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Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners

W >> William Hazlitt >> Table Talk, Essays on Men and Manners




It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear of death become more
familiar to us as we approach nearer to it: that life seems to ebb with
the decay of blood and youthful spirits; and that as we find everything
about us subject to chance and change, as our strength and beauty die,
as our hopes and passions, our friends and our affections leave us, we
begin by degrees to feel ourselves mortal!

I have never seen death but once, and that was in an infant. It is
years ago. The look was calm and placid, and the face was fair and
firm. It was as if a waxen image had been laid out in the coffin, and
strewed with innocent flowers. It was not like death, but more like an
image of life! No breath moved the lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or
sound would enter those eyes or ears more. While I looked at it, I saw
no pain was there; it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which
was over: but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed--it seemed to
stifle me; and still as the nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard
over his little grave, the welcome breeze helps to refresh me, and ease
the tightness at my breast!

An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument of the two children,
is contemplated with pure delight. Why do we not grieve and fret that
the marble is not alive, or fancy that it has a shortness of breath? It
never was alive; and it is the difficulty of making the transition from
life to death, the struggle between the two in our imagination, that
confounds their properties painfully together, and makes us conceive
that the infant that is but just dead, still wants to breathe, to enjoy,
and look about it, and is prevented by the icy hand of death, locking up
its faculties and benumbing its senses; so that, if it could, it would
complain of its own hard state. Perhaps religious considerations
reconcile the mind to this change sooner than any others, by
representing the spirit as fled to another sphere, and leaving the body
behind it. So in reflecting on death generally, we mix up the idea of
life with it, and thus make it the ghastly monster it is. We think, how
we should feel, not how the dead feel.

Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires!

There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's _Light of
Nature Pursued_, which I shall transcribe, as by much the best
illustration I can offer of it.

'The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the mansion provided for
it to inhabit, dark, cold, close and solitary, are shocking to the
imagination; but it is to the imagination only, not the understanding;
for whoever consults this faculty will see at first glance, that there
is nothing dismal in all these circumstances: if the corpse were kept
wrapped up in a warm bed, with a roasting fire in the chamber, it would
feel no comfortable warmth therefrom; were store of tapers lighted up as
soon as day shuts in, it would see no objects to divert it; were it left
at large it would have no liberty, nor if surrounded with company would
be cheered thereby; neither are the distorted features expressions of
pain, uneasiness, or distress. This every one knows, and will readily
allow upon being suggested, yet still cannot behold, nor even cast a
thought upon those objects without shuddering; for knowing that a living
person must suffer grievously under such appearances, they become
habitually formidable to the mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which
is increased by the customs of the world around us.'

There is usually one pang added voluntarily and unnecessarily to the
fear of death, by our affecting to compassionate the loss which others
will have in us. If that were all, we might reasonably set our minds at
rest. The pathetic exhortation on country tombstones, 'Grieve not for
me, my wife and children dear,' etc., is for the most part speedily
followed to the letter. We do not leave so great a void in society as
we are inclined to imagine, partly to magnify our own importance. and
partly to console ourselves by sympathy. Even in the same family the
gap is not so great; the wound closes up sooner than we should expect.
Nay, _our room_ is not unfrequently thought better than _our company._
People walk along the streets the day after our deaths just as they did
before, and the crowd is not diminished. While we were living, the
world seemed in a manner to exist only for us, for our delight and
amusement, because it contributed to them. But our hearts cease to
beat, and it goes on as usual, and thinks no more about us than it did
in our lifetime. The million are devoid of sentiment, and care as
little for you or me as if we belonged to the moon. We live the week
over in the Sunday's paper, or are decently interred in some obituary at
the month's end! It is not surprising that we are forgotten so soon
after we quit this mortal stage; we are scarcely noticed while we are on
it. It is not merely that our names are not known in China--they have
hardly been heard of in the next street. We are hand and glove with the
universe, and think the obligation is mutual. This is an evident
fallacy. If this, however, does not trouble us now, it will not
hereafter. A handful of dust can have no quarrel to pick with its
neighbours, or complaint to make against Providence, and might well
exclaim, if it had but an understanding and a tongue, 'Go thy ways, old
world, swing round in blue ether, voluble to every age, you and I shall
no more jostle!'

It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even some of those who
have wielded great political power, are forgotten.

