ci 4%] (Nov. 
DEATH’S DOINGS.* : 
Turre has always prevailed in the world a rather strange desire to laugh at 
Death, whom, in our more serious mood, we have personified under the awful 
name of the King of Terrors. ‘Certainly, as Miss Farrier has observed, in her 
excellent novel, “ The Inheritance,” all our real figures of dread are drawn, 
either directly or remotely, from death. The earthquake might shake conti-’ 
nents—tornadoes upturn oceans—the lightning might flash ‘In tenfold vehe- 
mence from the clouds—the floods might rise to heights unheard-of in the days 
of Noah, without exciting in us any ideas beyond those of inconvenience, if it 
were possible that these occurrences could take place without loss of life. If 
we were so made as to defy them, and live, they would cease to be horrible : 
but vest them with the powers of p&atn, as they are invested, and that gives 
them the attributes of horror. Disease, no matter how painful, if not decidedly 
deadly, is little regarded. The gout, for instance, is matter of jest, in spite of all 
its torture; but no one laughs at fever, and who shudders not at the very-‘name 
of pracuE? And why does that name excite the greater terror, but because 
his “ doings” are more rapid, and less capable of being opposed—because he 
is, as Professor Wilson calls him, the 
* King of the grave and church-yard cell ?”’ 
All objects of physical terror being thus, in fact, resolvable into that one of 
death—and objects of physical terror outweighing, beyond all power of calcu- 
lation, all other objects of terror, with the mass of mankind—how are we to 
account for the propensity toward caricaturing him, which may be traeed in all 
parts of the world? “We must suppose that it arises principally from the ine- 
vitable certainty of his approach, and our familiarity with him in all his shapes. 
Were he to be propitiated by reverence, he would not be caricatured. But 
when laughing at him, or pretending to laugh at him, will not accelerate his ap- 
proach, any more than flattering him, or bowing down in honour of his powers, 
retard it. There isa sort of pleasure in making light of terror, and exhibiting 
in grotesque forms the. grim shadow, which in graver hours we regard with 
feelings of the most opposite nature. Something of the same kind has taken 
place with respect to the popular idea of the devil. The-personified origin of 
Evil—the avowed adversary of man—he 
“* Who brought into this world, a world of woe, 
Sin, and her shadow, Death; and Misery, 
Death’s harbinger,’ — 
would not, @ priori, be considered as a fit object for jest; and yet he is, in all 
European nations at least, a matter of mere sport. The sayings of the devil 
are generally slang of the most jocose description—much fitter for the Fives’ 
Court or Billingsgate than the mouth of him, 
sree sees“ che fu nobil creato 
Piu d altra creatura,’— 
the proud-spirited emperor of Pandemonium, Dressed out in the buffoon dis- 
guise of hoof, horn, and tail, he figures in caricature and masquerade innume- 
rable. In every country in Europe he has a peculiar nickname of the most 
jocular kind : and this also must be a reaction of dread. 
Tn the ancient world, the Greek wits were in the habit of jesting much on 
such subjects. The merriest of Lucian’s merry writings are “ Dialogues. of 
the Dead,” in which death itself is laughed at witha laboured lightness of 
jesting that proves its insincerity ; while the heathen ministers. of - hell, its king 
and queen, its judges, furies, messengers, 
“And the grim ferryman that poets write of,” ve 
are treated with a real gatté de ceur. In fact, he believed in @ANATOX—he 
could not avoid it; but he had a thorough scorn for the inconsistent and blun- 
* Death’s Doings ; consisting of numerous original Compositions in Prose and Verse ; 
with Twenty-four Illustrations, designed and etched by R. Dagley. 8vo.—London : 
Andrews, Cole. c 
