There is a motive for this reticence—a very base and significant motive. That motive is—policy!
To return to Will. He endeavored to live up to the precept enforced in the following lines:
“So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,