anticles:--I am none of
her minions--I hold with the Persian.

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into
my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital
plague-sore.--I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such
hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge; and speak of
the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a
pillow. Some have wooed death--but out upon thee, I say, thou foul,
ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give
thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused
or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper; to be branded,
proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest
thee, thou thin, melancholy _Privation_, or more frightful and
confounding _Positive!_'

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogether
frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a man,
that he shall "lie down with kings and emperors in death," who in his
life-time never greatly coveted the society of such bed-fellows?--or,
forsooth, that "so shall the fairest face appear?"--why, to comfort
me, must Alice W----n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive disgust
at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon
your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be
lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must
shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In
the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee.
Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly
candidate for 1821. Another cup of wine--and while that turn-coat
bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed,
with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to
its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr.
Cotton.--

THE NEW YEAR

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us, the day himself's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look as seems to say,
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall,
Than direst mischiefs can