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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
However interesting it may be to be acquainted with the time and circumstances of the birth of an eminent person, it is more instructive to ascertain when, where, and how he died. A man's career is then complete, his actions can be freely reviewed and recorded for the information of posterity, and nothing more can justly be added to the acts of his life on which to found his reputation. In more than one sense, therefore, is there truth in the words of Solomon, “A good name rather than good perfume, and a day of death rather than a day of birth.” (Eccl. vii. 1.) The case of the great painter Holbein strikingly illustrates this saying. His powers and reputation as an artist far transcended, even in his royal master's judgment, the accidental distinctions of rank and fortune; and the true date of his death is far more important to his posthumous reputation and to posterity than the date of his birth.
page 272 note a This communication should have been inserted at the commencement of this volume, but having been returned to the author it was mislaid and thought to be lost. Many of the particulars and the Will were therefore incorporated into the Memoir by Mr. Franks (ante, p. 1), which was printed before the MS. was recovered. It has however been deemed advisable to insert Mr. Black's communication here in its original form.
page 272 note b I have since traced those dates to Carel Van Mander's Schilder Boeck, or Lives of Painters, published at Amsterdam, 1618, 4to. ff. 142–145, which 1 first met with in Brussels.
page 274 note a His monument says that he died on the 5th of that month.
page 274 note b Walpole's Anecdotes, in his works, vol. III. p. 65.
page 274 note c See the Ashmolean MSS. at Oxford.
page 276 note a See Stowe's Annals, p. 1030.
page 276 note b Strype's edition of Stowe's Survey of London, 1720, vol. I. book ii. p. 64.