N° 73. THURSDAY, MAY 23, 1754.

It was the saying of Epaminondas, upon being asked which of all his friends he esteemed most, that they must all die before such a question could be answered.' But if Epaminondas had lived in this country, and in these times, he would have known that the greatest heroes at their deaths, are frequently those who have been the greatest villains in their lives. And yet most men are apt to think like Epaminondas, and to pass their judgments upon a man's life from what he has said and acted in the last scene of it; that season being thought the season of sincerity, because dissimulation is to no purpose, and because the conscience finds ease in disclosing crimes which can no longer profit us, and which threaten us with destruction in the state to which we are hastening, unless truly confessed and repented of in this. But of those who die in their beds, as well as malefactors, I have known and heard of many debauched and dissolute men who have met death with the utmost patience and resignation; while the pious and moral Christian, whose life has been spent in the constant exercise of religion and virtue, has beheld its approaches with confusion; and from a consciousness of not having done exactly as he ought to have done upon every occasion, has died fearful and desponding.

A

From hence it will appear that those who judge of men's lives by their behaviour at their deaths, will be sometimes mistaken. The contempt of death may be owing in many to insensibility; in some to a brutal courage; in others to the dislike of life; in a few to philosophy; as well as in many to a wellgrounded hope of a happy hereafter. The jest of Sir Thomas More upon the scaffold, who, after laying his head upon the block, bade the executioner stay till he had put aside his beard, because that had committed no treason, was no more a proof of the goodness of his life (if there had been no other voucher) than that of the murderer at the gallows, who entreated the hangman not to touch his neck with his fingers, because he was ticklish. The thief for the reputation of dying hard, as it is called, and the philosopher, to support the doctrine he has taught, that death is no evil, will rush into eternity with an affected bravery, and offend Heaven rather than confess their apprehensions of dissolution.

Men are sometimes hypocrites in their last moments through pride, as they have been all their lives through interest; nor will it appear strange that they are so: for as every man is desirous (if it can be done without much trouble) of leaving a good name behind him, he is unwilling to confess at his death that he has been a rogue all his life. Upon principles like these have the worst of criminals gone to the gallows with as much triumph and exultation, as the martyrs of old did to the stake for the cause of Heaven and religion.

For my own part (and I hope it will not be imputed to me as presumption) I should think of death with much greater terror than I do, if I considered it as the final end of being. The thought of annihilation to one whose life had not been marked with any of the capital vices, and whose frailties, he

humbly hopes, are no more than those which are incident to humanity; who has been unprofitable to his Maker because he was human, and to mankind because unfriended by fortune; and whose connexions in this life have been such as to make him desirous of their eternal duration; I say, to one who thus thinks, and who hopes he has thus lived, the thought of annihilation would make death most terrible. And yet in the circle of my own acquaintance, I have found a man of a decent life and conversation, who wished well to every body, and who loved and enjoyed his friends, but who, through a tedious and painful illness, had conceived sleep to be so great a blessing as to make him wish for an eternity of it; and having taken pains to believe that death was such a sleep he talked of it with pleasure, and within a very few hours of his exit, as a confirmation that he died in the opinion he had professsed, he wrote the following epitaph upon himself, and directed it to a friend with his own hand.

Beneath this stone, to worms a prey,
(Himself as poor and vile as they)
Eugenio lies in hopes of rest,
Who deem'd all farther hope a jest:
Who ne'er on Fancy's wings could rise
To heav'n-built domes above the skies;
Content from whence he sprung to lie,
Nor wish'd to live, nor fear'd to die.

I shall only observe upon the writer of this epitaph, that as I believe him to have been honest and sincere, it is but charity to hope that he is now rejoicing in his mistake.

There is nothing more true in the general, than that those people are the most averse to death, who have had the least enjoyment of life; as on the contrary, those who have enjoyed life most, have been the least anxious about dying. To many of my readers such an assertion as this may appear strange

and unaccountable: but a very little inquiry will, I believe, convince them of the fact.

Men who, through necessitous circumstances, gloomy dispositions, or sickly habits of body, have lived in perpetual discontent, are apt to flatter themselves that life is in arrears to them: that as their days have hitherto passed without enjoyment, every thing is to be made up to them before they come to die. They look upon riches, pleasure, and health, to be blessings that never tire, and consider the possessors of them as living in a state of uninterrupted happiness, which they long to taste, and cannot bear the thoughts of dying before they have enjoyed. Thus are the miserable in love with life, and afraid of death. Hope still flatters them with happy days; and death, that would inevitably cut off that hope, is beheld by them as the cruellest of all enemies.

Let us cast an eye now to those in happier situations; to those who are contented with their lot, and who (if there are any such) have lived all their days in health, cheerfulness, and affluence. What can to→ morrow bring to such as these that they have not known before, unless it be misfortune? It is from this consideration that such persons are more resigned to dying. We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for: the reason of it is, that what we expect is always greater than what we enjoy. And hence it is that the enjoyment of life makes us less desirous of its continuance, than if it had hitherto given us nothing, and fed us only with expectation.

I have waved in this place all consideration of a future existence, and have considered the happy and unhappy only in regard to this life. If we take religion and a future state into the question, the happy

being resigned to death than the unhappy. Pain, sickness, and misfortune, as they do not wean us from a love of life, so neither do they beget in us a /proper frame and temper to prepare for death. It is the enjoyment of life that calls forth our gratitude to Him who gave it; that opens the heart to acts of kindness and benevolence; and by giving us a taste here of the happiness of Heaven, excites in us a desire of securing it through eternity; and by thus securing it, makes us eager to embrace it; enabling us to resign with joy the happiness which is uncertain and temporal, for that which is without change and without end.

I shall conclude this essay with observing, that those who make religion to consist in the contempt of this world and its enjoyments, are under a very fatal and dangerous mistake. As life is the gift of Heaven, it is religion to enjoy it. He therefore who can be happy in himself, and who contributes all that is in his power towards the happiness of others (and none but the virtuous can so be and so do) answers most effectually the ends of his creation, is an honour to his nature, and a pattern to mankind.

N° 74. THURSDAY, MAY 30, 1754.

Dicetur meritâ Nox quoque nænia.-HOR.

I HAVE lately got a set of new correspondents; and have had the favour of letters from various persons, with whom I have not the honour to be in the least acquainted. They seem, indeed, to be of another order of beings, as they seldom make their appearance till the ordinary race of mortals are asleep in their beds.