: because their friend is happy, or themselves want his company. It is certainly a sad thing in nature to see a friend trembling with the palsy or scorched with fevers, or dried up like a potsherd' with immoderate heats, and rolling upon his uneasy bed without sleep, which cannot be invited with music, or pleasant murmurs, or a decent stillness; nothing but the servants of cold death, poppy and weariness, can tempt the eyes to let their curtains down; and then they sleep only to taste of death, and make an essay of the shades below and yet we weep not here; the period and opportunity for tears we choose when our friend is fallen asleep, when he hath laid his neck upon the lap of his mother; and let his head down, to be raised up to heaven. This grief is ill placed and undecent. But many times it is worse: and it hath been observed that those greater and stormy passions do so spend the whole stock of grief, that they presently admit a comfort and contrary affection, while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes on to its period with expectation and the distances of a just time. The Ephesian Woman that the Soldier told of in Petronius was the talk of all the town, and the rarest example of a dear affection to her husband; she descended with the corpse into the vault, and there being attended with her maiden resolved to weep to death, or die with famine or a distempered sorrow; from which resolution nor his nor her friends, nor the reverence of the principal citizens, who used the entreaties of their charity and their power, could persuade her. But a soldier, that watched seven dead bodies hanging upon trees just over against this monument, crept in, and y Ps. xxii. 15. awhile stared upon the silent and comely disorders of the sorrow; and having let the wonder awhile breathe out at each other's eyes, at last he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine, with purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed himself with that sad prettiness. His pity and first draught of wine made him bold and curious to try if the maid would drink; who, having many hours since felt her resolution faint as her wearied body, took his kindness, and the light returned into her eyes, and danced like boys in a festival: and fearing lest the pertinaciousness of her mistress's sorrows should cause her evil to revert, or her shame to approach, assayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to persuade her to drink and live. The violent passion had laid all her spirits in wildness and dissolution, and the maid found them willing to be gathered into order at the arrest of any new object, being weary of the first, of which, like leeches, they had sucked their fill till they fell down and burst. The weeping woman took her cordial, and was not angry with her maid, and heard the soldier talk: and he was so pleased with the change, that he who first loved the silence of the sorrow was more in love with the music of her returning voice, especially which himself had strung and put in tune; and the man began to talk amorously, and the woman's weak head and heart was soon possessed with a little wine, and grew gay, and talked, and fell in love; and that very night, in the morning of her passion, in the grave of her husband, in the pomps of mourning, and in her funeral garments, married her new and stranger guest. For so the wild foragers of Libya, being spent with heat, and dissolved by the too fond kisses of the sun, do melt with their common fires, and die with faintness, and descend with motions slow and unable to the little brooks that descend from Heaven in the wilderness; and when they drink they return into the vigour of a new life, and contract strange marriages; and the lioness is courted by a panther, and she listens to his love, and conceives a monster that all men call unnatural, and the daughter of an equivocal passion and of a sudden refreshment. And so also was it in the Cave at Ephesus; for by this time the soldier began to think it was fit he should return to his watch, and observe the dead bodies he had in charge: but when he ascended from his mourning bridal-chamber, he found that one of the bodies was stolen by the friends of the dead, and that he was fallen into an evil condition, because by the laws of Ephesus his body was to be fixed in the place of it. The poor man returns to his woman, cries out bitterly, and in her presence resolves to die to prevent his death, and in secret to prevent his shame; but now the woman's love was raging like her former sadness, and grew witty, and she comforted her soldier, and persuaded him to live, lest by losing him who had. brought her from death and a more grievous sorrow, she should return to her old solemnities of dying, and lose her honour for a dream, or the reputation of her constancy without the change and satisfaction of an enjoyed love. The man would fain have lived if it had been possible, and she found out this way for him: That he should take the body or her first husband, whose funeral she had so strangely mourned, and put it upon the gallows in the place of the stolen thief; he did so, and escaped the present danger, to possess a love which might change as violently as her grief had done. But so have I seen a crowd of disordered people rush violently and in heaps till their utmost border was restrained by a wall, or had spent the fury of the first fluctuation and watery progress, and by and by it returned to the contrary with the same earnestness, only because it was violent and ungoverned. A raging passion is this crowd, which, when it is not under discipline and the conduct of Reason, and the proportions of temperate humanity, runs passionately the way it happens, and by and by as greedily to another side, being swayed by its own weight, and driven any whither by chance, in all its pursuits having no rule, but to do all it can, and spend itself in haste, and expire with some shame and much undecency. When thou hast wept awhile, compose the body to burial which that it be done gravely, decently, and charitably, we have the example of all nations to engage us, and of all ages of the world to warrant: so that it is against common honesty, and public fame and reputation, not to do this office. It is good that the body be kept veiled and secret, and not exposed to curious eyes, or the dishonours wrought by the changes of death discerned and stared upon by impertinent persons. When Cyrus was dying, he called his sons and friends to take their leave, to touch his hand, to see him the last time, and gave in charge, that when he had put his veil over his face no man should uncover it; and Epiphanius his body was rescued from inquisitive eyes by a miracle. Let it be interred after the manner of the country and the laws of the place, and the dignity of the person. For so Jacob was buried with great solemnity, and Joseph's bones were carried into Canaan' after they had been embalmed and kept four hundred years a;. and devout men carried S. Stephen to his burial, making great lamentation over him. And Elian tells, that those who were the more excellent persons were buried in purple; and men of an ordinary courage and fortune had their graves only trimmed with branches of olive and mourning flowers. But when Mark Anthony gave the body of Brutus to his freed-man to be buried honestly, he gave also his own mantle to be thrown into his funeral pile: and the magnificence of the old funeral we may see largely described by Virgil in the obsequies of Misenus, and by Homer in the funeral of Patroclus. It was noted for piety in the men of Jabesh-Gilead, that they shewed kindness to their Lord Saul and buried him ; and they did it honourably. And our blessed Saviour, Who was temperate in His expense and grave in all the parts of His life and death, as age and sobriety itself, yet was pleased to admit the cost of Mary's ointment upon His head and feet, because she did it against His buriale: and though she little thought it had been so nigh, yet because He accepted it for that end, He knew He had made her apology sufficient; by which He remarked it to be a great act of piety, and honourable, to inter our friends and relatives according to the proportions of their condition, and so to give a testimony of our hope of their Resurrection. So far is piety; beyond it may be the ostentation and bragging of a grief, or a z Gen. 1. 1-13. b Acts viii. 2. a Gen. 1. 25, 26; Exod. xiii. 19. e Elian, lib. vi. Var. Histor. cap. 6. e Matt. xxvi. 12; John xii. 7. 41 Sam. xxxi. 11-13; 2 Sam. ii. 4-6. |