26 EVEN AFTER LIFE THERE EXISTS A CONCERN FOR OUR ASHES.

No dying man can truss his baggage so,
But something of him he must leave below:
Nor from his carcass that doth prostrate lie
Himself can clear, or far enough can fly.

Bertrand de Glesquin, dying before the castle of Rancon near unto Puy in Auvergne, the beseig'd were afterwards, upon surrender, enjoyn'd to lay down the keys of the place upon the corps of the dead general. Bartolomew d' Alviano, the Venetian general, hapning to die in the service of the republick in Brascia; and his corps being to be carried through the territory of Verona, an enemy's country, most of the army were of opinion to demand safe conduct from the Veronese, supposing, that upon such an occasion it would not be denied: but Theodoro Trivulsio highly oppos'd the motion, rather choosing to make his way by force of arms, and to run the hazard of a battle, saying it was by no means decent, and very unfit, that he who in his life was never afraid of his enemies should seem to apprehend them when he was dead. And in truth, in affairs of almost the same nature, by the Greek laws, he who made suit to an enemy for a body to give it burial, did by that act renounce his victory, and had no more right to erect a trophy; and he to whom such suit was made, was ever, whatever otherwise the success had been, reputed victor. By this means it was, that Nicius lost the advantage he had visibly obtain❜d over the Corinthians, and that Agesilaus, on the contrary, assur'd what he had before very doubtfully gain'd of the Bœotians. These proceedings might appear very odd, had it not been a general practice in all ages, not only to extend the concern of our persons beyond the limits of life, but moreover, to fansie that the favour of heaven does not only very often accompany us to the grave, but has also, even after life, a concern for our ashes of which there are so many ancient examples (waving those of our own observation of later date) that it is not very necessary I should longer insist upon it. Edward king of England, and the first of that name, having in the long wars betwixt him and Robert king of Scotland, had sufficient experience of how great importance his own immediate presence was to the success of his affairs, having ever been victorious in whatever he undertook in his own person; when he came to die, bound his son in a solemn oath, that so soon as he should be dead, he should boyl his body till the flesh parted from the bones, and reserve them to carry continually with him in his army, so often as he should be oblig'd to go against the Scots; as if destiny had inevitably grapled victory even to those miserable remains. Jean Zisca, the same who so often in vindication of Wickliffe's heresies, infested the Bohemian state, left order that they should flea him after his death, and of his skin to make a drum, to carry in the war against his enemies, fansying it would much contribute to the continuation of the successes he had always obtained in the war against them.

In like manner, certain of the Indians, in the day of battel with the Spaniards, carried with them the bones of one of their captains, in consideration of the victories they had formerly obtain'd under his conduct. And other people of the same new world do yet carry about with them in their wars the relicks of valiant men who have dyed in battel, to incite their courage, and advance their fortune of which examples, the first reserve nothing for the tomb, but the reputation they have acquir'd by their former achievements; but these proceed yet further, and attribute a certain power of operation. The last act of Captain Bayard is of a much better composition; who, finding himself wounded to death with a harquebuze shot, and being by his friends importun'd to retire out of the fight, made answer, that he would not begin at the last gasp to turn his back to the enemy; and accordingly still fought on, till feeling himself too faint, and no longer able to sit his horse, he commanded his steward to set him down against the root of a tree, but so that he might die with his face towards the enemy which he also did. I must yet add another example equally remarkable, for the present consideration, with any of the former. The emperor Maximilian, great grand-father to Philip the second, king of Spain, was a prince endowed throughout with great and extraordinary qualities and amongst the rest, with a singular beauty of person; but had withall, a humour very contrary to that of other princes, who for the dispatch of their most important affairs convert their close-stool into a chair of state, which was, that he would never permit any of his bed-chamber, in what familiar degree of favour soever, to see him in that posture; and would steal aside to make water as religiously as a virgin, and was as shy to discover either to his physician, or any other whatever, those parts that we are accustomed to conceal and I my self, who have so impudent a way of talking; am nevertheless naturally so modest this way, that unless at the importunity of necessity, or pleasure, I very rarely and unwillingly communicate to the sight of any, either those parts or actions that custom orders us to conceal, wherein I also suffer more constraint than I conceive is very well becoming a man, especially of my profession: but he nourish'd this modest humour to such a degree of superstition, as to give express orders in his last will, that they should put him on drawers so soon as he should be dead; to which methinks he would have done well to have added, that he should have been hoodwink'd too that put them on. The charge that Cyrus left with his children, that neither they nor any other should either see or touch his body after the soul was departed from it, I attribute to some superstitious devotion of his; both his historian, and himself, amongst other great qualities, having strew'd the whole course of their lives with a singular respect to religion. I was by no means pleas'd with a story was told me by a man of very great quality, of a relation

