_Euthanasia! Euthanasia_! an easy death! was the exclamation of
Augustus; it was what Antoninus Pius enjoyed; and it is that for which
every wise man will pray, said Lord Orrery, when perhaps he was
contemplating the close of Swift's life.
The ancients contemplated DEATH without terror, and met it with
indifference. It was the only divinity to which they never sacrificed,
convinced that no human being could turn aside its stroke. They raised
altars to Fever, to Misfortune, to all the evils of life; for these
might change! But though they did not court the presence of death in any
shape, they acknowledged its tranquillity; and in the beautiful fables
of their allegorical religion, Death was the daughter of Night, and the
sister of Sleep; and ever the friend of the unhappy! To the eternal
sleep of death they dedicated their sepulchral monuments--_AEternali
somno!_[136] If the full light of revelation had not yet broken on them,
it can hardly be denied that they had some glimpses and a dawn of the
life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which describe the
transmigration of the soul. A butterfly on the extremity of an
extinguished lamp, held up by the messenger of the gods intently gazing
above, implied a dedication of that soul; Love, with a melancholy air,
his legs crossed, leaning on an inverted torch, the flame thus naturally
extinguishing itself, elegantly denoted the cessation of human life; a
rose sculptured on a sarcophagus, or the emblems of epicurean life
traced on it, in a skull wreathed by a chaplet of flowers, such as they
wore at their convivial meetings, a flask of wine, a patera, and the
small bones used as dice: all these symbols were indirect allusions to
death, veiling its painful recollections. They did not pollute their
imagination with the contents of a charnel-house. The sarcophagi of the
ancients rather recall to us the remembrance of the activity of life;
for they are sculptured with battles or games, in basso relievo; a sort
of tender homage paid to the dead, observes Mad. de Stael, with her
peculiar refinement of thinking.
It would seem that the Romans had even an aversion to mention death in
express terms, for they disguised its very name by some periphrasis,
such as _discessit e vita_, "he has departed from life;" and they did
not say that their friend had _died_, but that he had _lived_; _vixit_!
In the old Latin chronicles, and even in the _Foedera_ and other
documents of the middle ages, we find the same delicacy about using the
fatal word _Death_, especially when applied to kings and great people.
"_Transire a Saeculo--Vitam suam mutare--Si quid de eo humanitus
contigerit, &c._" I am indebted to Mr. Merivale for this remark. Even
among a people less refined, the obtrusive idea of death has been
studiously avoided: we are told that when the Emperor of Morocco
inquires after any one who has recently died, it is against etiquette to
mention the word "death;" the answer is "his destiny is closed!" But
this tenderness is only reserved for "the elect" of the Mussulmen. A
Jew's death is at once plainly expressed: "He is dead, sir! asking your
pardon for mentioning such a contemptible wretch!" _i.e._ a Jew! A
Christian's is described by "The infidel is dead!" or, "The cuckold is
dead."
The ancient artists have so rarely attempted to personify Death, that we
have not discovered a single revolting image of this nature in all the
works of antiquity.[137]--To conceal its deformity to the eye, as well
as to elude its suggestion to the mind, seems to have been an universal
feeling, and it accorded with a fundamental principle of ancient art;
that of never permitting violent passion to produce in its
representation distortion of form. This may be observed in the Laocoon,
where the mouth only opens sufficiently to indicate the suppressed agony
of superior humanity, without expressing the loud cry of vulgar
suffering. Pausanias considered as a personification of death a female
figure, whose teeth and nails, long and crooked, were engraven on a
coffin of cedar, which enclosed the body of Cypselus; this female was
unquestionably only one of the _Parcae_, or the Fates, "watchful to cut
the thread of life." Hesiod describes Atropos indeed as having sharp
teeth and long nails, waiting to tear and devour the dead; but this
image was of a barbarous era. Catullus ventured to personify the Sister
Destinies as three Crones; "but in general," Winkelmann observes, "they
are portrayed as beautiful virgins, with winged heads, one of whom is
always in the attitude of writing on a scroll." Death was a nonentity to
the ancient artist. Could he exhibit what represents nothing? Could he
animate into action what lies in a state of eternal tranquillity?
Elegant images of repose and tender sorrow were all he could invent to
indicate the state of death. Even the terms which different nations have
bestowed on a burial-place are not associated with emotions of horror.
The Greeks called a burying-ground by the soothing term of
_Coemeterion_, or "the sleeping-place;" the Jews, who had no horrors
of the grave, by _Beth-haim_, or, "the house of the living;" the
Germans, with religious simplicity, "God's-field." The Scriptures had
only noticed that celestial being "the Angel of Death,"--graceful,
solemn, and sacred!
Whence, then, originated that stalking skeleton, suggesting so many
false and sepulchral ideas, and which for us has so long served as the
image of death?
When the Christian religion spread over Europe, the world changed! the
certainty of a future state of existence, by the artifices of wicked
worldly men, terrified instead of consoling human nature; and in the
resurrection the ignorant multitude seemed rather to have dreaded
retribution, than to have hoped for remuneration. The Founder of
Christianity everywhere breathes the blessedness of social feelings. It
is "Our Father!" whom he addresses. The horrors with which Christianity
was afterwards disguised arose in the corruptions of Christianity among
those insane ascetics who, misinterpreting "the Word of Life," trampled
on nature; and imagined that to secure an existence in the other world
it was necessary not to exist in the one in which God had placed them.
The dominion of mankind fell into the usurping hands of those imperious
monks whose artifices trafficed with the terrors of ignorant and
hypochondriac "Kaisers and kings." The scene was darkened by penances
and by pilgrimages, by midnight vigils, by miraculous shrines, and
bloody flagellations; spectres started up amidst their _tenebres_;
millions of masses increased their supernatural influence. Amidst this
general gloom of Europe, their troubled imaginations were frequently
predicting the end of the world. It was at this period that they first
beheld the grave yawn, and Death, in the Gothic form of a gaunt anatomy,
parading through the universe! The people were frightened as they
viewed, everywhere hung before their eyes, in the twilight of their
cathedrals, and their "pale cloisters," the most revolting emblems of
death. They startled the traveller on the bridge; they stared on the
sinner in the carvings of his table and chair; the spectre moved in the
hangings of the apartment; it stood in the niche, and was the picture
of their sitting-room; it was worn in their rings, while the illuminator
shaded the bony phantom in the margins of their "Horae," their primers,
and their breviaries. Their barbarous taste perceived no absurdity in
giving action to a heap of dry bones, which could only keep together in
a state of immovability and repose; nor that it was burlesquing the
awful idea of the resurrection, by exhibiting the incorruptible spirit
under the unnatural and ludicrous figure of mortality drawn out of the
corruption of the grave.
An anecdote of these monkish times has been preserved by old Gerard
Leigh; and as old stories are best set off by old words, Gerard
speaketh! "The great Maximilian the emperor came to a monastery in High
Almaine (Germany), the monks whereof had caused to be curiously painted
the charnel of a man, which they termed--Death! When that well-learned
emperor had beholden it awhile, he called unto him his painter,
commanding to blot the skeleton out, and to paint therein the image
of--a fool. Wherewith the abbot, humbly beseeching him to the contrary,
said 'It was a good remembrance!'--'Nay,' quoth the emperor, 'as vermin
that annoyeth man's body cometh unlooked for, so doth death, which here
is but a fained image, and life is a certain thing, if we know to
deserve it.'"[138] The original mind of Maximilian the Great is
characterized by this curious story of converting our emblem of death
into a parti-coloured fool; and such satirical allusions to the folly of
those who persisted in their notion of the skeleton were not unusual
with the artists of those times; we find the figure of a fool sitting
with some drollery between the legs of one of these skeletons.[139]
This story is associated with an important fact. After they had
successfully terrified the people with their charnel-house figure, a
reaction in the public feelings occurred, for the skeleton was now
employed as a medium to convey the most facetious, satirical, and
burlesque notions of human life. Death, which had so long harassed their
imaginations, suddenly changed into a theme fertile in coarse humour.
The Italians were too long accustomed to the study of the beautiful to
allow their pencil to sport with deformity; but the Gothic taste of the
German artists, who could only copy their own homely nature, delighted
to give human passions to the hideous physiognomy of a noseless skull;
to put an eye of mockery or malignity into its hollow socket, and to
stretch out the gaunt anatomy into the postures of a Hogarth; and that
the ludicrous might be carried to its extreme, this imaginary being,
taken from the bone-house, was viewed in the action of _dancing_! This
blending of the grotesque with the most disgusting image of mortality,
is the more singular part of this history of the skeleton, and indeed of
human nature itself!
