“The weakest atheist-wretch all heaven defies,
But shrinks and shudders when the thunder flies.”
So Boileau satirises the “intrepid” scoffer, who puts off believing in
God until fever prostrates him; who is almost as quick as the lightning
to lift up his hands to heaven when the lightning glares across it, but
laughs at poor feeble humanity as soon as the atmosphere is cleared and
the storm quite spent:
“Attend pour croire en Dieu que la fiévre le presse;
Et, toujours dans l’orage au ciel levant les mains,
Dès que l’air est calmé, rit des faibles humains.”
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu describes in one of her vivacious letters
a stormy passage she has just made from Calais to Dover, and diverts
herself not a little, as her ladyship’s manner is, at the distress of a
fellow-passenger, in alternations of anxiety as to being lost herself
and losing her smuggled head-dress. “She was an English lady that I had
met at Calais, who desired me to let her go over with me in my cabin.
She had brought a fine point-head, which she was contriving to conceal
from the custom-house officers. When the wind grew high, and our little
vessel cracked, she fell very heartily to her prayers, and thought wholly
of her soul. When it seemed to abate, she returned to the worldly care
of her head-dress;” and the alternative exclamations of the distracted
creature are liberally specified by Lady Mary; who then adds: “This easy
transition from her soul to her head-dress, and the alternate agonies
that both gave her, made it hard to determine which she thought of
greatest value.”
Lord Lytton, in one of his fictions, comments on the instinct, as he
calls it, of that capricious and fluctuating conscience, belonging to
weak minds, “which remains still and drooping and lifeless as a flag on
a mast-head during the calm of prosperity, but flutters and flaps and
tosses when the wind blows and the wave heaves.” And an example to the
purpose is given in the case of a selfish uncle, whose orphan nephews
are all but coldly discarded until his own son is _in extremis_. “Mr.
Beaufort ... thought very acutely and remorsefully of the condition of
the Mortons, during the danger of his own son. So far indeed from his
anxiety for Arthur monopolising his care, it only sharpened his charity
towards the orphans; for many a man becomes devout and good when he
fancies he has an _immediate_ interest in appeasing Providence.” Such
a man, in such a case, becomes at any rate lavish of promises, which
perhaps at the moment he even intends to keep. But how are promises of
this kind usually kept? Much after the manner predicated of Bajazet, by
Acomat, in the French tragedy; a vaguely worded intimation, but definite
enough in its scope: only let the pressure that extorts the promise be
withdrawn, and gone will be the value of the promise too:
“Promettez: affranchi du péril qui vous presse,
Vous verrez de quel poids sera votre promesse.”
Pope would consign such trifles light as air to the lunar sphere,
“Where broken vows and death-bed alms are found,
And lovers’ hearts with ends of ribbon bound,
The courtier’s promises, the sick man’s prayers.”
Why do these last make so slight an impression on by-standers? Mr.
Whitehead says because it is not a living but a dying man that speaks;
and a dying man who wants to live. “It is fear that cries out in agony,
not penitence that prays.” Fielding, in his masterpiece, moralises on the
truism that be men ever so much alarmed and frightened when apprehending
themselves in danger of dying, yet no sooner are they cleared from this
apprehension, than even the fears of it are erased from their minds. It
is much later in the same story, that the “hero’s” avowed resolution, at
a crisis in his fortunes, to sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto
him, is ridiculed by a cynical acquaintance, as the effect merely of low
spirits, and confinement—with the quotation of “some witticisms about the
devil when he was sick.” The epigram in question is a favourite allusion
with novelists and moralists of all sorts and sizes. There is a border
freebooter of Scott’s, who, having recovered from a severe illness,
thanks to the medical skill of the Black Dwarf, greets his benefactor, on
horseback, all in bandit array, as soon as convalescent. “So,” said the
dwarf, “rapine and murder once more on horseback!” “On horseback?” said
the bandit; “ay, ay, Elshie, your leech-craft has set me on the bonnie
bay again.” “And all those promises of amendment which you made during
your illness forgotten?” continued Elshender. “All clear away, with the
water-saps and panada,” returned the unabashed convalescent. “Ye ken,
Elshie, for they say ye are weel acquent wi’ the gentleman,
“‘When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he.’”
