dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral
appearances,--that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister,
like that innutritious one denounced in the Canticles:--I am none of
her minions--I hold with the Persian.

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into
my mind. All partial evils, like humours, run into that capital
plague-sore.--I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such
hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge; and speak of
the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a
pillow. Some have wooed death--but out upon thee, I say, thou foul,
ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give
thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused
or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper; to be branded,
proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest
thee, thou thin, melancholy _Privation_, or more frightful and
confounding _Positive!_'

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogether
frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a man,
that he shall "lie down with kings and emperors in death," who in his
life-time never greatly coveted the society of such bed-fellows?--or,
forsooth, that "so shall the fairest face appear?"--why, to comfort
me, must Alice W----n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive disgust
at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon
your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be
lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must
shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In
the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee.
Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly