different light from what he appears in at present. "In short, as the life of any man cannot be called happy or unhappy, so neither can it be pronounced vicious or virtuous, before the conclusion of it. It was upon this consideration that Epaminondas, being asked whether Chabrias, Iphicrates, or he himself deserved most to be esteemed,' You must first see us die, (said he,) before that question can be answered.'" Fortune's wheel, the whirligig of time, brings round its revenges; and Croesus at the stake might, when thrice he invoked Solon by name, have apostrophized him in the style of Shakspeare's Edmund : "... Thou hast spoken right, 't is true; The wheel is come full circle; I am here." Historians take note of our Henry the First,1 that he seemed to possess as great a share of happiness as human life admits of; "but the felicity of man," observes one of them, “depends upon a conjunction of many circumstances, which are all subject to various accidents, and every single accident is able to dissolve the whole contexture; which truth was never verified more than in this prince," who, by one domestic misfortune not to be prevented or foreseen, found all the pleasure and content he proposed to himself wholly disappointed, by one fatal wreck. "So now prosperity begins to mellow And drop into the rotten mouth of death," as Margaret of Anjou has it. Or to cite another royal speaker, in Marlowe's historical tragedy,— "Whilom I was powerful and full of pomp: But what is he whom rule and empery Have not in life or death made miserable?" Corneille's elder Horace is reminded by his prince that 1 Of Edward the Third, again, Tytler observes, that nothing could afford a more striking lesson on the vanity of human grandeur than the circumstances in which he died: stript of the fairest provinces which had been the fruit of his victories, and pillaged and deserted in his last moments by his faithless mistress and ungrateful domestics, 66 Beaucoup par un long âge ont appris comme vous Que le malheur succède au bonheur le plus doux." The moral is from Herodotus which a modern paraphrast draws, with Croesus for his text, when he tells of Fortune, that, as she passes, oft upon his head that, underneath heaven's hollowness, doth stand highest of men,1 her loose uncertain hand lets fall the iron wedge and leaden weight. "Croesus, the lord of all the Lydian state, O' the seldom smiling world a little while." The commonly accepted import of the Scottish proverb, "Ruse [praise] the fair day at e'en," is a grateful recognition of the past favours we have enjoyed when we come to the close of the day,2 and of life; but a learned commentator has suggested another reading of the adage, in accordance with the 1 Hence the strain of Schiller's stanza in The Ring of Polycrates : "Wouldst thou escape the coming ill,' Thy sweets themselves to sour. The gods their bounty shower." 2 Let a man's setting out be as bright and glorious as the rising sun, many a black cloud, writes South, may gather over him, and many a furious storm fall upon him, which shall bring him beaten and battered with a Non putavi (the fool's motto) in his mouth, to a sad and doleful journey's end; "and then he will find, when he has once felt it, that it is no such strange thing, for a fair morning and a foul evening to fall on the same day." The plaint of those who have outlived their well-being, in one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is, "Now be we caytifs, as it is wel seene; Thanked be Fortune, and hire false wheel, saying of Solon (Aristotle, Ethic. Nicom. i. 10): Karà Eóλova χρέων τέλος ὁρᾷν — Do not praise the fairness of the day till evening; do not call the life happy till you have seen the close. Wallenstein's confidence in his assured prosperity is rebuked by Gordon with a direct appeal to the saw, sharp set for the purpose "And yet remember I the good old proverb, 'Let the night come before thou praise the day.'' But let us end as we began, with the dying of David in a good old age, and the succession of Solomon to his throne. A sonnet by Hartley Coleridge shall be our summing up: "Then Solomon sat on the throne as king; Abel, 173. A. Abercrombie, Dr., 8. Abraham, 217 seq. INDEX. Absent, missing the, 199 seq. Andronicus, Emperor, 245, 252. Aram, Eugene, 280. Arblay, Mme. d', quoted, 286. Artist, an inspired, 133-44. B. Babington, Dr., 9. Bacon, Lord, quoted, 51, 291. Baillie, Joanna, quoted, 176. Barham, R. H., quoted, 90, 280. Baruch's burnt book, 180 seq. Beddoes, W. L., quoted, 282. Bell, Robert, quoted, 9, 103. Bernard, C. de, quoted, 175. Bevis, H. J., quoted, 2. Bible burning, 181 seq. Blair, R., quoted, 151. Blank annals of well-being, 108-14. Bohun, E., quoted, 235. Boileau, quoted, 52, 124, 156. Boyd, Dr., quoted, 290, 300. Brayed in a mortar, 115-21. Bronte, Charlotte, quoted, 145, Brontè, Emily, 14; quoted, 32. Brooks, C. S., quoted, 8. Browne, Sir T., quoted, 50, 307. Bruyère, La, quoted, 13, 56, 60, Burke, 231; quoted, 40, 140, 270. But, 304. Butler, S., quoted, 128, 268, 328. 146, 150, 174, 211, 230, 318. Chambers, R., quoted, 106, 277. Channing, Dr., 236–7 ; quoted, 141, 237. Chateaubriand, quoted, 29, 169, 196. Chaucer, quoted, 151, 245, 347. Chesterfield, Lord, quoted, 43, 59, 86, 272. Churchill, quoted, 63, 120. Clement of Rome, 222-3. 18, 77, 105, 215, 325, 326, 348. Coleridge, S. T., quoted, 155, 200, 264, 325. Collins, W. W., quoted, 130, 132, 272, 277. Columbus, 140, 235. Comforters, Job's, 224 seq. Cooper, J. F., quoted, 53, 165, 179, 249, 273, 302. Copleston, Bp., 332. Corneille, quoted, 38, 65, 167, Cowper, quoted, 11, 22, 49, 55, IOI, 112, 120, 159, 174, 194. Coxe, Archdeacon, quoted, 113, 177. Crabbe, quoted, 14, 206. Cranes of Ibycus, 279. Crime, undiscovered, 276 seq. Critics and sympathy, 25 seq. Croesus and Solon, 343 seq. Cromwell, Oliver, 25. D. Dallas, E. S., quoted, 138, 308, Dawson, Florence, quoted, 212. Despair, blasphemy of, 164. Diotrephes, domineering, 57-63. Disraeli, Isaac, quoted, 102. Drinking on compulsion, 85 seq. Dundonald, Lord, 205. E. Eden, Miss, quoted, 333. Eli, sons of, 71 seq. Eliot, George, quoted, 15, 80, 98, 119, 149, 170, 262, 268, 301. Elizabeth, Queen, 235. Emerson, R. W., quoted, 228. Epictetus, quoted, 228. Euripides, quoted, 241. Experience, taught by, 117 seq. Expressive silence, 314-26. |