“Nor have I time
To give thee hallow’d to thy grave, but straight
Must cast thee, scarcely coffin’d, in the ooze;
Where, for a monument upon thy bones,
And aye-remaining lamps, the belching whale
And humming water must o’erwhelm thy corpse,
Lying with simple shells.”
Again, in “Troilus and Cressida” (iii. 2), we find a further reference in the words of Troilus:
“O, that I thought it could be in a woman,
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love.”
Pope, too, in his “Eloisa to Abelard,” has a similar allusion (l. 261, 262):
“Ah, hopeless lasting flames, like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th’ unfruitful urn!”
D’Israeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” thus explains this superstition: “It has happened frequently that inquisitive men, examining with a flambeau ancient sepulchres which have just been opened, the fat and gross vapors engendered by the corruption of dead bodies kindled as the flambeau approached them, to the great astonishment of the spectators, who frequently cried out ‘A miracle!’ This sudden inflammation, although very natural, has given room to believe that these flames proceeded from perpetual lamps, which some have thought were placed in the tombs of the ancients, and which, they said, were extinguished at the moment that these tombs opened, and were penetrated by the exterior air.” Mr. Dennis, however, in his “Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria” (1878, vol. ii. p. 404), says that the use of sepulchral lamps by the ancients is well known, and gave rise to the above superstition. Sometimes lamps were kept burning in sepulchres long after the interment, as in the case of the Ephesian widow described by Petronius (“Satyr,” c. 13), who replaced the lamp placed in her husband’s tomb.
A common expression formerly applied to the dead occurs in the “Winter’s Tale” (v. 1), where Dion asks:
“What were more holy,
Than to rejoice the former queen is well?”
So in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 5):
“Messenger. First, madam, he is well.