For it is not every vow taken in a panic, to become a monk if spared,
that is kept as Luther’s was—“devil” though the anti-Lutherans of his
day might account and call him. Young Martin saw one of his friends
struck dead by his side, by a stroke of lightning, in 1505; and the
sight moved him to utter on the instant a vow to St. Anne that he would
become a monk if he were himself spared. “The danger passed over, but
he did not seek to elude an engagement wrung from him in terror. He
solicited no dispensation from his vow.” Brother Martin _ipso facto_
approved himself no member of the fraternity of what Le Sage calls _vous
autres, messieurs les diables_, in a passage that indirectly bears upon
our theme, for it refers to the proverbial worthlessness of promises
coming from that quarter: “Voilà de belles promesses, répliqua l’Ecolier;
mais vous autres, messieurs les diables, on vous accuse de n’être pas
fort réligieux à tenir ce que vous promettez.” The epigram runs, if not
rhymes, as well in Latin as in English:
“Ægrotat dæmon, monachus tunc esse volebat;
Dæmon convaluit, dæmon ut ante fuit.”
Referring to proverbs of this kind it is that Archbishop Trench says,
that sometimes an adage, without changing its shape altogether, will yet
on the lips of different nations be slightly modified—the modifications,
slight as they often are, being not the less eminently characteristic.
“Thus in English we say, _The river past, and God forgotten_, to express
with how mournful a frequency He whose assistance was invoked, it may
have been earnestly, in the moment of peril, is remembered no more,
so soon as by His help the danger has been surmounted. The Spaniards
have the proverb too; but it is with them: _The river past, the
saint forgotten_: the saints being in Spain more prominent objects of
invocation than God. And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder
depth of ingratitude: _The peril passed, the saint mocked_.” Men
indulge in doubts of a Supreme Being, says La Bruyère, when they are
lusty and strong; but with sickness comes belief, such as it is. “L’on
doute de Dieu dans une pleine santé.... Quand on devient malade, et que
l’hydropisie est formée ... l’on croit en Dieu.” Believes? As to that,
the devils believe, and tremble. But how when the dropsy is relieved
and the trembling fit over? Dr. Johnson once adverted in conversation
with Seward and Boswell to the evil life he led until sickness wrought a
reformation, which, in his case, had been lasting. Mr. Seward thereupon
observed: “One should think that sickness, and the view of death, would
make more men religious.” But Johnson replied to this: “Sir, they do
not know how to go about it; they have not the first notion. A man who
has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick
than a man who has never learnt figures can count when he has need of
calculation.”[14] It is to be observed that the doctor claimed for
himself a previous regard for religion in quite early life; for some
years it had, to use his own phrase, “dropped out of his mind,” but
“sickness brought it back,” and he hoped he had never lost it since.
It is an old, old story, that of the generation which tempted God in the
desert, whose days He therefore consumed in vanity, and their years in
trouble. When He slew them, then they sought Him; and they returned, and
inquired early after God. But it was only to start aside again, like a
broken bow.
“Tamen ad mores natura recurrit
Damnatos, fixa et mutari nescia.”
“When men in health against physicians rail,”
says Crabbe,
“They should consider that their nerves may fail;
Nay, when the world can nothing more produce,
The priest, the insulted priest, may have his use.”
