I should, however, much doubt its being intended as a portrait of Sickingen, and I can trace no resemblance to the medal given by Luckius.  I believe the conjecture originated with Bartsch, in his Peintre Graveur, vol. vii. p. 107.  Schoeber, in his Life of Durer, p. 87., supposes that it is an allegory of the nature of a soldier’s life.

It was this print that inspired La Motte Fouque with the idea of his Sintram as he thus informs us in the postscript to that singularly romantic tale: 

“Some years since there lay among my birth-day presents a beautiful engraving of Albert Durer.  A harnessed knight, with an oldish countenance, is riding upon his high steed, attended by his dog, through a fearful valley, where fragments of rock and roots of trees distort themselves into loathsome forms; and poisonous weeds rankle along the ground.  Evil vermin are creeping along through them.  Beside him Death is riding on a wasted pony; from behind the form of a devil stretches over its clawed arm toward him.  Both horse and dog look strangely, as it were infected by the hideous objects that surround them; but the knight rides quietly along his way, and bears upon the tip of his lance a lizard that he has already speared.  A castle, with its rich friendly battlements, looks over from afar, whereat the desolateness of the valley penetrates yet deeper into the soul.  The friend who gave me this print added a letter, with a request that I would explain the mysterious forms by a ballad....  I bear the image with me in peace and in war, until it has now spun itself out into a little romance.”

S.W.  Singer.

Mickleham Aug. 13. 1850.

“Noli me tangere” (Vol. ii., p. 153.).—­B.R. is informed, that one of the finest paintings on this subject is the altar-piece in All Souls College Chapel, Oxford.  It is the production of Raphael Mengs, and was purchased for the price of three hundred guineas of Sir James Thornhill, who painted the figure of the founder over the altar, the ceiling, and the figures between the windows.  There may be other paintings by earlier masters on so interesting subject, but none can surpass this of Raphael Mengs in the truthfulness of what he has here delineated.  The exact size of the picture I do not recollect, but it cannot be less than ten feet high.

There is a beautiful engraving of it by Sherwin.

J.M.G.

Worcester.

Dr. Bowring’s Translations (Vol. ii. p. 152.).—­Besides the anthologies mentioned by Jarltzberg, Dr. Bowring has published Poets of the Magyars, 8vo.  London, 1830; Specimens of Polish Poets, 1827; Servian popular Poetry, 1827; and a Cheskian Anthology, 1832.

H.H.W.

“Speak the Tongue that Shakspeare spoke” (Vol. ii., p. 135.).—­The lines about which X. asks, are

  “We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
  That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
  Which Milton held,” &c.