and divines; in fine, nothing but ghostliness and horror round about us, render it so formidable, that a man almost fancies himself dead and buried already.  Children are afraid even of those they love best, and are best acquainted with, when disguised in a vizor, and so are we; the vizor must be removed as well from things as persons; which being taken away, we shall find nothing underneath but the very same death that a mean servant, or a poor chambermaid, died a day or two ago, without any manner of apprehension or concern.” [1]

“Men feare death as children feare to goe in the darke; and as that natural feare in children is increased with tales, so in the other.  Certainly the contemplation of death as the wages of sinne, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the feare of it as a tribute unto nature, is weake.  Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanitie and of superstition.  You shal reade in some of the friars’ books of mortification, that a man should thinke unto himself what the paine is if he have but his finger-end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death passeth with lesse paine than the torture of a Lemme.  For the most vitall parts are not the quickest of sense.  Groanes and convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and blackes and obsequies, and the like, shew death terrible.  It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the minde of man so weake but it mates and masters the feare of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can winne the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death, love subjects it, honour aspireth to it, griefe fleeth to it, feare pre-occupieth it; nay, we read, after Otho the emperour had slaine himselfe, pitty, (which is the tenderest of affections,) provoked many to die, out of meer compassion to their soveraigne, and as the truest sort of followers. . . . .  It is as naturall to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.  He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who for the time scarce feels the hurt; and, therefore, a minde mixt and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the sadness of death.  But above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc Dimittis, when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations.  Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envie.” [2]

These sentences of the great essayists are brave and ineffectual as Leonidas and his Greeks.  Death cares very little for sarcasm or trope; hurl at him a javelin or a rose, it is all one.  We build around ourselves ramparts of stoical maxims, edifying to witness, but when the terror comes these yield as the knots of river flags to the shoulder of Behemoth.