There is a passage in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters that reads like a
paraphrase and expansion of this: “Quand le médecin est auprès de mon
lit, le confesseur me trouve à son avantage. Je sais bien empêcher la
religion de m’affliger quand je me porte bien; mais je lui permets de
me consoler quand je suis malade: lorsque je n’ai plus rien à espérer
d’un côté, la religion se présente, et me gagne,” etc. Plutarch tells
us of Tullus Hostilius, that he exulted in irreligious opinions while
in health, but was frightened into superstition when taken ill. To
this passage, one of Plutarch’s translators, Dr. Langhorne, appends a
footnote, about none being so superstitious in distress as those who,
in their prosperity, have laughed at religion; and cites as an instance
the famous Canon Vossius, who was “no less remarkable for the greatness
of his fears, than he was for the littleness of his faith.” Cowper would
cite to the same purpose a more distinguished example:
“The Frenchman first in literary fame;
Mention him, if you please. Voltaire? The same.
...
The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew
_Bon-mots_ to gall the Christian and the Jew:
An infidel when well, but what when sick?
Oh, then a text would touch him to the quick.”
Swift gives a satirical narrative of “what passed in London during the
general consternation of all ranks and degrees of mankind” on account of
the predicted destruction of the world by a comet, on a given day. Friday
was the declared day; and during Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, public
bewilderment and terror are described as extreme—the churches crowded,
and thousands praying in the public streets. At length Friday came. But
as the day wore on, popular fears began to abate, then lessened every
hour; “at night they were almost extinct, till the total darkness that
hitherto used to terrify, now comforted every freethinker and atheist.
Great numbers went together to the taverns, bespoke suppers, and broke
up whole hogsheads for joy. The subject of all wit and conversation was
to ridicule the prophecy and rally each other. All the quality and
gentry were perfectly ashamed, nay, some utterly disowned that they had
manifested any signs of religion.
“But the next day, even the common people, as well as their betters,
appeared in their usual state of indifference. They drank, they swore,
they lied, they cheated, they quarrelled, they murdered. In short, the
world went on in the old channel.”
To apply what Butler says of “saints” in his application of the word, as
a cant term then of political significance:
“For saints in peace degenerate,
And dwindle down to reprobate; ...
And though they’ve tricks to cast their sins,
As easy as serpents do their skins,
That in a while grow out again,
In peace they turn mere carnal men;
And from the most refined of saints
As naturally turn miscreants,[15]
As barnacles turn solan geese
I’ th’ islands of the Orcades.”
That is a fine stroke of nature, in the Knight’s Tale (from Chaucer),
where Dryden makes Arcite resolve, only when and not until moribund, to
avow the wrong he has done to Palamon, and own his fear of repeating it
should he recover:
“When ’twas declared all hope of life was past,
Conscience (that of all physic works the last)
Caused him to send for Emily in haste.
With her, at his desire, came Palamon;”
to whom Arcite owns the faithless part he has played, and desires
forgiveness, but at the same time makes this frank avowal:—
“And much I doubt, should Heaven my life prolong,
I should return to justify my wrong;
For while my former flames remain within,
Repentance is but want of power to sin.”
Mr. Tennyson pictures for us a similar instance in Sir Lancelot:
“Yet the great knight in his mid-sickness made
Full many a holy vow and pure resolve.
These, as but born of sickness, could not live;
For when the blood ran lustier in him again,
Full often the sweet image of one face,
Making a treacherous quiet in his heart,
Dispersed his resolution like a cloud.”
Treating of missions in Abyssinia in the sixteenth century, Gibbon
relates how, in a moment of terror, the emperor promised to reconcile
himself and his subjects to the Catholic faith. “But the vows,” adds
the historian, “which pain had extorted, were forsworn on the return
of health.” Swift again, in his history of England,—for the Dean of
St. Patrick wrote one—tells how William Rufus fell dangerously sick at
Gloucester, on his return from Scotland, and being moved by the fears of
dying, began to discover great marks of repentance, with many promises
of amendment and retribution. “But as it is the disposition of men who
derive their vices from their complexions, that their passions usually
beat strong and weak with their pulses, so it fared with this prince,
who, upon recovery of his health, soon forgot the vows he had made in his
sickness, relapsing with greater violence into the same irregularities,”
etc.
