that bears
Death's name, he utters his meditation upon death's nature and
significance. Like other philosophers and all old wives, he also
attempts our consolation. Mankind demands a consolation, for without it,
perhaps, the species could hardly have survived their foreknowledge of
the end. But in treating the first two terrors to which he applies his
comfortable arguments, Maeterlinck's reasoning appears to me almost
irrelevant, almost obsolete. He attributes the terrified apprehension of
death, first, to the fear of pain in dying, and, secondly, to the fear
of anguish hereafter. In neither fear, I think, does the essential
horror of death now lie. All who have witnessed various forms of death,
whether on the field or in the sick chamber, will agree that the
process of dying is seldom more difficult or more painful than taking
off one's clothes. The blood ebbs, the senses sleep, "the casement
slowly grows a glimmering square," breath gradually fails,
unconsciousness faints into deeper unconsciousness, and that is all.
Even in terrible wounds and cases of extreme pain, medicine can now
alleviate the worst, nor, in any case, do I believe that the expectation
of physical agony, however severe, has much share in the instinct that
stands aghast at death. If fear of pain thus preoccupied the soul,
martyrs would not have sown the Church, nor would births continue.

In combating the dread of future torment, Maeterlinck may have better
cause for giving comfort. Long generations have been haunted by that
terror. "Ay, but to die," cries Claudio in _Measure for Measure_:

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!"

Nor were such terrors mediaeval only. Till quite recent years they cast
a gloom over the existence of honourable and laborious men. Remember
that scene in Oxford when Dr. Johnson, with a look of horror,
acknowledged that he was much oppressed by the fear of death, and when
the amiable Dr. Adams suggested that God was infinitely good, he
replied:

"'As I cannot be sure that I have fulfilled the conditions o