31 JANUARY 1914, Page 33

SUICIDE.

[To can EDITOR or ram "ErECTATOTI...]

Sta,—The lines quoted on the front page of last Saturday's Spectator,

" When all the blandishments of life are gone,

The coward slinks [sneaks] to death, the brave lives on,'

and there ascribed to the poet Crabbe, are said in the diction- aries of quotations to be from a poem entitled "The Suicide," by a certain George Sewell, M.D., who died in 1726, and whose Life may be read in the Dictionary of National Biography.

The couplet appears to be a translation or paraphrase of the last two lines of an epigram of Martial (xi. 56)

:- "Rebus in angustis facile est coutemnere vitam Fortiter file facit qui miser ease potest."

Dryden, in a fine passage, claims the doctrine as specifically

Christian:—

"Death may be called in vain, and cannot come;

Tyrants may tie him up from your relief ; Nor has a Christian privilege to die.

Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls, And give them furloughs for another world,

But see, like sentries, are obliged to Stand

In starless nights, and wait tie appointed hour."