Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend Part 9

To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan;+ dispar- aging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself.

Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's patients, or Achilles's horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and n.o.ble acts, which are the balsam of our memories, the entelechia and soul of our sub- sistences? To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, than Pilate?

* The character of death.

+ "Cuperem notum esse quod sim non opto ut sciatur qualis sim."

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we com- pute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations, and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon without the favour of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?

The first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of G.o.d, not in the record of man.

Twenty-seven names make up the first story and the recorded names ever since contain not one living cen- tury. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpa.s.seth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans<6> could doubt, whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying memen- toes, and time that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration;--diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slip- pery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repet.i.tions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigra- tion of their souls,--a good way to continue their me- mories, while having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their pa.s.sed selves, make acc.u.mulation of glory unto their last dura- tions. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their un- known and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all is vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become mer- chandise, Mizraim, cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.

In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been deceived even in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osyris in the Dog-star.

While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find that they are but like the earth;--durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Phaeton's favour, would make clear conviction.

There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality.

Whatever hath no beginning, may be confident of no end;--all others have a dependent being and within the reach of destruction;--which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself;--and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully const.i.tuted as not to suffer even from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory.

G.o.d who can only destroy our souls, and hath a.s.sured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a n.o.ble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal l.u.s.tre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to pro- vide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn.

Five languages<7> secured not the epitaph of Gordia.n.u.s.

The man of G.o.d lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without either tomb or burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict account being still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all die but be changed, according to re- ceived translation, the last day will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will antic.i.p.ate lasting sepultures. Some graves will be opened before they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared to die, shall groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second and living death, when life puts despair on the d.a.m.ned; when men shall wish the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilations shall be courted.

While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined them, and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaricus seems most subtle, who had a river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, that thought himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his monument.

Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.*

Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient magna- nimity. But the most magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency.+

Pious spirits who pa.s.sed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of G.o.d, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome antic.i.p.ation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their pro- ductions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in n.o.ble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St Innocent's# church-yard as in the sands of

* Isa. xiv. 16. + The least of angles.

# In Paris, where bodies soon consume.

Egypt. Ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adria.n.u.s.*

--"Tabesne cadavera solvat, An rogus, haud refert."--LUCAN. viii. 809.

* A stately mausoleum or sepulchral pile, built by Adria.n.u.s in Rome, where now standeth the castle of St Angelo.

A LETTER TO A FRIEND,

UPON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF HIS INTIMATE FRIEND.

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LETTER TO A FRIEND.

GIVE me leave to wonder that news of this nature should have such heavy wings that you should hear so little concerning your dearest friend, and that I must make that unwilling repet.i.tion to tell you "ad portam rigidos calces extendit," that he is dead and buried, and by this time no puny among the mighty nations of the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past, yet every hour you know largely addeth unto that dark society; and considering the incessant mortality of mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole earth so few as a thousand an hour.

Although at this distance you had no early account or particular of his death, yet your affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret sense or intima- tion thereof by dreams, thoughtful whisperings, mer- curisms, airy nuncios or sympathetical insinuations, which many seem to have had at the death of their dearest friends: for since we find in that famous story, that spirits themselves were fain to tell their fellows at a distance that the great Antonio was dead, we have a sufficient excuse for our ignorance in such particulars, and must rest content with the common road, and Ap- pian way of knowledge by information. Though the uncertainty of the end of this world hath confounded all human predictions; yet they who shall live to see the sun and moon darkened, and the stars to fall from heaven, will hardly be deceived in the advent of the last day; and therefore strange it is, that the common fallacy of consumptive persons who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their friends in perfect health and judgment;--that you should be so little acquainted with Plautus's sick com- plexion, or that almost an Hippocratical face should not alarum you to higher fears, or rather despair, of his continuation in such an emaciated state, wherein medical predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute dis- eases, and wherein 'tis as dangerous to be sentenced by a physician as a judge.

