[126] Bodin’s “Commonweal,” translated by R. Knolles, p. 148. 1606.
[127] Burke’s Works, vol. i. 288.
[128] The modern word cheater is traced by some authors to this term, which soon became odious to the populace.
[129] Daines Barrington, in “Observations on the Statutes,” gives the marginal note of Buck as the words of the duke; they certainly served his purpose to amuse, better than the veracious ones; but we expect from a grave antiquary inviolable authenticity. The duke is made by Barrington a sort of wit, but the pithy quaintness is Buck’s.
[130] These “Private Instructions to the Commissioners for the General Loan” may be found in Rushworth, i. 418.
THE BOOK OF DEATH.
Montaigne was fond of reading minute accounts of the deaths of remarkable persons; and, in the simplicity of his heart, old Montaigne wished to be learned enough to form a collection of these deaths, to observe “their words, their actions, and what sort of countenance they put upon it.” He seems to have been a little over curious about deaths, in reference, no doubt, to his own, in which he was certainly deceived; for we are told that he did not die as he had promised himself,—expiring in the adoration of the mass; or, as his preceptor Buchanan would have called it, in “the act of rank idolatry.”
I have been told of a privately printed volume, under the singular title of “The Book of Death,” where an amateur has compiled the pious memorials of many of our eminent men in their last moments: and it may form a companion-piece to the little volume on “Les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant.” This work, I fear, must be monotonous; the deaths of the righteous must resemble each other; the learned and the eloquent can only receive in silence that hope which awaits “the covenant of the grave.” But this volume will not establish any decisive principle, since the just and the religious have not always encountered death with indifference, nor even in a fit composure of mind.