I have lately been called, from a mingled life of business and amusement,
to attend the last hours of an old friend; an office which has filled me,
if not with melancholy, at least with serious reflections, and turned my
thoughts towards the contemplation of those subjects, which though of the
utmost importance, and of indubitable certainty, are generally secluded
from our regard, by the jollity of health, the hurry of employment, and
even by the calmer diversions of study and speculation; or if they become
accidental topicks of conversation and argument, yet rarely sink deep
into the heart, but give occasion only to some subtilties of reasoning,
or elegancies of declamation, which are heard, applauded, and forgotten.
It is, indeed, not hard to conceive how a man accustomed to extend his
views through a long concatenation of causes and effects, to trace
things from their origin to their period, and compare means with ends,
may discover the weakness of human schemes; detect the fallacies by
which mortals are deluded; shew the insufficiency of wealth, honours,
and power, to real happiness; and please himself, and his auditors, with
learned lectures on the vanity of life.
But though the speculatist may see and shew the folly of terrestrial
hopes, fears, and desires, every hour will give proofs that he never felt
it. Trace him through the day or year, and you will find him acting upon
principles which he has in common with the illiterate and unenlightened,
angry and pleased like the lowest of the vulgar, pursuing, with the same
ardour, the same designs, grasping, with all the eagerness of transport,
those riches which he knows he cannot keep, and swelling with the
applause which he has gained by proving that applause is of no value.
The only conviction that rushes upon the soul, and takes away from our
appetites and passions the power of resistance, is to be found, where
I have received it, at the bed of a dying friend. To enter this school
of wisdom is not the peculiar privilege of geometricians; the most
sublime and important precepts require no uncommon opportunities, nor
laborious preparations; they are enforced without the aid of eloquence,
and understood without skill in analytick science. Every tongue can utter
them, and every understanding can conceive them. He that wishes in
earnest to obtain just sentiments concerning his condition, and would
be intimately acquainted with the world, may find instructions on every
side. He that desires to enter behind the scene, which every art has been
employed to decorate, and every passion labours to illuminate, and wishes
to see life stripped of those ornaments which make it glitter on the
stage, and exposed in its natural meanness, impotence, and nakedness, may
find all the delusion laid open in the chamber of disease: he will there
find vanity divested of her robes, power deprived of her sceptre, and
hypocrisy without her mask.
The friend whom I have lost was a man eminent for genius, and, like others
of the same class, sufficiently pleased with acceptance and applause.
Being caressed by those who have preferments and riches in their
disposal, he considered himself as in the direct road of advancement,
and had caught the flame of ambition by approaches to its object. But
in the midst of his hopes, his projects, and his gaieties, he was seized
by a lingering disease, which, from its first stage, he knew to be
incurable. Here was an end of all his visions of greatness and happiness;
from the first hour that his health declined, all his former pleasures
grew tasteless. His friends expected to please him by those accounts
of the growth of his reputation, which were formerly certain of being
well received; but they soon found how little he was now affected by
compliments, and how vainly they attempted, by flattery, to exhilarate
the languor of weakness, and relieve the solicitude of approaching
death. Whoever would know how much piety and virtue surpass all external
goods, might here have seen them weighed against each other, where all
that gives motion to the active, and elevation to the eminent, all that
sparkles in the eye of hope, and pants in the bosom of suspicion, at once
became dust in the balance, without weight and without regard. Riches,
authority, and praise, lose all their influence when they are considered
as riches which to-morrow shall be bestowed upon another, authority which
shall this night expire for ever, and praise which, however merited, or
however sincere, shall, after a few moments, be heard no more.
In those hours of seriousness and wisdom, nothing appeared to raise his
spirits, or gladden his heart, but the recollection of acts of goodness;
nor to excite his attention, but some opportunity for the exercise of
the duties of religion. Every thing that terminated on this side of the
grave was received with coldness and indifference, and regarded rather
in consequence of the habit of valuing it, than from any opinion that
it deserved value; it had little more prevalence over his mind than a
bubble that was now broken, a dream from which he was awake. His whole
powers were engrossed by the consideration of another state, and all
conversation was tedious, that had not some tendency to disengage him
from human affairs, and open his prospects into futurity.
It is now past, we have closed his eyes, and heard him breathe the groan
of expiration. At the sight of this last conflict, I felt a sensation
never known to me before; a confusion of passions, an awful stillness
of sorrow, a gloomy terrour without a name. The thoughts that entered my
soul were too strong to be diverted, and too piercing to be endured; but
such violence cannot be lasting, the storm subsided in a short time, I
wept, retired, and grew calm.
I have from that time frequently revolved in my mind, the effects which
the observation of death produces, in those who are not wholly without
the power and use of reflection; for, by far the greater part, it is
wholly unregarded. Their friends and their enemies sink into the grave
without raising any uncommon emotion, or reminding them that they are
themselves on the edge of the precipice, and that they must soon plunge
into a gulf of eternity.
It seems to me remarkable that death increases our veneration for the
good, and extenuates our hatred of the bad. Those virtues which once
we envied, as Horace observes, because they eclipsed our own, can now
no longer obstruct our reputation, and we have therefore no interest to
suppress their praise. That wickedness, which we feared for its malignity,
is now become impotent, and the man whose name filled us with alarm, and
rage, and indignation, can at last be considered only with pity, or
contempt.
When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for
every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand
endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a
thousand favours unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed, and wish,
vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive, as that we
may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never
understood.
There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful
occurrence, than the death of one whom we have injured without
reparation. Our crime seems now irretrievable, it is indelibly recorded,
and the stamp of fate is fixed upon it. We consider, with the most
afflictive anguish, the pain which we have given, and now cannot
alleviate, and the losses which we have caused, and now cannot repair.
Of the same kind are the emotions which the death of an emulator or
competitor produces. Whoever had qualities to alarm our jealousy, had
excellence to deserve our fondness; and to whatever ardour of opposition
interest may inflame us, no man ever outlived an enemy, whom he did not
then wish to have made a friend. Those who are versed in literary history
know, that the elder Scaliger was the redoubted antagonist of Cardan
and Erasmus; yet at the death of each of his great rivals he relented,
and complained that they were snatched away from him before their
reconciliation was completed:
_Tu-ne etiam moreris? Ah! quid me linquis, Erasme,_
_Ante meus quam sit conciliatus amor?_
Art thou too fallen? Ere anger could subside
And love return, has great Erasmus died?
Such are the sentiments with which we finally review the effects of
passion, but which we sometimes delay till we can no longer rectify our
errours. Let us, therefore, make haste to do what we shall certainly at
last wish to have done; let us return the caresses of our friends, and
endeavour by mutual endearments to heighten that tenderness which is
the balm of life. Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance
may not be a barren anguish, and let us open our eyes to every rival
excellence, and pay early and willingly those honours which justice will
compel us to pay at last.