"The Dance of Death," erroneously considered as Holbein's, with other
similar Dances, however differently treated, have one common subject
which was painted in the arcades of burying-grounds, or on town-halls,
and in market-places. The subject is usually "The Skeleton" in the act
of leading all ranks and conditions to the grave, personated after
nature, and in the strict costume of the times. This invention opened a
new field for genius; and when we can for a moment forget their luckless
choice of their bony and bloodless hero, who to amuse us by a variety of
action becomes a sort of horrid Harlequin in these pantomimical scenes,
we may be delighted by the numerous human characters, which are so
vividly presented to us. The origin of this extraordinary invention is
supposed to be a favourite pageant, or religious mummery, invented by
the clergy, who in these ages of barbarous Christianity always found it
necessary to amuse, as well as to frighten the populace; a circumstance
well known to have occurred in so many other grotesque and licentious
festivals they allowed the people. The practice of dancing in churches
and church-yards was interdicted by several councils; but it was found
convenient in those rude times. It seems probable that the clergy
contrived the present dance, as more decorous and not without moral and
religious emotions. This pageant was performed in churches, in which the
chief characters in society were supported in a sort of masquerade,
mixing together in a general dance, in the course of which every one in
his turn vanished from the scene, to show how one after the other died
off. The subject was at once poetical and ethical; and the poets and
painters of Germany adopting the skeleton, sent forth this chimerical
Ulysses of another world to roam among the men and manners of their own.
A popular poem was composed, said to be by one Macaber, which name
seems to be a corruption of St. Macaire; the old Gaulish version,
reformed, is still printed at Troyes, in France, with the ancient blocks
of woodcuts, under the title of "La Grande Danse Macabre des Hommes et
des Femmes." Merian's "Todten Tanz," or the "Dance of the Dead," is a
curious set of prints of a Dance of Death from an ancient painting, I
think not entirely defaced, in a cemetery at Basle, in Switzerland. It
was ordered to be painted by a council held there during many years, to
commemorate the mortality occasioned by a plague in 1439. The prevailing
character of all these works is unquestionably grotesque and ludicrous;
not, however, that genius, however barbarous, could refrain in this
large subject of human life from inventing scenes often imagined with
great delicacy of conception, and even great pathos. Such is the
new-married couple, whom Death is leading, beating a drum; and in the
rapture of the hour, the bride seems, with a melancholy look, not
insensible of his presence; or Death is seen issuing from the cottage of
the poor widow with her youngest child, who waves his hand sorrowfully,
while the mother and the sister vainly answer; or the old man, to whom
Death is playing on a psaltery, seems anxious that his withered fingers
should once more touch the strings, while he is carried off in calm
tranquillity. The greater part of these subjects of death are, however,
ludicrous; and it may be a question, whether the spectators of these
Dances of Death did not find their mirth more excited than their
religious emotions. Ignorant and terrified as the people were at the
view of the skeleton, even the grossest simplicity could not fail to
laugh at some of those domestic scenes and familiar persons drawn from
among themselves. The skeleton, skeleton as it is, in the creation of
genius, gesticulates and mimics, while even its hideous skull is made to
express every diversified character, and the result is hard to describe;
for we are at once amused and disgusted with so much genius founded on
so much barbarism.[140]
When the artist succeeded in conveying to the eye the most ludicrous
notions of death, the poets also discovered in it a fertile source of
the burlesque. The curious collector is acquainted with many volumes
where the most extraordinary topics have been combined with this
subject. They made the body and the soul debate together, and ridicule
the complaints of a damned soul! The greater part of the poets of the
time were always composing on the subject of Death in their humorous
pieces.[141] Such historical records of the public mind, historians,
intent on political events, have rarely noticed.
Of a work of this nature, a popular favourite was long the one entitled
"_Le faut mourir, et les Excuses Inutiles qu'on apporte a cette
Necessite; Le tout en vers burlesques, 1658_." Jacques Jacques, a canon
of Ambrun, was the writer, who humorously says of himself that he gives
his thoughts just as they lie on his heart, without dissimulation--"For
I have nothing double about me except my name! I tell thee some of the
most important truths in laughing; it is for thee _d'y penser tout a
bon_." This little volume was procured for me with some difficulty in
France; and it is considered as one of the happiest of this class of
death-poems, of which I know not of any in our literature.