28 NECESSITY OF REGULATING THE EXPENCE OF FUNERALS.

of mine, and one who had given a very good account of himself both in peace and war; that coming to die in a very old age, of an excessive pain of the stone, he spent the last hours of his life in an extraordinary solicitude about ordering the ceremony of his funeral, pressing all the men of condition who came to see him, to engage their word to attend him to his grave, importuning this very prince, who came to visit him at his last gasp, with a most earnest supplication, that he would order his family to be assisting there, and withal representing before him several reasons and examples to prove that it was a respect due to a a man of his condition; and seem'd to die content, having obtain'd this promise, and appointed the method and order of his funeral parade. I have seldom heard of so long liv'd a vanity. Another though contrary solitude (of which also I do not want domestick example,) seems to be somewhat a-kin to this; that a man shall cudgel his brains at the last moments of his life, to contrive his obsequies to so particular and unusual a parsimony, as to conclude it in the sordid expence of one single servant with a candle and lanthorn, and yet I see this humour commended, and the appointment of Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, who forbad his heirs to bestow upon his hearse even the common ceremonies in use upon such occasions. Is it not temperance and frugality to avoid the expence and pleasure of which the use and knowledge is imperceptible to us? See here an easie and cheap reformation. If instruction were at all necessary in this case, I should be of opinion, that in this, as in all other actions of life, the ceremony and expence should be regulated by the ability of the person deceas'd; and the philosopher Lycon prudently order'd his executors to dispose of his body where they should think most fit, and as to his funerals to order them neither too superfluous, nor too mean. For my part, I should wholly referr the ordering of this ceremony to custom, and shall, when the time comes, accordingly leave it to their discretion, to whose lot it shall fall to do me that last office. "Totus bic locus est contemnendus in nobis, non negligendus in nostris."-Cicero Tusc. lib. 1. The place of our sepulture is wholly so be contemn'd by us, but not to be neglected by our friends; but it was a holy saying of a saint, "curatio funeris, conditio sepulturæ, pompa exequiarum, magis sunt vivorum solatia, quam subsidia mortuorum.”—August. de civ. Dei. The care of funerals, the place of sepulture, and the pomp of exequies, are rather consolations to the living than any benefit to the dead. Which made Socrates answer Criton, who at the hour of his death ask'd him, how he would be buried? How you will, said he. If I could concern myself further than the present about this affair, I should be most tempted, as the greatest satisfaction of this kind, to imitate those who in their lifetime entertain themselves with the ceremony of their own obsequies before hand, and are pleas'd with viewing their own monument, and beholding their own dead coun

