PERPETUAL LAMP.
(Vol. iv., p. 501.)
The reported discovery at the dissolution of monasteries of a lamp that had burned in a tomb nearly 1200 years, to which your correspondent B. B. adverts, is, I presume, the discovery referred to by Camden (Gough's ed. vol. iii. p. 242.), where he says:
"I have been informed by persons of good credit, that upon the dissolution of monasteries in the last age, a lamp was found burning in a secret vault of a little chapel, where, according to tradition, Constantius was buried. For Lazius writes that the ancients had the art of reducing gold to a consistent fluid, by which they kept fire burning in vaults for a long time, and even for many ages."
The lamp of the alleged tomb of Constantius Chlorus was the subject of a communication by Mr. Albert Way to the York meeting of the Archæological Institute in 1846, in which he compared the ignited lamp said to have been found therein, with the story of a similar sepulchral lamp in a Roman family tomb, beneath the site of the ancient Castellum Priscum in the province of Cordova, as communicated to the Institute by Mr. Wetherell of Seville. It seems well worthy the attention of modern archæologists to ascertain what foundation in fact exists for the statements advanced by ancient writers as to the possibility of preparing a lamp that would burn for centuries in the tomb. Mr. Way remarks that the curious discovery communicated from Seville is unfortunately not authenticated by the observation at the time of any person skilled either in natural history or archæology. Some, however, may consider the tale of the sepulchre of Chlorus, though rejected by Drake and others, as not wholly unworthy of consideration; and Mr. Way suggests the possibility of a substance having been compounded which, on the admission of purer air to the tomb, became for a short time ignited. An abstract of his interesting communication is in the Athenæum for 8th August, 1846. The prince whose tomb is said to have been discovered near the church of St. Helen's on the Walls, in York, was the H. Valerius Constantius who came to York about a century after the death of Severus, and was father of Constantine the Great.
Let me now ask where the story may be found of
"The bright lamp that lay in Kildare's holy fane,
And burned through long ages of darkness and storm?"
W. S. G.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.