W. Sparrow Simpson.
Kennington.
LIFE AND DEATH.
I have thrown together a few parallel passages for your pages, which may prove acceptable.
1. "To die is better than to live."
"I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun."—Eccles. iv. 2, 3.
"Great travail is created for every man, and a heavy yoke upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb, till the day that they return to the mother of all things."—Ecclus. xl. 1.: cf. 2 Esdr. vii. 12, 13.
"Never to have been born, the wise man first
Would wish; and, next, as soon as born to die."—Anth. Græc.(Posidippus).
In the affecting story of Cleobis and Biton, as related by Herodotus, we read,—