2), the same notion is alluded to in
the following dialogue:

"_Westmoreland._ Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray.

_Mowbray._ You wish me health in very happy season;
For I am, on the sudden, something ill.

_Archbishop._ Against ill chances men are ever merry;
But heaviness foreruns the good event.

_Westmoreland._ Therefore be merry, coz; since sudden sorrow
Serves to say thus, 'Some good thing comes to-morrow.'

_Archbishop._ Believe me, I am passing light in spirit.

_Mowbray._ So much the worse, if your own rule be true."

Tytler, in his "History of Scotland," thus speaks of the death of King
James I.: "On this fatal evening (Feb. 20, 1437), the revels of the
court were kept up to a late hour. The prince himself appears to have
been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may
believe the contemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared
that a king that year should be slain." Shelley strongly entertained
this superstition: "During all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in
brilliant spirits, to him a sure prognostic of coming evil."

Again, it is a very common opinion that death announces its approach by
certain mysterious noises, a notion, indeed, which may be traced up to
the time of the Romans, who believed that the genius of death announced
his approach by some supernatural warning. In "Troilus and Cressida"
(iv. 4), Troilus says:

"Hark! you are call'd: some say, the Genius so
Cries 'Come!' to him that instantly must die."

This superstition was frequently made use of by writers of bygone times,
and often served to embellish, with touching pathos, their poetic
sentiment. Thus Flatman, in some pretty lines, has embodied this
thought:

"My soul, just now about to take her flight,
Into the regions of eternal night,
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say,
Be not fearful, come away."

Pope speaks in the same strain:

"Hark! they whisper, angels say,
Sister spirit, come away."

Shakespeare, too, further alludes to this idea in "Macbeth" (ii. 3),
where, it may be remembered, Lennox graphically describes how, on the
awful night in which Duncan is so basely murdered:

"Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion, and confus'd events,
New hatch'd to th