spread, according to which Lazarus, after his resurrection, lived in continual misery and horror at the thought that he should have again to pass through the gate of death. If the just had so much to fear, how could the sinner soothe himself? And then what motif was more poignant than the calling up of the agony of death? It appeared under two traditional forms: the Ars moriendi and the Quator hominum novissima, that is, the four last experiences awaiting man, of which death was the first. These two subjects were largely propagated in the fifteenth century by the printing-press and by engravings. The Art of Dying, as well as the Last Four Things, comprised a description of the agony of death, in which it is easy to recognize a model supplied by the ecclesiastical literature of former centuries.
Chastellain, in a long-winded poem, Le Pas de la Mort, has assembled all the above motifs; he gives successively the image of putrefaction—the lament: Where are the great ones of the earth?—an outline of a death-dance—and the art of dying. Being prolix and heavy, he needs a great many lines to express what Villon presents in half a stanza. But in comparing them we recognize their common model. Chastellain writes:
“Il n’a membre ne facture
Qui ne sente sa pourreture.
Avant que l’esperit soit hors,
Le cœur qui veult crevier au corps
Haulce et souliève la poitrine
Qui se veult joindre à son eschine.
—La face est tainte et apalie,
Et les yeux treilliés en la teste.
La parole luy est faillie,
Car la langue au palais se lie.
Le poulx tressault et sy halette.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
Les os desjoindent à tous lez;
Il n’a nerf qu’au rompre ne tende.”[1]
- ↑ There is not a limb nor a form, Which does not smell of putrefaction. Before the soul is outside, The heart which wants to burst in the body Raises and lifts the chest Which nearly touches the backbone.—The face is discoloured and pale, And the eyes veiled in the head. Speech fails him, For the tongue cleaves to the palate. The pulse trembles and he pants…. The bones are disjointed on all sides; There is not a tendon which does not stretch as to burst.
