Yes this should be the grand care and concern of all; and many, in various ways,* do bear this thought in their remembrance all the days of their life. Johnson said that this rule of Dr. Cheyne should be imprinted on every mind: "To neglect nothing to secure my eternal peace, more than if I had been certified I should die within the day; nor to mind any thing that my secular obligations and duties demanded of me, less than if I had been insured to live fifty years more." And excellently hath Sir Thomas Browne said, "Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto others: and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in the lights of heaven. Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave: and reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou must be contented with under it.. Could the world unite in

for instance, "Mr. The singular oddity He had caused one

* Some take a singular mode of doing this; Dick Smith, master of the tap-house, Vauxhall. of this man's character may be worth relating. part of his tap-room to be painted, representing a country church and church-yard, with grave-stones, and the initial letters of such of his deceased friends as he deemed worthy to lie in the best ground, with a grave left open for himself to lie among them. Those whom he deemed mean, pitiful fellows, were placed in the poor ground, at a distance. This man being thus familiarized with death, took a formal leave of his friends about twelve o'clock on Thursday, though seemingly in good health; told them he should never see them more, went up stairs, and died in about half an hour after; and is now put into a coffin of a new construction, made of different sorts of wood, and without nails, with a lock and two keys, which he had by him since Christmas for that purpose."-Gentleman's Magazine for May 30th, 1782.

Yet we may be reminded that Archbishop Parker ordered his tombstone to be fitted up before his death, that he might look upon it while he lived. He had many inscriptions, reminding him of death, engraven on the walls of his house and the glass of his windows; and on the seal of his See was the manner of the last Judgment. Bishop Wilson (Sodor and Man) also ordered a favorite elm to be cut down and sawed into planks some years before his death, so that in the preparation made for his coffin he might have a memento mori before his eyes. Jeremy Taylor tells us always to let the striking of the clock bo accompanied with a meditation on our proportionate advancement to eternity.

† Christian Morals, by Sir Thomas Browne, of Norwich, author of Religio Medici. Payne. Dr. Johnson wrote the author's life, which is prefixed to this work.

P*

the practice of that despised train of virtues, which the divine ethics of our Saviour hath so inculcated upon us, the furious face of things must disappear: Eden would be yet to be found, and the angels might look down, not with pity, but joy upon us."

And to bring the subject still more home to every individual, let the following lines be quoted for the mindfulness of a time that must come to each reader in more or less degree:

"Oh! the sad day,

When men shall shake their heads and say,
Of miserable me,

Hark how he groans! look how he pants for breath
See how he struggles in the pangs of death!
When they shall say of these my eyes,

How hollow and how dim they be !
Look how his breast doth swell and rise

Against his potent enemy!

When some old friend shall step to my bedside,
Touch my chill face, and thence shall gently slide;
And when his next companions say,

How does he do? what hopes ?-shall turn away,
Answering only with a lift-up hand,

Who can his fate withstand?
Then shall a gasp or two do more,

Than all my rhetoric could before,

Persuade the world to trouble me no more."

And more than this- -for in that awful hour must every man, however orthodox in sacred knowledge, however pious in daily practice, and however dignified in person or estate, exclaim, with the almost matchless George Herbert,

"Throw away thy rod,

Throw away thy wrath,
O my God,

Take the gentle path."

And would not these very lines themselves form a good epitaph? What better prayer for the soul (if it could be permitted to pray) awaiting the tribunal of the judgment day? Doubtless, from many of our sacred poets appropriate lines might be selected for the purpose of epitaphs and it would be well, if the friends of the deceased would usually

consult the clergyman of the parish, or some other discreet friend, in this matter, rather than, by leaving the choice to an unlettered stone-cutter, deface the tomb-stones of a churchyard. We should best obtain modest and instructive epitaphs, if persons in their life-time would select some sentence or verse which they might feel would have a solemn effect either on the devout perambulator, or on the mere idle stroller, in our church-yards. And what could be a more grateful idea than that of contributing to the welfare of our fellow-creatures, however few, after we are gone!

"Nunc vivo, neque adhuc homines lucemque relinquo!
Sed linquam."

* See Tract on Tombstones, by Rev. E. Paget: also, Remarks on English Churches, by T. H. Markland, F.R.S. & S.A.

CHAPTER XXI.

CLOSE OF DR. JOHNSON'S LIFE.-THE FEAR OF DEATH.

We now come to a subject that all men should regard with feelings of solemnity and awe, and discourse of in a gentle tone, as Dr. Johnson ever did—namely, the fear of death. And herein we shall view so much of the true magnanimity of his mind-the tenderness of his conscience-the reality of his soul's religion-that if we have admired his talent and his benevolence in life, we shall reverence his resignation and fortitude, at the last, in death. That he had

a fear of death continually before him, is a fact; but it was, though not wholly, a becoming fear, the fear of a mind sensible of the doom that awaited the transgressor, sensible of the justice of the Almighty, sensible of his own utter unworthiness, fearful lest Christ's merits might not avail him; it was the fear of a steadfast believer who dare not acquit himself, dare not presumptuously anticipate the sentence of his Judge, of one, who, with a permission to cherish hope, must, to the very last, work out his own salvation with fear and trembling.

Let us first present his own recorded sayings and conversations on this matter, and they are worthy our profoundest consideration and reflection, at the same time that they must, in no small degree, call forth our pity and regret.

He was a man that never could bear bravado upon any occasion. General Paoli had said, that a great portion of the fashionable infidelity sprung out of a desire of showing courage. Men," observed the general, "who have no opportunity of showing it as to things in this life, take death and futurity as objects on which to display it." Johnson answered, "That is mighty foolish affectation. Fear is one of the passions of human nature, of which it. is impossible to divest it. You remember that the Emperor Charles V.,

"Then he

when he read upon the tombstone of a Spanish nobleman, Here lies one who never knew fear,' wittily said, never snuffed a candle with his fingers.'

He was much pleased with a remark of General Paoli, "That it is imwhich was mentioned to him by Boswell, possible not to be afraid of death; and that those who at the time of dying are not afraid, are not thinking of death, but of applause, or something else, which keeps death out of their sight so that all men are equally afraid of death when they see it only some have a power of turning away their sight from it better than others."

This observation must particularly apply to soldiers in the tumult and glory of battle. Johnson looked upon preparation for death as the grand thing, and would have had all soldiers especially prepared. "If a man," he said, "can be supposed to make no provision for death in war, what can be the state that would have awakened him to the care of futurity? When would that man have prepared himself to die, who went to seek death without preparation ?"

There is an article in the Gentleman's Magazine (1747) which bears strong internal evidence of being the production of Johnson's pen, on the behavior of Lord Lovat at his execution, and which censures the display of pleasantry and lightness in the hour of death. Lord Lovat was a profligate, hypocritical, and cowardly man: had he been better, and braver, he would have met the "last enemy" in a different spirit, and with other bearing.

"When I first entered Ranelagh," says Johnson, speaking of the Vauxhall-gardens of his day, "it gave an expansion and gay sensation to my mind, such as I never experienced any where else. But as Xerxes wept when he viewed his immense army, and considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterward, so it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go home and think: but that the thoughts of each individual there would be distressing when alone." Alas! how many would die without thinking-and the more thought, the more fear of death.