Montaigne was fond of reading minute accounts of the deaths of remarkable
persons; and, in the simplicity of his heart, old Montaigne wished to be
learned enough to form a collection of these deaths, to observe "their
words, their actions, and what sort of countenance they put upon it." He
seems to have been a little over curious about deaths, in reference, no
doubt, to his own, in which he was certainly deceived; for we are told
that he did not die as he had promised himself,--expiring in the
adoration of the mass; or, as his preceptor Buchanan would have called
it, in "the act of rank idolatry."
I have been told of a privately printed volume, under the singular title
of "The Book of Death," where an _amateur_ has compiled the pious
memorials of many of our eminent men in their last moments: and it may
form a companion-piece to the little volume on "Les grands hommes qui
sont morts en plaisantant." This work, I fear, must be monotonous; the
deaths of the righteous must resemble each other; the learned and the
eloquent can only receive in silence that hope which awaits "the
covenant of the grave." But this volume will not establish any decisive
principle, since the just and the religious have not always encountered
death with indifference, nor even in a fit composure of mind.
The functions of the mind are connected with those of the body. On a
death-bed a fortnight's disease may reduce the firmest to a most
wretched state; while, on the contrary, the soul struggles, as it were
in torture, in a robust frame. Nani, the Venetian historian, has
curiously described the death of Innocent the Tenth, who was a character
unblemished by vices, and who died at an advanced age, with too robust a
constitution. _Dopo lunga e terribile agonia, con dolore e con pena,
seperandosi l'anima da quel corpo robusto, egli spiro ai sette di
Genuaro, nel ottantesimo primo de suoi anno._ "After a long and terrible
agony, with great bodily pain and difficulty, his soul separated itself
from that robust frame, and expired in his eighty-first year."
Some have composed sermons on death, while they passed many years of
anxiety, approaching to madness, in contemplating their own. The
certainty of an immediate separation from all our human sympathies may,
even on a death-bed suddenly disorder the imagination. The great
physician of our times told me of a general, who had often faced the
cannon's mouth, dropping down in terror, when informed by him that his
disease was rapid and fatal. Some have died of the strong imagination of
death. There is a print of a knight brought on the scaffold to suffer;
he viewed the headsman; he was blinded, and knelt down to receive the
stroke. Having passed through the whole ceremony of a criminal
execution, accompanied by all its disgrace, it was ordered that his life
should be spared. Instead of the stroke from the sword, they poured cold
water over his neck. After this operation the knight remained
motionless; they discovered that he had expired in the very imagination
of death! Such are among the many causes which may affect the mind in
the hour of its last trial. The habitual associations of the natural
character are most likely to prevail, though not always. The intrepid
Marshal Biron disgraced his exit by womanish tears and raging
imbecility; the virtuous Erasmus, with miserable groans, was heard
crying out, _Domine! Domine! fac finem! fac finem!_ Bayle having
prepared his proof for the printer, pointed to where it lay, when dying.
The last words which Lord Chesterfield was heard to speak were, when the
valet, opening the curtains of the bed, announced Mr. Dayroles, "Give
Dayroles a chair!" "This good breeding," observed the late Dr. Warren,
his physician, "only quits him with his life." The last words of Nelson
were, "Tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to an anchor." The tranquil
grandeur which cast a new majesty over Charles the First on the
scaffold, appeared when he declared, "I fear not death! Death is not
terrible to me!" And the characteristic pleasantry of Sir Thomas More
exhilarated his last moments, when, observing the weakness of the
scaffold, he said, in mounting it, "I pray you, see me up safe, and for
my coming down, let me shift for myself!" Sir Walter Rawleigh passed a
similar jest when going to the scaffold.[131]
My ingenious friend Dr. Sherwen has furnished me with the following
anecdotes of death:--In one of the bloody battles fought by the Duke
d'Enghien, two French noblemen were left wounded among the dead on the
field of battle. One complained loudly of his pains; the other, after
long silence, thus offered him consolation: "My friend, whoever you are,
remember that our God died on the cross, our king on the scaffold; and
if you have strength to look at him who now speaks to you, you will see
that both his legs are shot away."
At the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, the royal victim looking at the
soldiers, who had pointed their fusees, said, "Grenadiers! lower your
arms, otherwise you will miss, or only wound me!" To two of them who
proposed to tie a handkerchief over his eyes, he said, "A loyal soldier
who has been so often exposed to fire and sword can see the approach of
death with naked eyes and without fear."