Michael Germain—who, however, is allowed to have looked upon
the religious observances of Rome with the eye of a French
encyclopédiste—makes merry, as one of Mabillon’s Italian expedition (in
1685), at the expense of that indolent and hypochondriacal Pope (so Sir
James Stephen calls him), Innocent XI. “If I should attempt,” writes this
French Benedictine, “to give you an exact account of the health of his
Holiness, I must begin with Ovid, ‘In nova fert animus mutatas dicere
formas.’ At ten he is sick, at fifteen well again, at eighteen eating
as much as four men, at twenty-four dropsical.... The worst of it is,
that they say he has given up all thoughts of creating new cardinals,
forgetting in his restored health the scruples he felt when sick; like
other great sinners;” like Louis XV., for instance, at the commencement
of whose last illness Mr. Carlyle so vividly depicts the consternation
of the infamous Du Barry, lest she should have to take flight, as
her predecessors had been constrained to do when the Well-beloved
(Bien-aimé) had been sick before. “Should the Most Christian King die, or
even get seriously afraid of dying! For, alas! had not the fair, haughty
Chateauroux to fly, with wet cheeks and flaming heart, from that fever
scene at Metz, long since; driven forth by sour shavelings? She hardly
returned, when fever and shavelings were both swept into the background.
Pompadour, too, when Damiens wounded Royalty ‘slightly, under the fifth
rib,’ ... had to pack, and be in readiness; yet did not go, the wound not
proving poisoned.” His Most Christian Majesty was of no distant kin with
that profligate viscount in Mr. Thackeray’s story, who used to recount
misdeeds “with rueful remorse when he was ill, for the fear of death set
him instantly repenting; and with shrieks of laughter when he was well,
his lordship having a very great sense of humour.” Of the same kindred
comes the same author’s Miss Crawley, as we see her ill with fright,
in her lonely, loveless old age. When in health and good spirits, this
venerable inhabitant of Vanity Fair, we are assured, had as free notions
about religion and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could desire;
but “when illness overtook her, it was aggravated by the most dreadful
terrors of death, and an utter cowardice took possession of the prostrate
old sinner.” Nor be forgotten, as a scion of the same stock, that puffy,
pursy, pusillanimous creature, Jos. Sedley, of whom we read that, in the
course of his voyage home from Bengal, he disappeared in a panic during a
two-days’ gale, and remained in his cot reading a religious tract left on
board by a missionary’s wife; while, “for common reading he had brought a
stock of novels and plays,” to which of course he would return with all
the more zest and devotion when the perils of the gale were past.
Comparing the influence on the mind of danger of death, and of danger
from a storm, or from some other external cause than sickness, Archbishop
Whately ascribes to the storm a much larger virtue of “wholesome
discipline” than to the deadly sickness. He says, “The well-known
proverb, ‘The devil was sick,’ etc., shows how generally it has been
observed that people, when they recover, forget the resolutions formed
during sickness. One reason of the difference, and perhaps the chief,
is, that it is so much easier to _recall_ exactly the sensations felt
when in perfect health and yet in imminent danger, and to act over again,
as it were, in imagination, the whole scene, than to recall fully, when
in health, the state of mind during some sickness, which itself so much
affects the mind along with the body.”
And yet the effects defective of a storm are a commonplace with the
satirists. Peter Pindar devotes a “poem” to the subject; and a greater
poet—if the said Peter can be called poet at all—has a forcible stanza on
the equinoxes, when the Parcæ cut short the further spinning
“Of seamen’s fates, and the loud tempests raise
The waters, and repentance for past sinning
In all who o’er the great deep take their ways:
They vow to amend their lives, and yet they don’t;
Because, if drown’d, they can’t—if spar’d, they won’t.”
_SLEEP AND DEATH._
ST. JOHN xi. 11-14.