tenance in marble. Happy are they who can gratify their senses by insensibility, and live by their death! I am ready to conceive an implacable hatred against all democracy and popular government, (though I cannot but think it the most natural and equitable of all others) so oft as I call to mind the inhuman injustice of the people of Athens, who, without remission, or once vouchsafing to hear what they had to say for themselves, put to death their brave captains, newly return'd triumphant from a naval victory they had obtained over the Lacedæmonians near the Arginusian Isles; the most bloody and obstinate engagement that ever the Greeks fought at sea; for no other reason, but that they rather followed their blow and pursued the advantages prescribed them by the rule of war, than that they would stay to gather up and bury their dead : an execution that is yet rendred more odious by the behaviour of Diomedon, who being one of the condemn'd, and a man of most eminent, both politick and military vertue, after having heard their sentence, advancing to speak, no audience till then having been allowed, instead of laying before them his own innocency, or the impiety of so cruel an arrest, only express'd a solicitude for his judges preservation, beseeching the Gods to convert this sentence to their own good, and praying that for neglecting to pay those vows which he and his companions had done (which he also acquainted them with) in acknowledgment of so glorious a success, they might not pull down the indignation of the gods upon them; and so without more words went courageously to his death. But fortune a few years after punishing them in their kind, made them see the error of their cruelty for Chabrias, captain-general of their naval forces, having got the better of Pollis, admiral of Sparta, about the Isle of Naxos, totally lost the fruits of his success, and content with his victory, of very great importance to their affairs, not to incur the danger of this example, and lose a few bodies of his dead friends that were floating in the sea, gave opportunity to a world of living enemies to sail away in safety, who afterwards made them pay dear for this unseasonable superstition.

Quæris quo jaceas post obitum loco?

Quo non nata jacent.-Seneca Tr. Chor. 2.
Dost ask where thou shalt lie when dead?

With those that never being had.

This other restores the sense of repose to a body without a soul? Neque sepulcrum, quo recipiat, habeat portum corporis: ubi, remissa humana vita, corpus requiescat a malis.-Cicero Tusc., lib. 1.

Nor with a tomb as with a heaven blest,

Where, after life, the corps in peace may rest.

As nature demonstrates to us, that several dead things retain yet an occult sympathy and relation to life; wine changes its flavour and complexion in cellars, according to the changes and seasons of the

30 THE SOUL LOVES THE FALSE WHERE THE TRUE ARE WANTING.

vine from whence it came; and the flesh of venison alters its condition and taste in the powd'ring-tub, according to the seasons of the living flesh of its kind, as it is observed by the curious.

CHAP. IV. THAT THE SOUL DISCHARGES HER PASSIONS UPON FALSE OBJECTS WHERE THE TRUE ARE WANTING.

A GENTLEMAN of my country, who was very often tormented with the gout, being importun'd by his physician's totally to reclaim his appetite from all manner of salt meats, was wont presently to reply, that he must needs have something to quarrel with in the extremity of his fits, and that he fansy'd, that railing at, and cursing one while the Bolognia sawsages, and another the dry'd tongues and the hamms, was some mitigation to his pain. And in good earnest, as the arm when it is advanced to strike, if it fail of meeting with that upon which it was design'd to discharge the blow, and spends it self in vain, does offend the striker himself; and as also, that to make a pleasant prospect the sight should not be lost and dilated in a vast extent of empty air, but have some bounds to limit and circumscribe it at a reasonable distance:

Ventus, ut amittit vires, nisi robore densæ
Occurrant sylvæ, spatio diffusus inani.

As winds do lose their strength, unless withstood
By some dark grove of strong opposing wood.

So it appears, that the soul being transported and discompos'd, turns its violence upon its self, if not supply'd with something to oppose it, and therefore always requires an enemy as an object on which to discharge its fury and resentment. Plutarch says very well of those who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys; that the amorous part which is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge, and create one frivolous and false; as we see that the soul in the exercise of its passions, inclines rather to deceive it self, by creating a false and fantastical subject, even contrary to its own relief, than not to have something to work upon. And after this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth even execute their revenge upon themselves, for the injury they have receiv'd from another.

Pannonis haud aliter post ictum sævior ursa
Cui jaculum parva lybs amentavit habena,
Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum

Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam.-Claudian.
So the fierce bear, made fiercer by the smart
Of the bold Lybian's mortal guided dart,