“Soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day,”
the mind is prone to yield to those feelings which it might perhaps in
the turmoil of the busy world and at another period deem superstition.
There is something in the approach of death of so holy and so solemn a
nature, something so unlike life in the feeling of the dying, that in
this transition, although we cannot compass the mystery, some vision of
another world may steal over the retiring spirit, imparting to it a
proof of its immortality. I do not fear to yield for once my approval of
this devout passage of Sir Thomas Brown:—“It is observed that men
sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above
themselves, for then the soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of
the body, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.” It is on the
verge of eternity, and the laws and principles of vitality may be
already repealed by the Being who conferred them.—The arguments, then,
regarding the phenomena of life may fail, when life has all but ceased.
With this admission, I may counsel Astrophel as to the danger of
adducing heathen history or fiction in proof of this solemn question.
CAST. And yet Shakspere, for one, with a poet’s license, brings before
us, as you do, the dying hour, as the _cause_ of prophetic vision. John
of Gaunt, on his death-bed, mutters,—
“Methinks I am a prophet new inspired,
And thus expiring do foretell of him,”
and then predicts the fate of Richard.