The truism appears to have been a favourite theme with Prior, who expatiates upon it in a variety of keys. Here is one other specimen from his stores, in octosyllabic metre:— “All must obey the general doom, Down from Alcides to Tom Thumb. Grim Pluto will not be withstood By force or craft. Tall Robin Hood, As well as Little John, is dead— (You see how deeply I am read).” Does not Cervantes begin the last chapter of his great work with the reflection that, as all human things, especially the lives of men, are transitory, ever advancing to their decline and final termination, so “Don Quixote was favoured by no privilege of exemption from the common fate,” for the period of his dissolution came when he least thought of it—and he died. Death’s final conquest is the subject of a fine poem of James Shirley’s; the piece by which he is, in every sense, best remembered. How death lays his icy hands on kings, is there told with pitiless candour; and the merry monarch, _par excellence_, Charles the Second, is said to have greatly admired the poetry, if not the candour, of Shirley’s strain. Early or late, all stoop to fate; that is the trite topic. But the moral is noble, and nobly expressed. The poet reminds laurelled victors that the garlands are withering on their brow, and that soon upon death’s purple altar shall the “victor victim” bleed:— “All heads must come To the cold tomb; Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.” The first verse only of George Herbert’s “Virtue” is familiar to men; all four have a music and a meaning of their own:— “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky, The dew shall weep thy fall to-night; For thou must die. “Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. “Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie, My music shows ye have your closes, And all must die. “Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like seasoned timber, never gives; But though the whole world turn to coal, Then chiefly lives.” _AN ULTRA-PROTESTER._ ST. MATTHEW xxvi. 33-35, 69-75.