," the personal character
predominates even in death, and its habitual associations exist to its
last moments. Many religious persons may have died without showing in
their last moments any of those exterior acts, or employing those
fervent expressions, which the collector of "The Book of Death" would
only deign to chronicle; their hope is not gathered in their last hour.

Yet many have delighted to taste of death long before they have died,
and have placed before their eyes all the furniture of mortality. The
horrors of a charnel-house is the scene of their pleasure. The "Midnight
Meditations" of Quarles preceded Young's "Night Thoughts" by a century,
and both these poets loved preternatural terror.

If I must die, I'll snatch at everything
That may but mind me of my latest breath;
DEATH'S-HEADS, GRAVES, KNELLS, BLACKS,[132] TOMBS, all these shall bring
Into my soul such _useful thoughts of death_,
That this sable king of fears
Shall not catch me unawares.--QUARLES.

But it may be doubtful whether the _thoughts of death are useful_,
whenever they put a man out of the possession of his faculties. Young
pursued the scheme of Quarles: he raised about him an artificial emotion
of death: he darkened his sepulchral study, placing a skull on his table
by lamp-light; as Dr. Donne had his portrait taken, first winding a
sheet over his head and closing his eyes; keeping this melancholy
picture by his bed-side as long as he lived, to remind him of his
mortality[133]. Young, even in his garden, had his conceits of death: at
the end of an avenue was viewed a seat of an admirable chiaro-oscuro,
which, when approached, presented only a painted surface, with an
inscription, alluding to the deception of the things of this world. To
be looking at "the mirror which flatters not;" to discover ourselves
only as a skeleton with the horrid life of corruption about us, has been
among those penitential inventions, which have often ended in shaking
the innocent by the pangs which are only natural to the damned.[134]
Without adverting to those numerous testimonies, the diaries of
fanatics, I shall offer a picture of an accomplished and innocent lady,
in a curious and unaffected transcript she has left of a mind of great
sensibility, where the preternatural terror of death might perhaps have
hastened the premature one she suffered.

From the "Reliquiae Gethinianae,"[135] I quote some of Lady Gethin's ideas
on "Death."