HIS CHEERFULNESS. CCCXxix 



of spirit never forsook him. When, upon the charge being 

 first made, his servants rose as he passed through the hall, 

 &quot; Sit down, my friends,&quot; he said, &quot; your rise has been my 

 fall ;&quot; and when one of his friends said, &quot; You must look 

 around you,&quot; he replied, &quot; I look above me :&quot; (a) Playful 

 ness in affliction is, however, only an equivocal test of 

 cheerfulness; (b) in a powerful mind grief rests itself in the 

 exercise of the antagonist feelings, and, by a convulsive 

 effort, throws off the load of despair. 



Difficult as it may be to discover the real state of his 

 mind, it cannot be supposed, accustomed as he was to 

 active life, and well aware of the intrigues of courts, that, 

 in this moment of peril, his sagacity slumbered, or that he 

 was so little attentive to his own interests, as to be sheltered 

 in the shades of Gorhambury, all meaner things forgotten, 

 watching the progress of some chemical experiment, or 

 wandering with Hobbes in the mazes of metaphysics. 



(a) There are many other anecdotes of the same nature. When his 

 lordship was in disfavour, his neighbours hearing how much he was 

 indebted, came to him with a motion to buy oak-wood of him. His lord 

 ship told them, &quot; He would not sell his feathers.&quot; 



The Earl of Manchester being removed from his place of Lord Chief 

 Justice of the Common Pleas to be Lord President of the Council, told my 

 lord (upon his fall) that he was sorry to see him made such an example, 

 Lord Bacon replied, it did not trouble him, since he was made a president. 



(6) Such was the supposed levity of Sir Thomas More on the scaffold. 

 When Danton was led to the guillotine he conversed upon the pleasures 

 of rural life. This mood of the mind did not escape, and what did escape, 

 the notice of Shakespeare, as may be seen in the light jests and quibbles of 

 Hamlet. 



Wordsworth, describing the grief of a young man, says, 



&quot; At his door he stood, 

 And whistled many a snatch of merry tunes 

 That had no mirth in them.&quot; 



A very intelligent medical practitioner once said to me, &quot; Apparent 

 cheerfulness by a powerful mind in danger is a bad symptom.&quot; 



