416 



OF THE GROWTH AND DECREASE 



Hopkins Hopkins, weighing never more than 18lbs. and lat- 

 terly but 12, died of pure old age at seventeen ; and one of his 

 sisters, but 12 years of age and weighing only ISlbs. at the time 

 of his death, had all the marks of old age.* 



(D) The heavenly serenity of the countenance of most fresh 

 corpses is a very remarkable, and to me, I confess a very affect- 

 ing and consolitary, circumstance. I cannot deny myself the 

 pleasure of forcibly drawing the attention of my readers to it by 

 quoting some inimitable lines of the mighty and unhappy Byron, 



" He who hath bent him o'er the dead 



Ere the first day of death is fled, 



Before decay's effacing fingers 



Have swept those lines where beauty lingers, 



And marked the mild angelic air, 



The rapture of repose that's there, 



The fixed yet tender traits that streak 



The languor of the placid cheek, 



And but for that sad shrouded eye 



That fires not wins not weeps not now. 



And but for that chill changeless brow 



Where cold obstruction's apathy 



Appals the gazing mourner's heart 



As if to him it could impart 



The doom he dreads yet dwells upon, 



Yes but for these and these alone, 



Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour, 



He still might doubt the tyrant's power : 



So fair, so calm, so softly sealed, 



The fair last look by death revealed." t 



(E) Our countryman Parr married when a hundred and twenty 

 years of age, retained his vigour till a hundred and forty, and 

 died at a hundred and fifty-two from plethora induced by a 

 change in his diet. Harvey, who dissected him, found no decay 

 of any organ,} and, had not Parr become an inmate of the Earl 



* Gentleman's Magazine, vol.24, p. 191. 



f- Giaoier. 



% Philos. Trans, vol. iii. 1699. 



