IMMODERATE GRIEF.

Solemn and appointed mournings are good expressions of our dearness to the departed soul, and of his worth, and our value of him; and it hath its praise in nature, and in manners, and public customs. Something is to be given to custom, something to fame, to nature, and to civilities, and to the honor of the deceased friends; for that man is esteemed to die miserable, for whom no friend or relative sheds a tear, or pays a solemn sigh. I desire to die a dry death, but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral. Some showers sprinkled upon my grave would do well and comely; and a soft shower to turn those flowers into a springing memory or a fair rehearsal, that I may not go forth of my doors as my servants carry the entrails of beasts.

But that which is to be faulted in this particular is when the grief is immoderate and unreasonable: and Paula Romana deserved to have felt the weight of St. Hierom's severe reproof, when at the death of every of her children, she almost wept herself into her grave. But it is worse yet, when people, by an ambitious and a pompous sorrow, and by ceremo

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nies invented for the ostentation of their grief, fill heaven and earth with exclamations, and grow troublesome because their friend is happy, or themselves want his company. It is certainly a sad thing in nature, to see a friend trembling with a palsy, or scorched with fevers, or dried up like a potsherd with immoderate heats, and rolling upon his uneasy bed without sleep, which cannot be invited with music, or pleasant murmurs, or a decent stillness: nothing but the servants of cold death, poppy and weariness, can tempt the eyes to let their curtains down, and then they sleep only to taste of death, and make an essay of the shades below: and yet we weep not here. The period and opportunity for tears we choose when our friend is fallen asleep, when he hath laid his neck upon the lap of his mother, and let his head down to be raised up to heaven. This grief is ill-placed and indecent. But many times it is worse: and it hath been observed that those greater and stormy passions do so spend the whole stock of grief, that they presently admit a comfort and contrary affection; while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes on to its period with expectation and the distances of a just time.

THE EPHESIAN MATRON.

The Ephesian woman, that the soldier told of. in Petronius, was the talk of all the town, and the rarest example of a dear affection to her husband. She descended with the corpse into the vault, and there being attended with her maiden, resolved to weep to death, or die with famine or a distempered sorrow; from which resolution nor his nor her friends, nor the reverence of the principal citizens, who used the entreaties of their charity and their power, could persuade her. But a soldier that watched seven dead bodies hanging upon trees just over against this monument, crept in, and awhile stared upon the silent and comely disorders of the sorrow; and having let the wonder awhile breathe out at each other's eyes, at last he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine, with purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed himself with that sad prettiness. His pity and first draught of wine made him bold and curious to try if the maid would drink; who, having many hours since felt her resolution faint as her wearied body, took his kindness; and the light returned into her eyes, and danced like boys in a festival; and fearing lest the pertinaciousness

of her mistress's sorrows should cause her evil to revert, or her shame to approach, assayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to persuade her to drink and live. The violent passion had laid all her spirits in wildness and dissolution, and the maid found them willing to be gathered into order at the arrest of any new object, being weary of the first, of which, like leeches, they had sucked their fill, till they fell down and burst. The weeping woman took her cordial, and was not angry with her maid, and heard the soldier talk. And he was so pleased with the change, that he, who first loved the silence of the sorrow, was more in love with the music of her returning voice, especially which himself had strung, and put in tune; and the man began to talk amorously, and the woman's weak head and heart were soon possessed with a little wine, and grew gay, and talked, and fell in love; and that very night, in the morning of her passion, in the grave of her husband, in the pomps of mourning, and in her funeral garments, married her new and stranger guest.

For so the wild foragers of Lybia being spent with heat, and dissolved by the too fond kisses of the sun, do melt with their common fires, and die with faintness, and descend with motions slow and unable to the little brooks that

descend from heaven in the wilderness; and when they drink, they return into the vigor of a new life, and contract strange marriages; and the lioness is courted by a panther, and she listens to his love, and conceives a monster that all men call unnatural, and the daughter. of an equivocal passion and of a sudden refreshment. And so also was it in the cave at Ephesus; for by this time the soldier began to think it was fit he should return to his watch, and observe the dead bodies he had in charge; but when he ascended from his mourning bridal chamber, he found that one of the bodies was stolen by the friends of the dead, and that he was fallen into an evil condition, because by the laws of Ephesus his body was to be fixed in the place of it. The poor man returns to his woman, cries out bitterly, and in her presence resolves to die to prevent his death, and in secret to prevent his shame. But now the woman's love was raging like her former sadness, and grew witty, and she comforted her soldier, and persuaded him to live, lest by losing him, who had brought her from death and a more grievous sorrow, she should return to her old solemnities of dying, and lose her honor for a dream, or the reputation of her constancy without the change and satisfaction of an enjoyed love. The man would fain have lived,