POETICAL AND GRAMMATICAL DEATHS.
It will appear by the following anecdotes, that some men may be said to have died poetically and even grammatically.
There must be some attraction existing in poetry which is not merely fictitious, for often have its genuine votaries felt all its powers on the most trying occasions. They have displayed the energy of their mind by composing or repeating verses, even with death on their lips.
The Emperor Adrian, dying, made that celebrated address to his soul, which is so happily translated by Pope. Lucan, when he had his veins opened by order of Nero, expired reciting a passage from his Pharsalia, in which he had described the wound of a dying soldier. Petronius did the same thing on the same occasion.
Patris, a poet of Caen, perceiving himself expiring, composed some verses which are justly admired. In this little poem he relates a dream, in which he appeared to be placed next to a beggar, when, having addressed him in the haughty strain he would probably have employed on this side of the grave, he receives the following reprimand:—
Ici tous sont égaux; je ne te dois plus rien;
Je suis sur mon fumier comme toi sur le tien.
Here all are equal! now thy lot is mine!
I on my dunghill, as thou art on thine.
Des Barreaux, it is said, wrote on his death-bed that well-known sonnet which is translated in the "Spectator."
Margaret of Austria, when she was nearly perishing in a storm at sea, composed her epitaph in verse. Had she perished, what would have become of the epitaph? And if she escaped, of what use was it? She should rather have said her prayers. The verses however have all the naïveté of the times. They are—