Upon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all hopes of his recovery, that in my sad opinion he was not like to behold a gra.s.shopper,<1> much less to pluck another fig; and in no long time after seemed to discover that odd mortal symptom in him not mentioned by Hippocrates, that is, to lose his own face, and look like some of his near relations; for he maintained not his proper countenance, but looked like his uncle, the lines of whose face lay deep and invisible in his healthful visage before: for as from our begin- ning we run through variety of looks, before we come to consistent and settled faces; so before our end, by sick and languis.h.i.+ng alterations, we put on new visages: and in our retreat to earth, may fall upon such looks which from community of seminal originals were before latent in us.

He was fruitlessly put in hope of advantage by change of air, and imbibing the pure aerial nitre of these parts; and therefore, being so far spent, he quickly found Sar- dinia in Tivoli,* and the most healthful air of little effect, where death had set her broad arrow;+ for he lived not unto the middle of May, and confirmed the observation of Hippocrates of that mortal time of the year when the leaves of the fig-tree resemble a daw's claw. He is happily seated who lives in places whose air, earth, and water, promote not the infirmities of his weaker parts, or is early removed into regions that correct them. He that is tabidly<2> inclined, were unwise to pa.s.s his days in Portugal: cholical persons will find little comfort in Austria or Vienna: he that is weak- legged must not be in love with Rome, nor an infirm head with Venice or Paris. Death hath not only par- ticular stars in heaven, but malevolent places on earth, which single out our infirmities, and strike at our weaker parts; in which concern, pa.s.sager and migrant birds have the great advantages, who are naturally const.i.tuted for distant habitations, whom no seas nor places limit, but in their appointed seasons will visit us from Greenland and Mount Atlas, and, as some think, even from the Antipodes.#

Though we could not have his life, yet we missed not our desires in his soft departure, which was scarce an expiration; and his end not unlike his beginning, when the salient point scarce affords a sensible motion, and his departure so like unto sleep, that he scarce needed the civil ceremony of closing his eyes; contrary unto the common way, wherein death draws up, sleep lets fall

* "c.u.m mors venerit, in medio Tibure Sardinia est."

+ In the king's forests they set the figure of a broad arrow upon trees that are to be cut down.

# Bellonius de Avibus.

the eyelids. With what strife and pains we came into the world we know not; but 'tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it: yet if it could be made out, that such who have easy nativities have commonly hard deaths, and contrarily; his departure was so easy, that we might justly suspect his birth was of another nature, and that some Juno sat cross-legged at his nativity.

Besides his soft death, the incurable state of his disease might somewhat extenuate your sorrow, who know that monsters but seldom happen, miracles more rarely in physick.* Angelus Victorius gives a serious account of a consumptive, hectical, phthisical woman, who was suddenly cured by the intercession of Ignatius.

We read not of any in Scripture who in this case applied unto our Saviour, though some may be contained in that large expression, that he went about Galilee healing all manner of sickness and all manner of diseases.+ Amulets, spells, sigils, and incantations, practised in other diseases, are seldom pretended in this; and we find no sigil in the Archidoxis of Paracelsus to cure an extreme consumption or marasmus, which, if other diseases fail, will put a period unto long livers, and at last makes dust of all. And therefore the Stoics could not but think that the fiery principle would wear out all the rest, and at last make an end of the world, which notwithstanding without such a lingering period the Creator may effect at his pleasure: and to make an end of all things on earth, and our planetical system of the world, he need but put out the sun.

I was not so curious to ent.i.tle the stars unto any concern of his death, yet could not but take notice that

* "Monstra contingunt in medicina." Hippoc.--"Strange and rare escapes there happen sometimes in physick."

+ Matt. iv. 23.

he died when the moon was in motion from the meri- dian; at which time an old Italian long ago would per- suade me that the greatest part of men died: but herein I confess I could never satisfy my curiosity; although from the time of tides in places upon or near the sea, there may be considerable deductions; and Pliny* hath an odd and remarkable pa.s.sage concerning the death of men and animals upon the recess or ebb of the sea.

