“Where broken vows and death-bed alms are found,
And lovers’ hearts with ends of ribbon bound,
The courtier’s promises, the sick man’s prayers.”
Why do these last make so slight an impression on by-standers? Mr. Whitehead says because it is not a living but a dying man that speaks; and a dying man who wants to live. “It is fear that cries out in agony, not penitence that prays.” Fielding, in his masterpiece, moralises on the truism that be men ever so much alarmed and frightened when apprehending themselves in danger of dying, yet no sooner are they cleared from this apprehension, than even the fears of it are erased from their minds. It is much later in the same story, that the “hero’s” avowed resolution, at a crisis in his fortunes, to sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto him, is ridiculed by a cynical acquaintance, as the effect merely of low spirits, and confinement—with the quotation of “some witticisms about the devil when he was sick.” The epigram in question is a favourite allusion with novelists and moralists of all sorts and sizes. There is a border freebooter of Scott’s, who, having recovered from a severe illness, thanks to the medical skill of the Black Dwarf, greets his benefactor, on horseback, all in bandit array, as soon as convalescent. “So,” said the dwarf, “rapine and murder once more on horseback!” “On horseback?” said the bandit; “ay, ay, Elshie, your leech-craft has set me on the bonnie bay again.” “And all those promises of amendment which you made during your illness forgotten?” continued Elshender. “All clear away, with the water-saps and panada,” returned the unabashed convalescent. “Ye ken, Elshie, for they say ye are weel acquent wi’ the gentleman,
“‘When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he.’”
For it is not every vow taken in a panic, to become a monk if spared, that is kept as Luther’s was—“devil” though the anti-Lutherans of his day might account and call him. Young Martin saw one of his friends struck dead by his side, by a stroke of lightning, in 1505; and the sight moved him to utter on the instant a vow to St. Anne that he would become a monk if he were himself spared. “The danger passed over, but he did not seek to elude an engagement wrung from him in terror. He solicited no dispensation from his vow.” Brother Martin ipso facto approved himself no member of the fraternity of what Le Sage calls vous autres, messieurs les diables, in a passage that indirectly bears upon our theme, for it refers to the proverbial worthlessness of promises coming from that quarter: “Voilà de belles promesses, répliqua l’Ecolier; mais vous autres, messieurs les diables, on vous accuse de n’être pas fort réligieux à tenir ce que vous promettez.” The epigram runs, if not rhymes, as well in Latin as in English:
“Ægrotat dæmon, monachus tunc esse volebat;
Dæmon convaluit, dæmon ut ante fuit.”
Referring to proverbs of this kind it is that Archbishop Trench says, that sometimes an adage, without changing its shape altogether, will yet on the lips of different nations be slightly modified—the modifications, slight as they often are, being not the less eminently characteristic. “Thus in English we say, The river past, and God forgotten, to express with how mournful a frequency He whose assistance was invoked, it may have been earnestly, in the moment of peril, is remembered no more, so soon as by His help the danger has been surmounted. The Spaniards have the proverb too; but it is with them: The river past, the saint forgotten: the saints being in Spain more prominent objects of invocation than God. And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder depth of ingratitude: The peril passed, the saint mocked.” Men indulge in doubts of a Supreme Being, says La Bruyère, when they are lusty and strong; but with sickness comes belief, such as it is. “L’on doute de Dieu dans une pleine santé.... Quand on devient malade, et que l’hydropisie est formée ... l’on croit en Dieu.” Believes? As to that, the devils believe, and tremble. But how when the dropsy is relieved and the trembling fit over? Dr. Johnson once adverted in conversation with Seward and Boswell to the evil life he led until sickness wrought a reformation, which, in his case, had been lasting. Mr. Seward thereupon observed: “One should think that sickness, and the view of death, would make more men religious.” But Johnson replied to this: “Sir, they do not know how to go about it; they have not the first notion. A man who has never had religion before, no more grows religious when he is sick than a man who has never learnt figures can count when he has need of calculation.”[14] It is to be observed that the doctor claimed for himself a previous regard for religion in quite early life; for some years it had, to use his own phrase, “dropped out of his mind,” but “sickness brought it back,” and he hoped he had never lost it since.