Life and Death

SIBYLS and prophets have already spoken their inexorable decree, as Goethe has said, on the day that first gives the man to the world ; no time and no might can break the stamped mould of his character ; only as life wears on, do all its aforeshapen lines come into light. ... The leaden chains of use bind many an ugly prisoner in the soul; and when the habit of their lives has been sundered, the most immaculate are capable of antics beyond prevision.

John Morley

'SUPPOSE the worst to happen, I said, addressing a portly jeweller from Cheapside; 'suppose even yourself to be the victim ; il n'y a pas d'homme nécessaire. We should miss you for a day or two upon the Woodford branch : but the great mundane movement would still go on, the gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, dividends would still be paid at the Bank, omnibuses would still run, there would still be the old crush at the corner of Fenchurch Street.' All was of no avail. Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle class, their passionate, absorbing, almost bloodthirsty, clinging to life.

Matthew Arnold. [I knew Fenchurch St and it's unfashionable railway terminus very well and this is the second reference to it I have read in literature in the widest meaning of the word, the first being a detective story by Baroness Orczy which I recently reread.]

If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity unto it, there were a happiness in Hoary hairs, and no calamity in Half senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when Avarice makes us the sport of Death; when David grew politickly Cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the Wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretcheth our days, Misery makes Almena's nights, and Time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish it self, content to be nothing, or never to have been; which was beyond the Male-content of Job, who cursed not the day of his Life, but his Nativity; content to have so far been, as to have a title to future being; although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an Abortion.

What Song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among Women, though puzzling Questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these Ossuaries entred the a∣mous Nations of the dead, and slept with Princes and Counsellors, might admit a wide Solution. But who were the proprietaries of these Bones, or what Bodies these Ashes made up, were a question above Antiquarism, not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by Spirits, except we con∣sult the Provincial Guardians, or Tutelary Observators. Had they made as good provision for their Names as they have done for their Reliques, they had not so grossly erred in the art of Perpetuation. But to subsist in Bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in Duration. Vain Ashes, which, in the oblivion of Names, Persons, Times and Sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless Continuation, and onely arise unto late Posterity as Emblems of mortal Vanities, Antidotes against Pride, Vain-glory, and madding Vices! Pagan Vain-glories, which thought the World might last for ever, had encouragement for Ambition, and finding no Atropos unto the immortality of their Names, were never dampt with the necessity of Oblivion. Even old Ambitions had the advantage of ours in the attempts of their Vain-glories, who acting early, and before the pro∣bable Meridian of Time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their Designs, whereby the ancient Heroes have already out-lasted their Monuments and Mechanical Preservations. But in this latter Scene of Time we cannot expect such Mummies unto our Memories, when Am∣bition may fear the Prophecie of Elias and Charles the fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselah's of Hector. 

And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our Memories.

Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial

These come from a good book with three extracts for every day that I sometimes read, Words and days : a table-book of prose and verse by Bowyer Nichols (1895) which I bought when 19 secondhand. I extended the extract from Browne.

How much better so very many things were in 1895 than now.