_High Spirits considered a Presage of impending Calamity or Death_:--
1. "How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death."
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act v. Sc. 3.
2. "C'était le jour de Noel [1759]. Je m'étais levé d'assez bonne heure,
et avec une humeur plus gaie que de coutume. Dans les idées de vieille
femme, cela présage toujours quelque chose do triste.... Pour cette fois
pourtunt le hasard justifia la croyance."--_Mémoires de J. Casanova_,
vol. iii p. 29.
3. "Upon Saturday last ... the Duke did rise up, in a well-disposed
humour, out of his bed, and cut a caper or two.... Lieutenant Felton
made a thrust with a common tenpenny knife, over Fryer's arm at the
Duke, which lighted so fatally, that he slit his heart in two, leaving
the knife sticking in the body."--_Death of Duke of Buckingham_; Howell.
_Fam. Letters_, Aug. 5, 1628.
4. "On this fatal evening [Feb. 20, 1435], the revels of the court were
kept up to a late hour ... the prince himself appears to have been in
unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe
the cotemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that a
king should that year be slain."--_Death of King James I_.; Tytler,
_Hist. Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 306.
5. "'I think,' said the old gardener to one of the maids, 'the gauger's
_fie_;' by which word the common people express those violent spirits
which they think a presage of death."--_Guy Mannering_, chap. 9.
6. "H.W.L." said: "I believe the bodies of the four persons seen by the
jury, were those of G.B., W.B., J.B., and T.B. On Friday night they were
all very merry, and Mrs. B. said she feared something would happen
before they went to bed, because they were so happy."--_Evidence given
at inquest on bodies of four persons killed by explosion of
firework-manufactory in Bermondsey_, Friday, Oct. 12, 1849. See _Times_,
Oct. 17, 1849.
Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, are evidently notices of the Belief; Nos. 3, 4, are
"what you will." Many of your correspondents may be able to supply
earlier and more curious illustrations.