To His disciples our Lord spoke of His friend, and theirs, “our friend,
Lazarus,” as sleeping; intimating at the same time His intention of
going on to Bethany, that He might awaken him out of sleep. “Then said
His disciples, Lord, if he sleep he shall do well. Howbeit, Jesus spake
of his death; but they thought that He had spoken of taking of rest in
sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.”
The affinity of sleep to death is familiarly recognised in the Old
Testament as in the New; indeed, in universal literature of whatever age,
sacred and profane. Bathsheba anticipates the day, only too near at hand,
when her lord the king “shall sleep with his fathers.” Daniel foretells
the awaking of many that sleep in the dust of the earth. The psalmist
utters a deprecation lest he sleep the sleep of death. Jesus declared
the sick maiden to be not dead, but sleeping; and was laughed to scorn
by those who _knew_ that she was dead. Them that sleep in Jesus, saith
the apostle, will God bring with Him. We shall not all sleep, he says
elsewhere, but we shall all be changed.
Homer personifies a dualism of “Sleep and Death, two twins of wingèd
race, of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace;” and he makes the
friends of Sarpedon “his sacred corse bequeath to the soft arms of
silent Sleep and Death.” He pictures Aphrodite speeding to Lemnos o’er
the rolling deep, to “seek the cave of Death’s half-brother, Sleep.” The
dying Gorgias, we are told, being in a slumber, and asked how he did,
answered, “Pretty well; only Sleep is commending me to the charge of his
brother.” Samuel Daniel apostrophizes “Care-charmer Sleep, son of the
sable Night, brother to Death, in silent darkness born;” and so too,
Beaumont and Fletcher apostrophize him in almost the selfsame words.
So again their contemporary, John Webster, “O thou soft natural Death,
that art joint twin to sweetest slumber!” Cowley’s ode _in memoriam_
of William Harvey, begins with sombre commemoration of a dismal and a
fearful night, “when sleep, death’s image, left his troubled breast, by
something liker death possest.” And the last verse of Denham’s “Song to
Morpheus” identifies the twins,—practically makes a hendiadys of them, as
grammarians might call it:
“Sleep, that is thy best repast,
Yet of death it bears a taste,
And both are the same thing at last.”
Warton’s Latin epigram on sleep, as _certissima mortis imago_, has been
Englished by Wolcot with a beauty and felicity pronounced by critics to
be worthy of the original:
“Come, gentle sleep! attend thy votary’s prayer;
And, though death’s image to my couch repair,
How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie,
And, without dying, O how sweet to die!”
Shelley’s opening of “Queen Mab” is a stock quotation: “How wonderful
is Death, Death and his brother Sleep! one pale as yonder waning moon,
with lips of lurid blue; the other rosy as the morn when, throned on
ocean’s wave, it blushes o’er the world: yet both so passing wonderful!”
But where, asks a prose writer of genius, where, in the sharp lineaments
of rigid and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slumber, telling of
rest for the waking hours that are past, and gentle hopes and loves for
those which are to come? “Lay death and sleep down, side by side, and
say who shall find the two akin.” But this is selecting such an aspect
of mortality as comes not within the poet’s purview. Prosaical in every
fibre is Sancho Panza meant to be; yet in his famous invocation of
blessings on the invention, or rather on the inventor, of sleep, which,
quoth he, “covers a man all over, body and mind, like a cloak”—for Sancho
has his poetical moods and tenses after all—he goes on to recognise the
affinity which poetry so freely asserts: “It [sleep] has only one fault,
as I have heard say, which is, that it looks like death: for between
the sleeper and the corpse there is but little to choose.” Shakspeare’s
Iachimo calls sleep the “ape of death.” To die, to sleep,—muses
Hamlet,—no more; and, by a sleep, to say we end the heart-ache, and the
thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to, were a consummation devoutly
to be wished. “Thy best of rest is sleep,” soliloquizes the duke in
“Measure for Measure,”
“And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear’st
Thy death, which is no more.”