PARALLEL PASSAGES.
I send you two parallels on the subject of Death and Sleep, Nature the art of God, &c.
"How wonderful is death—
Death and his brother sleep!"
Shelley, Queen Mab.
"Since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying mementoes."
Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia.
"Oh! what a wonder seems the fear of death,
Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep,
Babes, children, youths, and men,
Night following night, for threescore years and ten!"
Coleridge, Monody on Chatterton.
"A sleep without dreams, after a rough day
Of toil, is what we covet most; and yet
How clay slinks back from more quiescent clay!"
Byron (reference lost).
"In brief all things are artificial; for Nature is the art of God."
Sir T. Browne, Religio Medici, p. 32. (St. John's edit.)
"The course of Nature is the art of God."
"Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest."
Bacon, Essay 20., "Of Empire."
"Kings are like stars—they rise and set—they have
The worship of the world, but no repose."
Shelley, Hellas.
The following are not exactly parallel, but being "in pari materia," are sufficiently curious and alike to merit annotation:
"But the common form [of urns] with necks was a proper figure, making our last bed like our first: nor much unlike the urns of our nativity, while we lay in the nether part of the earth, and inward vault of our microcosm."
Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia, p. 221. (St. John's edit.)
"The babe is at peace within the womb,
The corpse is at rest within the tomb.
We begin in what we end."
Shelley, Fragments.
"The grave is as the womb of the earth."
Pearson on the Creed, p. 162.
HARRY LEROY TEMPLE.