XVIII. GRIEF FOR THE DEATH OF OTHERS. NUMBERLESS memorial medals, finger-rings, &c. (some of which are described elsewhere in this book), have devices and inscriptions which more or less illustrate this subject. Here may be mentioned various finger-rings, brooches, lockets, &c., bearing "mourning" devices, and memorial medals with such inscriptions as: "We shall not look upon his like again" (after Shakespeare's Hamlet). Thus, a memorial medal (a specimen of which was formerly in my collection) of a certain Bartholomew Johnson, who died at Scarborough on February 7, 1814, when he was supposed to be in his 104th year, bears on the reverse the inscription, "He was a man, take him for all in all. We shall not look upon his like again." A memorial medal by the Belgian medallist, Charles Wiener, of Jonas Webb, 1862, a celebrated breeder of sheep in Cambridgeshire (whose statue now stands in the Corn Exchange at Cambridge), has around the bust on the obverse the inscription, "We shall not look upon his like again." Both the longer and the shorter of these inscriptions (after Hamlet) occur on various commemorative medals of Shakespeare himself. 388 Compare also Goethe: "Auf dienem Grabstein wird man lesen, " 389 A medal of Ferdinand (afterwards the German Emperor Ferdinand I), brother of the Emperor Charles V, 388 Medallic Illustrations of British History, London, 1885, vol. i. pp. 208-212. 389 Cf. also the quotations given in Büchmann's Geflügelte Worte, 22nd edition, 1905, p. 204. struck in 1547, on the death of his wife Anna of Hungary, has on the reverse the letter A over a death'shead and a bone, with the inscription, Wier klagens Gott ("We bewail it to God"). This medal makes one think of a bell tolling at funerals (the "passing bell"), with the words "Mortuos plango" or "Defunctos ploro," inscribed on it. On the minster bell at Schaffhausen in Switzerland is the inscription, "Defunctos plango, vivos voco, fulmina frango." The similar bell-inscription always quoted in connexion with Schiller's famous Lied von der Glocke is, " Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango." For a considerable variety of similar, but mostly rather longer, bell-inscriptions see J. D. Blavignac, La Cloche, Geneva, 1877. It is, perhaps, curious that a large church bell, inscribed with the words, Mortuos plango, has never (as far as I know) been chosen for a device on a mortuary medal. Such a device might well make one think of Lord Tennyson's lines: "Yet in these ears till hearing dies, One set slow bell will seem to toll and of James Shirley's The Passing Bell, commencing : "Hark how chimes the passing bell, All the other sounds we hear, With the last-mentioned medal may be compared a modern plaquette, inscribed "Totenklage," and signed by Hans Schäfer, of Vienna. It is described and figured in the Monatsblatt der numismatischen Gesellschaft in Wien (1912, vol. ix. p. 59 and Pl. ii.), and represents a nude man standing in an attitude and with an expression of extreme grief; behind, on the left, Death, as a skeleton, playing on a harp, is seated on a stone block, about which flames are arising; the grieved man is evidently listening to the doleful music. sepulchral monuments (including reliefs on stelae, terracotta sarcophagi, wall-paintings and some painted vases) hardly come within the range of the present work, but will be alluded to in Part IV. Mourning for the dead and the bringing of funeral offerings are frequent subjects on Greek painted vases, especially on the white (probably Attic) sepulchral lecythi of the fifth century B.C. In regard to the manner of "mourning" for the dead in ancient times by funeral banquets, H. P. Dodd (Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 68) quotes the following epigram by Joannes Stobaeus (translated by C.): "Lov'd shade! For thee we garlands wear, For thee with perfumes bathe our hair; Where thou art gone no tears are shed, "Twere sin to mourn the blest, the dead.390 The value attached by the Greeks to such "pious" duties as the bringing of funeral offerings is well illustrated by a poem of Solon, thus translated by Merivale : "Oh let not death, unwept, unhonour'd, be But those who loved me living, when I die, Mourning for the dead is, of course, abundantly illustrated in the larger works of art of many countries and many periods. Some eighteenth-century mourning finger-rings, 399 It is perhaps from the funeral banquet-the feast in honour of the dead (uákapes, the blest or happy ones)—or from food offered to the dead, that the words macaroni and macaroon are derived. But this etymology is disputed by some authorities, as having been based on quite insufficient evidence. brooches, &c., have inscriptions intended to comfort the survivors, such as: "Not lost, but gone before," and "Heaven has in store what thou hast lost." Some coins of Philip, the last Duke of Brunswick of the old Grubenhagen line, bear the consolatory inscription, "Got gibt, Got nimbt"-presumably in reference to the deaths, in 1595, of his wife and only brother. But I have not seen it suggested on any mourning or memorial medals, jewellery, &c., that too long mourning for the dead is a useless waste of life, and therefore wrong Cf. Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 21, “Thou shalt not do him good, but hurt thyself"; one of William Blake's illustrations to Edward Young's Night Thoughts might have also served as an illustration to this passage in Ecclesiasticus. What might be called the "hopeless type" of grief and mourning for the dead is represented by various works of art, for instance, by a modern painting, entitled "A Hopeless Dawn," by Frank Bramley, R.A. (1888), now in the National Gallery of British Art (Tate Gallery, London), and, in epigrams, by Sir Henry Wotton's well-known epitaph on Sir Albertus Morton's wife: "He first deceased; she for a little tried To live without him; liked it not, and died." Sir Albertus Morton died in 1625. The epitaph on John and Margaret Whiting in the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great (London), who died 1680-1681, ends : "Shee first deceased; Hee for a little Tryd In a letter of condolence on the death of Montaigne, the essayist, written by the Flemish scholar, Justus Lipsius, to Marie de Gournay (a kind of "adopted daughter" to Montaigne), Lipsius added: "Rideat ille nos, si sciat dolere," meaning that Montaigne would laugh. at them if he knew they were grieving for him. Similar expressions and ideas are quoted from Christian and non-Christian sources in other parts of this book. Many references to ancient authors in regard to philosophic consolation for the death of friends, &c., are given in Part I. A. of this book, and many more philosophic consolatory arguments of all times are adduced in Robert Burton's famous Anatomy of Melancholy (part 2, sect. 3, M. 5). Nevertheless, in the Sinngedichte, by the seventeenth century German poet, Friedrich von Logau,391 we read: "Ich fürchte nicht den Tod, der mich zu nehmen kümmt; Ich fürchte mehr den Tod, der mir die Meinen nimmt." And so, indeed, there will always be some to whom the following stanza from "The Grave," by Henry Vaughan, "the Silurist" (1622-1695), is applicable: "But vainly there they seek their soul's relief, And of th' obdurate Grave its prey implore ; Closing their eyes by those they wept before." In regard to the so-called "untimely" or "premature" death of friends and relatives, Mr. William Wale has kindly drawn my attention to the following passage, translated from Cicero: "Some men make a womanish complaint that it is a great misfortune to die before one's time. I would ask what time? Is it that of Nature? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money; only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that one receives it." In the "Meditations" of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, various consolatory reflexions on the subject of early or "untimely" death are included. Grief for the loss of aged friends and relatives may sometimes be as severe as for the death of younger ones: in fact, the long habit of association makes the final separation more keenly felt. In such cases, however, there is real consolation to be derived from the fact of the death having been "in the fulness of time," after a good and worthy "innings," and similar considerations of the kind. As to one of the worst forms of grief and pain, the following passage (Robert Browning, A Death in the 391 Edited by G. Eitner, Leipzig-F. A. Brockhaus-1870, No. 90. |