Archbishop. Believe me, I am passing light in spirit.
Mowbray. So much the worse, if your own rule be true.”
Tytler, in his “History of Scotland,” thus speaks of the death of King James I.: “On this fatal evening (Feb. 20, 1437), the revels of the court were kept up to a late hour. The prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the contemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that a king that year should be slain.” Shelley strongly entertained this superstition: “During all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in brilliant spirits, to him a sure prognostic of coming evil.”
Again, it is a very common opinion that death announces its approach by certain mysterious noises, a notion, indeed, which may be traced up to the time of the Romans, who believed that the genius of death announced his approach by some supernatural warning. In “Troilus and Cressida” (iv. 4), Troilus says:
“Hark! you are call’d: some say, the Genius so
Cries ‘Come!’ to him that instantly must die.”
This superstition was frequently made use of by writers of bygone times, and often served to embellish, with touching pathos, their poetic sentiment. Thus Flatman, in some pretty lines, has embodied this thought:
“My soul, just now about to take her flight,
Into the regions of eternal night,
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say,
Be not fearful, come away.”
Pope speaks in the same strain:
“Hark! they whisper, angels say,
Sister spirit, come away.”
Shakespeare, too, further alludes to this idea in “Macbeth” (ii. 3), where, it may be remembered, Lennox graphically describes how, on the awful night in which Duncan is so basely murdered: