In the "Monument aux Morts" (Fig. 1), 196 the work of the modern French sculptor, Albert Bartholomé (born 1848), in the cemetery of Père Lachaise at Paris, those who have just passed in at the gloomy portal of death are represented in an attitude of peace and beatification, whereas, of those still outside the entrance only the miserable and wretched appear desirous of entering; the others hide their faces and shrink with fear. This reminds one, not only of the famous Pisan fresco already alluded to, but also of a fragment (referred to again a few pages further on) of the Polyidus of Euripides: “Who knoweth if what men call dying be not living; what men call living be not dying?"-a query of the eternally agnostic or sceptic group, a query to which Diogenes Laertius referred in his Life of Pyrrho (about 360-270 B.C.), the founder of the sceptic or Pyrrhonian school of philosophy. Cf. also reference to the passage in Plato's Gorgias, 492; and John Fiske's Life Everlasting, 1901, p. 14. It was a favourite saying of the famous French essayist Michel de Montaigne, and he had it inscribed in his library. In connexion with the aspect of, or attitude towards, death as giving freedom from pain, the comparison of death to a peaceful sleep after the fatigue and turmoil of the day follows naturally. At the end of the first book of the Tusculanae Disputationes, Cicero asks whether (if after all death signifies complete annihilation rather than a change or migration) anything could be better than, in the midst of the labours of life, to close one's eyes and 196 This monument is illustrated in T. H. Lewin's Life and Death, London, 1910. I am indebted for my illustration to the Frontispiece of a small book, entitled The Pros and Cons of Vivisection, by Charles Richet, with a preface by W. D. Halliburton (Duckworth & Co., sink softly into an eternal sleep? This is after Socrates, who (according to Plato's Apology) referred to death as either a change and migration of the soul, or else a complete annihilation, in which case it would be like a dreamless sleep. The beauty of Leonardo da Vinci's apophthegm will always last: "Si come une giornata bene spesa da lieto dormire cosi una vita bene usata da lieto morire." ("As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.") 197 Shakespeare (Macbeth, Act iii., Scene 2) makes Macbeth say of the murdered King Duncan: "After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well." Cf. Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, Book i. Canto ix. St. 40: "Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please." The idea of dying as falling happily and calmly to sleep after a wellspent life is gracefully expressed by Sir William Jones (1746-1794) from a Persian original: "On parent knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled: So live, that sinking to thy life's last sleep, Calm thou may'st smile, whilst all around thee weep." With such epigrams an epitaph by Carphyllides in the Greek Anthology (vii. 260) may be compared. It is translated by W. R. Paton (“Loeb Classical Library ") as follows:— "Find no fault with my fate, traveller, in passing my tomb; not even in death have I aught that calls for mourning. I left children's children, I enjoyed the company of one wife who grew old together with me. I married my three children, and many children sprung from these unions I lulled to sleep on my lap, never grieving for the illness or loss of one. They all, pouring their libations on my grave, sent me off on a painless journey to the home of the pious dead to sleep the sweet sleep." Some German "Sterbemünzen" (1619) bear the inscription, "Mors mihi quies, vita bellum." Amongst the 197 Leonardo da Vinci's Note-Books, rendered into English by E. McCurdy, London (Duckworth & Co.), p. 51. Sinngedichte of Friedrich von Logau (1604-1655) is the following (edition by G. Eitner, Leipzig-F. A. Brockhaus -1870, No. 987): "Der Tag hat grosse Müh, die Nacht hat süsse Ruh; Das Leben bringt uns Müh, der Tod die Ruhe zu.” Heinrich Heine has put it thus "Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, Byron ("And thou art dead") exclaims "The silence of that dreamless sleep A. Rethel's beautiful design (1851) of "Death as a Friend," shows the "King of Terrors," divested of all terrors, tolling the bell in the church-tower at the peaceful termination of the aged bell-ringer's life (see Fig. 31).19 "Be the day weary, or be the day long, At length it ringeth to Evensong." Although the day be ever so long, Yet at last it ringeth to evening song." This version, according to John Foxe (the martyrologist), was quoted by George Tankerfield at the stake, in 1555. The end of an epitaph by Stephen Hawes (early sixteenth century) is "For though the day be never so long, At last the bell ringeth to evensong." Cf. James Russell Lowell (To George William Curtis):- 13% Indeed, the voices of the bells in old cathedrals and beautiful country churches may suggest to some: "Laus Deo, pax vivis, requies aeterna sepultis." In Matthias Claudius's "Der Tod und das Mädchen" (first published in 1775, but chiefly known through Schubert's musical setting), Death, though in the repulsive FIG. 31.-"Death as a Friend," by A. Rethel. form of the " Knochenmann," comes to the beautiful maiden as a friend : "Gieb deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebild ! Sei gutes Muths! ich bin nicht wild, Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!" 199 199 Compare the idea of Death being greeted as a friend in Claudius's poem (1780), "Auf den Tod der Kaiserin." Still more did Death come as a friend to the poor weary woman in Adelaide Anne Procter's poem, "The Requital," so well known owing to J. Blumenthal's music. Cf. also "Non mihi mors sed somnus erit: sic carcere clausus Saepius optatum gaudet adesse diem." William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), the celebrated American poet, in his Thanatopsis (published in 1816, when he was only 18 years old), counsels: "Approach thy grave Like one that draws the drapery of his couch In another poem we read : "That's Death, my little sister, and the Night Yet, as J. S. Le Fanu says, old persons are sometimes as unwilling to die as tired-out children are to say good night and go to bed. La Fontaine's fable, La Mort et le Mourant, tells us the same (cf. Headings xix., xx.). Moreover, as Sir Lyon Playfair (afterwards Lord Playfair) pointed out,200 it is merely poetry to call sleep the "twinbrother of death"; scientifically, sleep is rather the preserver of life and a sign of life than in any way. analogous to death. Sleep, N. Vaschide has said, is not, as Homer thought, the brother of Death, but of Life, and Havelock Ellis adds, the elder brother.201 200 Vide Sir A. Mitchell's Dreaming, Laughing, and Blushing, 1905, P. 10. 201 Vide Havelock Ellis's The World of Dreams, London, 1911, p. 280. |