A little rule, a little sway,
Is all the great and mighty have
Betwixt the cradle and the grave--

and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind them. 'A
great man's memory may, at the common rate, survive him half a year.'
His heirs and successors take his titles, his power, and his wealth--all
that made him considerable or courted by others; and he has left nothing
else behind him either to delight or benefit the world. Posterity are
not by any means so disinterested as they are supposed to be. They give
their gratitude and admiration only in return for benefits conferred.
They cherish the memory of those to whom they are indebted for
instruction and delight; and they cherish it just in proportion to the
instruction and delight they are conscious they receive. The sentiment
of admiration springs immediately from this ground, and cannot be
otherwise than well founded.[3]

The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general or abstract idea,
is the effect of a highly civilised and artificial state of society.
Men formerly plunged into all the vicissitudes and dangers of war, or
staked their all upon a single die, or some one passion, which if they
could not have gratified, life became a burden to them--now our
strongest passion is to think, our chief amusement is to read new plays,
new poems, new novels, and this we may do at our leisure, in perfect
security, _ad infinitum_. If we look into the old histories and
romances, before the _belles-lettres_ neutralised human affairs and
reduced passion to a state of mental equivocation, we find the heroes
and heroines not setting their lives 'at a pin's fee,' but rather
courting opportunities of throwing them away in very wantonness of
spirit. They raise their fondness for some favourite pursuit to its
height, to a pitch of madness, and think no price too dear to pay for
its full gratification. Everything else is dross. They go to death as
to a bridal bed, and sacrifice themselves or others without remorse at
the shrine of love, of honour, of religion, or any other prevailing
feeling. Romeo runs his 'sea-sick, weary bark upon the rocks' of death
the instant he finds himself deprived of his Juliet; and she clasps his
neck in their last agonies, and follows him to the same fatal shore.
One strong idea takes possession of the mind and overrules every other;
and even life itself, joyless without that, becomes an object of
indifference or loathing. There is at least more of imagination in such
a state of things, more vigour of feeling and promptitude to act, than
in our lingering, languid, protracted attachment to life for its own
poor sake. It is, perhaps, also better, as well as more heroical, to
strike at some daring or darling object, and if we fail in that, to take
the consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a tedious,
spiritless, charmless existence, merely (as Pierre says) 'to lose it
afterwards in some vile brawl' for some worthless object. Was there not
a spirit of martyrdom as well as a spice of the reckless energy of
barbarism in this bold defiance of death? Had not religion something to
do with it: the implicit belief in a future life, which rendered this of
less value, and embodied something beyond it to the imagination; so that
the rough soldier, the infatuated lover, the valorous knight, etc.,
could afford to throw away the present venture, and take a leap into the
arms of futurity, which the modern sceptic shrinks back from, with all
his boasted reason and vain philosophy, weaker than a woman! I cannot
help thinking so myself; but I have endeavoured to explain this point
before, and will not enlarge farther on it here.

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only
gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the
precarious tenure on which we hold our present being. Sedentary and
studious men are the most apprehensive on this score. Dr. Johnson was
an instance in point. A few years seemed to him soon over, compared
with those sweeping contemplations on time and infinity with which he
had been used to pose himself. In the _still-life_ of a man of letters
there was no obvious reason for a change. He might sit in an arm-chair
and pour out cups of tea to all eternity. Would it had been possible
for him to do so! The most rational cure after all for the inordinate
fear of death is to set a just value on life. If we merely wish to
continue on the scene to indulge our headstrong humours and tormenting
passions, we had better begone at once; and if we only cherish a
fondness for existence according to the good we derive from it, the pang
we feel at parting with it will not be very severe!



NOTES to ESSAY XVII


[1] All men think all men mortal but themselves. --YOUNG.

[2] I remember once, In particular, having this feeling in reading
Schiller's _Don Carlos_, where there is a description of death, in a
degree that almost stifled me.

[3] It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against the
enormous salaries of public singers, actors, and so on. This matter
seems reducible to a moral equation. They are paid out of money raised
by voluntary contributions in the strictest sense; and if they did not
bring certain sums into the treasury, the managers would not engage
them. These sums are exactly in proportion to the number of Individuals
to whom their performance gives an extraordinary degree of pleasure.
The talents of a singer, actor, etc., are therefore worth just as much
as they will fetch.

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