Thus, methinks, I hear them speak, See, how the Dean begins to break! Poor gentleman! he droops apace! You plainly find it in his face. That old vertigo in his head Will never leave him, till he’s dead. Besides, his memory decays: He recollects not what he says: He can not call his friends to mind; Forgets the place where last he dined; Plies you with stories o’er and o’er; He told them fifty times before. How does he fancy we can sit To hear his out-of-fashion wit? But he takes up with younger folks, Who for his wine will bear his jokes. Faith, he must make his stories shorter, Or change his comrades once a quarter. Swift—“Death of Dr. Swift.”
Thus Swift predicted his own end as early as 1731. History mournfully testifies that his candle burnt out as he anticipated. “Fits of lunacy were succeeded by the dementia of old age. For three years he uttered only a few words and broken interjections. He would often attempt to speak, but could not recollect words to express his meaning, upon which he would sigh heavily. Babylon in ruins (to use a simile of Addison’s), was not a more melancholy spectacle than this wreck of a mighty intellect! In speechless silence his spirit passed away October 19, 1745.” (Chamber’s Eng. Lit.)
Manhood declines—age palsies every limb: He quits the scene—or else the scene quits him; Scrapes wealth, o’er each departing penny grieves, And avarice seizes all ambition leaves; Counts cent. per cent., and smiles or vainly frets, O’er hoards diminish’d by young Hopeful’s debts; Weighs well and wisely what to sell or buy, Complete in all life’s lessons—but to die; Peevish and spiteful, doting, hard to please, Commending every time, save times like these; Crazed, querulous, forsaken, half forgot, Expires unwept—is buried—let him rot! Byron—Hints from Horace.
The signs of a probable fatal termination are most beautifully portrayed by Shakespeare. The death of Falstaff can not fail to be regarded by the profession as an excellent description of approaching dissolution.
’A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been any christom child; ’a parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning of the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his finger’s ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and ’a babbled of green fields. * * * ’A bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were ’as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upwards, and upwards, and all was as cold as any stone.
Henry V., Act II., Sc. III.
Clarence. Lord! Methought, what pain it was to drown! What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears! What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Brakenbury. Had you such leisure in the time of death, To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?