east;
My father had a reason for't."

Indeed, the famous antiquary Hearne had such precise views in this
matter that he left orders for his grave to be made straight by a
compass, due east and west. This custom was practised by the ancient
Greeks, and thus, as Mr. Tylor points out,[749] it is not to late and
isolated fancy, but to the carrying on of ancient and widespread solar
ideas, that we trace the well-known legend that the body of Christ was
laid with the head towards the west, thus looking eastward, and the
Christian usage of digging graves east and west, which prevailed through
mediaeval times, and is not yet forgotten. The rule of laying the head to
the west, and its meaning that the dead shall rise looking towards the
east, are perfectly stated in the following passage from an
ecclesiastical treatise of the 16th century:[750] "Debet autem quis sic
sepeliri ut capite ad occidentem posito, pedes dirigat ad Orientem, in
quo quasi ipsa positione orat: et innuit quod promptus est, ut de occasu
festinet ad ortum: de mundo ad seculum."[751]

[749] "Primitive Culture," 1873, vol. ii. p. 423.

[750] Durandus, "De Officio Mortuorum," lib. vii. chap. 35-39.

[751] Dr. Johnson thought the words of the clown in "Hamlet"
(v. 1), "make her grave straight," meant, "make her grave from
east to west, in a direct line parallel to the church." This
interpretation seems improbable, as the word straight in the
sense of immediately occurs frequently in Shakespeare's plays.

Within old monuments and receptacles for the dead perpetual lamps were
supposed to be lighted up, an allusion to which is made by Pericles
(iii. 1), who, deploring the untimely death of Thaisa at sea, and the
superstitious demand made by the sailors that her corpse should be
thrown overboard, says:

"Nor have I time
To give thee hallow'd to thy grave, but straight
Must cast thee, scarcely coffin'd, in the ooze;
Where, for a monument upon thy bones,
And aye-remaining lamps, the belching whale
And humming water must o'erwhelm thy corpse,
Lying with simple shells."

Again, in "Troilus and Cressida" (iii. 2), we find a further reference
in the words of Troilus:

"O, that I thought it could be in a woman,
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love."

Pope, too, in his "Eloisa to Abelard," has a similar allusion (l. 261,
262):

"Ah, hopeless lasting flames,