Our canon of Ambrun, in facetious rhymes, and with the _naivete_ of
expression which belongs to his age, and an idiomatic turn fatal to a
translator, excels in pleasantry; his haughty hero condescends to hold
very amusing dialogues with all classes of society, and delights to
confound their "excuses inutiles." The most miserable of men, the
galley-slave, the mendicant, alike would escape when he appears to them.
"Were I not absolute over them," Death exclaims, "they would confound me
with their long speeches; but I have business, and must gallop on!" His
geographical rhymes are droll.
Ce que j'ai fait dans l'Afrique
Je le fais bien dans l'Amerique;
On l'appelle monde nouveau
Mais ce sont des brides a veau;
Nulle terre a moy n'est nouvelle
Je vay partout sans qu'on m'appelle;
Mon bras de tout temps commanda
Dans le pays du Canada;
J'ai tenu de tout temps en bride
La Virginie et la Floride,
Et j'ai bien donne sur le bec
Aux Francais du fort de Kebec.
Lorsque je veux je fais la nique
Aux Incas, aux rois de Mexique;
Et montre aux Nouveaux Grenadins
Qu'ils sont des foux et des badins.
Chacun sait bien comme je matte
Ceux du Bresil et de la Plate,
Ainsi que les Taupinembous--
En un mot, je fais voir a tout
Que ce que nait dans la nature,
Doit prendre de moy tablature![142]
The perpetual employments of Death display copious invention with a
facility of humour.
Egalement je vay rangeant,
Le conseiller et le serjent,
Le gentilhomme et le berger,
Le bourgeois et le boulanger,
Et la maistresse et la servante
Et la niece comme la tante;
Monsieur l'abbe, monsieur son moine,
Le petit clerc et le chanoine;
Sans choix je mets dans mon butin
Maistre Claude, maistre Martin,
Dame Luce, dame Perrete, &c.
J'en prends un dans le temps qu'il pleure
A quelque autre, au contraire a l'heure
Qui demesurement il rit;
Je donne le coup qui le frit.
J'en prends un, pendant qu'il se leve;
En se couchant l'autre j'enleve.
Je prends le malade et le sain
L'un aujourd'hui, l'autre le demain.
J'en surprends un dedans son lit,
L'autre a l'estude quand il lit.
J'en surprends un le ventre plein
Je mene l'autre par la faim.
J'attrape l'un pendant qu'il prie,
Et l'autre pendant qu'il renie;
J'en saisis un au cabaret
Entre le blanc et le clairet,
L'autre qui dans son oratoire
A son Dieu rend honneur et gloire:
J'en surprends un lorsqu'il se psame
Le jour qu'il epouse sa femme,
L'autre le jour que plein de deuil
La sieune il voit dans le cercueil;
Un a pied et l'autre a cheval,
Dans le jeu l'un, et l'autre au bal;
Un qui mange et l'autre qui boit,
Un qui paye et l'autre qui doit,
L'un en ete lorsqu'il moissonne,
L'autre eu vendanges dans l'automne,
L'un criant almanachs nouveaux--
Un qui demande son aumosne
L'autre dans le temps qu'il la donne,
Je prends le bon maistre Clement,
Au temps qu'il prend un lavement,
Et prends la dame Catherine
Le jour qu'elle prend medecine.
This veil of gaiety in the old canon of Ambrun covers deeper and more
philosophical thoughts than the singular mode of treating so solemn a
theme. He has introduced many scenes of human life which still interest,
and he addresses the "teste a triple couronne," as well as the "forcat
de galere," who exclaims, "Laissez-moi vivre dans mes fers," "le gueux,"
the "bourgeois," the "chanoine," the "pauvre soldat," the "medecin;" in
a word, all ranks in life are exhibited, as in all the "Dances of
Death." But our object in noticing these burlesque paintings and poems
is to show that after the monkish Goths had opened one general scene of
melancholy and tribulation over Europe, and given birth to that dismal
_skeleton of death_, which still terrifies the imagination of many, a
reaction of feeling was experienced by the populace, who at length came
to laugh at the gloomy spectre which had so long terrified them!