However, certain it is, he died in the dead and deep part of the night, when Nox might be most apprehen- sibly said to be the daughter of Chaos, the mother of sleep and death, according to old genealogy; and so went out of this world about that hour when our blessed Saviour entered it, and about what time many conceive he will return again unto it. Cardan<3> hath a peculiar and no hard observation from a man's hand to know whether he was born in the day or night, which I con- fess holdeth in my own. And Scaliger<4> to that purpose hath another from the tip of the ear:+ most men are begotten in the night, animals in the day; but whether more persons have been born in the night or day, were a curiosity undecidable, though more have perished by violent deaths in the day; yet in natural dissolutions both times may hold an indifferency, at least but con- tingent inequality. The whole course of time runs out in the nativity and death of things; which whether they happen by succession or coincidence, are best com- puted by the natural, not artificial day.

* "Aristoteles nullum animal nisi aestu recedente expirare affirmat; observatum id multum in Gallico Oceano et duntaxat in homine compertum," lib. 2, cap. 101.

+ "Auris pars pendula lobus dicitur, non omnibus ea pars, est auribus; non enim iis qui noctu sunt, sed qui interdiu, maxima ex parte."--Com. in Aristot. de Animal. lib. 1.

That Charles the Fifth<5> was crowned upon the day of his nativity, it being in his own power so to order it, makes no singular animadversion: but that he should also take King Francis<6> prisoner upon that day, was an unexpected coincidence, which made the same remarkable. Antipater, who had an anniversary feast every year upon his birth-day, needed no astro- logical revolution to know what day he should die on.

When the fixed stars have made a revolution unto the points from whence they first set out, some of the ancients thought the world would have an end; which was a kind of dying upon the day of its nativity. Now the disease prevailing and swiftly advancing about the time of his nativity, some were of opinion that he would leave the world on the day he entered into it; but this being a lingering disease, and creeping softly on, nothing critical was found or expected, and he died not before fifteen days after. Nothing is more common with infants than to die on the day of their nativity, to behold the worldly hours, and but the fractions thereof; and even to perish before their nativity in the hidden world of the womb, and before their good angel is con- ceived to undertake them. But in persons who out- live many years, and when there are no less than three hundred and sixty-five days to determine their lives in every year; that the first day should make the last, that the tail of the snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coincidence, which, though astrology hath taken witty pains to salve, yet hath it been very wary in making predictions of it.*

In this consumptive condition and remarkable exten-

* According to the Egyptian hieroglyphic.

uation, he came to be almost half himself, and left a great part behind him, which he carried not to the grave. And though that story of Duke John Ernestus Mansfield<7>* be not so easily swallowed, that at his death his heart was found not to be so big as a nut; yet if the bones of a good skeleton weigh little more than twenty pounds, his inwards and flesh remaining could make no bouff.a.ge,<8> but a light bit for the grave. I never more lively beheld the starved characters of Dante+ in any living face; an aruspex might have read a lecture upon him without exenteration, his flesh being so consumed, that he might, in a manner, have discerned his bowels without opening of him; so that to be carried, s.e.xta cervice# to the grave, was but a civil unnecessity; and the complements of the coffin might outweigh the subject of it.

Omnibonus Ferrarius in mortal dysenteries of chil- dren looks for a spot behind the ear; in consumptive diseases some eye the complexion of moles; Cardan eagerly views the nails, some the lines of the hand, the thenar or muscle of the thumb; some are so curious as to observe the depth of the throat-pit, how the pro- portion varieth of the small of the legs unto the calf, or the compa.s.s of the neck unto the circ.u.mference of the head; but all these, with many more, were so drowned in a mortal visage, and last face of Hippocra- tes, that a weak physiognomist might say at first eye, this was a face of earth, and that Morta$ had set her hard seal upon his temples, easily perceiving what caricatura

* Turkish history.