When fiddlers made not so pleasant mirth as fencers,
and men could sit with quiet stomachs, while hanging
was played before them.# Old considerations made few
* "In amphitheatro semiustulandum."--
Suetonius Vit.
Tib. + "Sic erimus cuncti, ... ergo dum vivimus vivamus."
# [Greek omitted]. A barbarous pastime at feasts, when
men stood upon a rolling globe, with their necks in a rope and
a knife in their hands, ready to cut it when the stone was
mementos by skulls and bones upon their monuments.
In the Egyptian obelisks and hieroglyphical figures it
is not easy to meet with bones. The sepulchral lamps
speak nothing less than sepulture, and in their literal
draughts prove often obscene and antick pieces. Where
we find
D. M.* it is obvious to meet with sacrificing
pateras and vessels of libation upon old sepulchral
monuments. In the Jewish hypogaeum and subter-
ranean cell at Rome, was little observable beside the
variety of lamps and frequent draughts of Anthony and
Jerome we meet with thigh-bones and death's-heads;
but the cemeterial cells of ancient Christians and
martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories;
not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive,
and the mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks;
but iterately affecting the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus,
Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as hopeful draughts,
and hinting imagery of the resurrection, which is the
life of the grave, and sweetens our habitations in the
land of moles and pismires.
Pages:
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232