[532] The Memoirs by Ayre appeared in 1745, without the name of the publisher. In a pamphlet which was printed the same year, under the title of Remarks on Squire Ayre's Memoirs, it is stated that the work was put together, and published by Curll, who being notorious for the manufacture of vapid, lying biographies, suppressed a name which would have been fatal to the sale of his trash.
[533] Warton's Essay, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 329.
[ [534] Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i., pp. 144, 158-160, 162.
[535] "Pray in your next," writes Caryll to Pope, July 16, 1717, "tell me who was the unfortunate lady you address a copy of verses to. I think you once gave me her history, but it is now quite out of my head." Pope, in his reply does not allude to the subject, and Caryll says to him on Aug. 18, "You answer not my question who the unfortunate lady was that you inscribe a copy of verses to in your book. I long to be re-told her story, for I believe you already told me formerly; but I shall refer that, and a thousand other things more, to chat over at our next meeting, which I hope draws near." This letter was answered by Pope on Aug. 22, but there is still not a word on the unfortunate lady.
[536] Dr. Morell, in his notes to Seneca's Epistles, says, "I remember when I was a boy at Eton that an old almswoman, Mrs. Pain, having been cut down alive, gave this reason for hanging herself, that she was afraid of dying." To rush into death from the fear of death is not uncommon, and shows how far suicide is from being an evidence of superior courage. Acute philosophers have not always reasoned better than Pope. M. Lerminier, a French writer of repute, eulogises, in his Philosophie du Droit, the suicide of Cato for "a pure and majestic act." "In the Memoirs of the Emperor's Valet," he says in the next sentence, "we learn that Napoleon tried to destroy himself at Fontainebleau in 1814. He took poison; remedies were applied, and he recovered. He was not to die thus. Would you wish that Napoleon's end should have been that of an amorous sub-lieutenant, or a ruined banker?" But this was the veritable end of Cato. He died the death of "amorous sub-lieutenants and ruined bankers." The question of M. Lerminier revealed his consciousness that suicide was not heroism, or, in justification of the attempt of the Emperor, he would have asked, "Would you not have wished that Napoleon's end should have been the pure and majestic end of Cato?"
[537] Comus, ver. 205.
[538] I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. Pasini, 1847, p. 45.
[539] A belief akin to that which grew up in deserts prevailed in England. Hamlet doubts whether his father's ghost is a "spirit of health or goblin damned," and Horatio attempts to dissuade Hamlet from following it lest it should prove to be an impostor. A "goblin damned" may have put on the "fair and warlike form" of the King of Denmark, may "tempt" Hamlet to the "dreadful summit of the cliff," may "there assume some other horrible form which might draw him into madness," and impel him to commit suicide. The radical idea is the same in Shakespeare and Marco Polo. Fiends personate the relations or friends of an intended victim that they may decoy him to his death.
And beck'ning woos me, from the fatal tree
To pluck a garland for herself or me.