g before him several
reasons and examples to prove that it was a respect due to a man of his
condition; and seemed to die content, having obtained this promise, and
appointed the method and order of his funeral parade. I have seldom
heard of so persistent a vanity.

Another, though contrary curiosity (of which singularity, also, I do not
want domestic example), seems to be somewhat akin to this, that a man
shall cudgel his brains at the last moments of his life to contrive his
obsequies to so particular and unusual a parsimony as of one servant with
a lantern, I see this humour commended, and the appointment of Marcus.
Emilius Lepidus, who forbade his heirs to bestow upon his hearse even the
common ceremonies in use upon such occasions. Is it yet temperance and
frugality to avoid expense and pleasure of which the use and knowledge
are imperceptible to us? See, here, an easy and cheap reformation. If
instruction were at all necessary in this case, I should be of opinion
that in this, as in all other actions of life, each person should
regulate the matter according to his fortune; and the philosopher Lycon
prudently ordered his friends to dispose of his body where they should
think most fit, and as to his funeral, to order it neither too
superfluous nor too mean. For my part, I should wholly refer the
ordering of this ceremony to custom, and shall, when the time comes,
accordingly leave it to their discretion to whose lot it shall fall to do
me that last office. "Totus hic locus est contemnendus in nobis, non
negligendus in nostris;"--["The place of our sepulture is to be contemned
by us, but not to be neglected by our friends."--Cicero, Tusc. i. 45.]--
and it was a holy saying of a saint, "Curatio funeris, conditio
sepultura: pompa exequiarum, magis sunt vivorum solatia, quam subsidia
mortuorum."--["The care of death, the place of sepulture, the pomps of
obsequies, are rather consolations to the living than succours to the
dead." August. De Civit. Dei, i. 12.]--Which made Socrates answer
Crito, who, at death, asked him how he would be buried: "How you will,"
said he. "If I were to concern myself beyond the present about this
affair, I should be most tempted, as the greatest satisfaction of this
kind, to imitate those who in their lifetime entertain themselves with
the ceremony and honours of their own obsequies beforehand, and are
pleased with beholding their own dead countenance in marble. Happy are
they who can