DR. OSLER ON DEATH.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1366, 17 February 1912, Page 17

DR. OSLER ON DEATH.

- : 4 : —. j ESSAY OF M. MAETERLINCK CRITICISED. A student for.many yeans of the art and of the act of dying, I read with cavernosa Maeterlinck's recent Essay, only, I must confess, to bo disappointed. A brilliaut example of tho type of literature characterised by Hamlet in his famous reply to Polonius, thero is an unpleasant flavour, a cadaverous mustiness about the Essay which even tho viords cannot cover; and ; in spite of tho plea for burning burials, ono smells everywhere "the mould above ' tile rose." To those of your readers who feel after the reading, as I did, the ohill 1 of tho charnelliouse, let me uree a.n hour ■ in the warm sunshine of tho Phacdo. 1 But I write for another purpose—to pro- ! test against tho pictures which are given i of the act of <l The Tortures of the ■ Last Illness," "The Uselessly Prolonged , Torments," "The Unbearable Memories of > the Chamber of Pain," "The Pangs of . Death," "Tho Awful Struggle," "The . Sharpest Peak of Human Pain," and J "Horror." The truth is, an. immense 1 majority of all die as they are bora—ob- ' livious. A .few, very few. sutler severely * in the bodv, fewer still in the mind. Alf most all Shelley's description fits:— ' Mild is the slow necessity of death; The tranquil spirit fails beneath itsgrasp, Without a groan, almost without a fear Resigned in peace to the necessity, ' Calm as a voyager lo some distant laud. 1 And lull of wonder, full of hope as he.

Nowadays. whoa flip voice (if I'aff calls, the majority of men may repot the Inst words <if So:'rnt'--. "T invr ;i cock in Ah-Ic-pius"—a debt of t'.haukfnliu"-;. as his. for ii foil and easy [)r. Willtam Osier, in tin■ "Spectator."