After a similar caution on the part of Sir George Lisle, or Sir Charles
Lucas, when murdered in nearly the same manner at Colchester, by the
soldiers of Fairfax, the loyal hero, in answer to their assertions and
assurances that they would take care not to miss him, nobly replied,
"You have often missed me when I have been nearer to you in the field of
battle."
When the governor of Cadiz, the Marquis de Solano, was murdered by the
enraged and mistaken citizens, to one of his murderers, who had run a
pike through his back, he calmly turned round and said, "Coward, to
strike there! Come round--if you dare face--and destroy me!"
Abernethy, in his Physiological Lectures, has ingeniously observed that
"Shakspeare has represented Mercutio continuing to jest, though
conscious that he was mortally wounded; the expiring Hotspur thinking of
nothing but honour; and the dying Falstaff still cracking his jests upon
Bardolph's nose. If such facts were duly attended to, they would prompt
us to make a more liberal allowance for each other's conduct, under
certain circumstances, than we are accustomed to do." The truth seems to
be, that whenever the functions of the mind are not disturbed by "the
nervous functions of the digestive organs," the personal character
predominates even in death, and its habitual associations exist to its
last moments. Many religious persons may have died without showing in
their last moments any of those exterior acts, or employing those
fervent expressions, which the collector of "The Book of Death" would
only deign to chronicle; their hope is not gathered in their last hour.
Yet many have delighted to taste of death long before they have died,
and have placed before their eyes all the furniture of mortality. The
horrors of a charnel-house is the scene of their pleasure. The "Midnight
Meditations" of Quarles preceded Young's "Night Thoughts" by a century,
and both these poets loved preternatural terror.
If I must die, I'll snatch at everything
That may but mind me of my latest breath;
DEATH'S-HEADS, GRAVES, KNELLS, BLACKS,[132] TOMBS, all these shall bring
Into my soul such _useful thoughts of death_,
That this sable king of fears
Shall not catch me unawares.--QUARLES.
But it may be doubtful whether the _thoughts of death are useful_,
whenever they put a man out of the possession of his faculties. Young
pursued the scheme of Quarles: he raised about him an artificial emotion
of death: he darkened his sepulchral study, placing a skull on his table
by lamp-light; as Dr. Donne had his portrait taken, first winding a
sheet over his head and closing his eyes; keeping this melancholy
picture by his bed-side as long as he lived, to remind him of his
mortality[133]. Young, even in his garden, had his conceits of death: at
the end of an avenue was viewed a seat of an admirable chiaro-oscuro,
which, when approached, presented only a painted surface, with an
inscription, alluding to the deception of the things of this world. To
be looking at "the mirror which flatters not;" to discover ourselves
only as a skeleton with the horrid life of corruption about us, has been
among those penitential inventions, which have often ended in shaking
the innocent by the pangs which are only natural to the damned.[134]
Without adverting to those numerous testimonies, the diaries of
fanatics, I shall offer a picture of an accomplished and innocent lady,
in a curious and unaffected transcript she has left of a mind of great
sensibility, where the preternatural terror of death might perhaps have
hastened the premature one she suffered.
From the "Reliquiae Gethinianae,"[135] I quote some of Lady Gethin's ideas
on "Death."--"The very thoughts of death disturb one's reason; and
though a man may have many excellent qualities, yet he may have the
weakness of not commanding his sentiments. Nothing is worse for one's
health than to be in fear of death. There are some so wise as neither to
hate nor fear it; but for my part I have an aversion for it; and with
reason; for it is a rash inconsiderate thing, that always comes before
it is looked for; always comes unseasonably, parts friends, ruins
beauty, laughs at youth, and draws a dark veil over all the pleasures of
life.--This dreadful evil is but the evil of a moment, and what we
cannot by any means avoid; and it is that which makes it so terrible to
me; for were it uncertain, hope might diminish some part of the fear;
but when I think I must die, and that I may die every moment, and that
too a thousand several ways, I am in such a fright as you cannot
imagine. I see dangers where, perhaps, there never were any. I am
persuaded 'tis happy to be somewhat dull of apprehension in this case;
and yet the best way to cure the pensiveness of the thoughts of death is
to think of it as little as possible." She proceeds by enumerating the
terrors of the fearful, who "cannot enjoy themselves in the pleasantest
places, and although they are neither on sea, river, or creek, but in
good health in their chamber, yet are they so well instructed with the
_fear of dying_, that they do not measure it only by the _present_
dangers that wait on us.--Then is it not best to submit to God? But some
people cannot do it as they would; and though they are not destitute of
reason, but perceive they are to blame, yet at the same time that their
reason condemns them their imagination makes their hearts feel what it
pleases."
