the tomb. 'Mr. Rowlandson had contemplated the subject with the view of applying it exclusively to the manners, customs, and character of this country. His pencil has accordingly produced the designs, which, in the order they were delivered to me, I have accompanied with metrical illustrations, a mode of proceeding which has been sanctioned by the success of our joint labours in the _Tour of Doctor Syntax_. The first volume, therefore, of the English _Dance of Death_, which has appeared in twelve successive numbers, is now presented to the public in a collected form. The second volume will follow in the same mode of publication. Though the name and tenour of the work is borrowed, it may, perhaps, be allowed some claim to local and characteristic originality. The most serious subject attached to our nature is, indeed, presented with a degree of familiar pleasantry which is not common to it. But in this particular the example of the painters who first suggested and propagated the idea has been followed, and no other vivacity has been displayed in these pages than has been found on the walls of edifices dedicated to religion, and was thus represented in the cloisters of St. Paul's, before the sacrilegious pride of the Protector Somerset caused the dilapidation of that appendage to the metropolitan church of the kingdom. But I am not afraid of being accused by reflecting minds of having introduced an unbecoming levity into the following pages, for that writer may surely claim the approbation of the grave and the good who familiarises the mind with Death by connecting it in any way with the various situations and circumstances of life. 'THE AUTHOR.'