Such is the picture of an ingenious and a religious mind, drawn by an
amiable woman, who, it is evident, lived always in the fear of death.
The Gothic skeleton was ever haunting her imagination. In Dr. Johnson
the same horror was suggested by the thoughts of death. When Boswell
once in conversation persecuted Johnson on this subject, whether we
might not fortify our minds for the approach of death; he answered in a
passion, "No, sir! let it alone! It matters not how a man dies, but how
he lives! The art of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a
time!" But when Boswell persisted in the conversation, Johnson was
thrown into such a state of agitation, that he thundered out "Give us no
more of this!" and, further, sternly told the trembling and too curious
philosopher, "Don't let us meet to-morrow!"
It may be a question whether those who by their preparatory conduct have
appeared to show the greatest indifference for death, have not rather
betrayed the most curious art to disguise its terrors. Some have
invented a mode of escaping from life in the midst of convivial
enjoyment. A mortuary preparation of this kind has been recorded of an
amiable man, Moncriff, the author of "Histoire des Chats" and "L'Art de
Plaire," by his literary friend La Place, who was an actor in, as well
as the historian of, the singular narrative. One morning La Place
received a note from Moncriff, requesting that "he would immediately
select for him a dozen volumes most likely to amuse, and of a nature to
withdraw the reader from being occupied by melancholy thoughts." La
Place was startled at the unusual request, and flew to his old friend,
whom he found deeply engaged in being measured for a new peruke, and a
taffety robe-de-chambre, earnestly enjoining the utmost expedition.
"Shut the door!" said Moncriff, observing the surprise of his friend.
"And now that we are alone, I confide my secret: on rising this morning,
my valet in dressing me showed me on this leg this dark spot--from that
moment I knew I was 'condemned to death;' but I had presence of mind
enough not to betray myself." "Can a head so well organised as yours
imagine that such a trifle is a sentence of death?"--"Don't speak so
loud, my friend! or rather deign to listen a moment. At my age it is
fatal! The system from which I have derived the felicity of a long life
has been, that whenever any evil, moral or physical, happens to us, if
there is a remedy, all must be sacrificed to deliver us from it--but in
a contrary case, I do not choose to wrestle with destiny and to begin
complaints, endless as useless! All that I request of you, my friend, is
to assist me to pass away the few days which remain for me, free from
all cares, of which otherwise they might be too susceptible. But do not
think," he added with warmth, "that I mean to elude the religious duties
of a citizen, which so many of late affect to contemn. The good and
virtuous curate of my parish is coming here under the pretext of an
annual contribution, and I have even ordered my physician, on whose
confidence I can rely. Here is a list of ten or twelve persons, friends
beloved! who are mostly known to you. I shall write to them this
evening, to tell them of my condemnation; but if they wish me to live,
they will do me the favour to assemble here at five in the evening,
where they may be certain of finding all those objects of amusement,
which I shall study to discover suitable to their tastes. And you, my
old friend, with my doctor, are two on whom I most depend."
La Place was strongly affected by this appeal--neither Socrates, nor
Cato, nor Seneca looked more serenely on the approach of death.
"Familiarise yourself early with death!" said the good old man with a
smile--"It is only dreadful for those who dread it!"
During ten days after this singular conversation, the whole of
Moncriff's remaining life, his apartment was open to his friends, of
whom several were ladies; all kinds of games were played till nine
o'clock; and that the sorrows of the host might not disturb his guests,
he played the _chouette_ at his favourite game of _picquet_; a supper,
seasoned by the wit of the master, concluded at eleven. On the tenth
night, in taking leave of his friend, Moncriff whispered to him, "Adieu,
my friend! to-morrow morning I shall return your books!" He died, as he
foresaw, the following day.
I have sometimes thought that we might form a history of this _fear of
death_, by tracing the first appearances of the SKELETON which haunts
our funereal imagination. In the modern history of mankind we might
discover some very strong contrasts in the notion of death entertained
by men at various epochs. The following article will supply a sketch of
this kind.