Why do these last make so slight an impression on by-standers? Mr. Whitehead says because it is not a living but a dying man that speaks; and a dying man who wants to live. “It is fear that cries out in agony, not penitence that prays.” Fielding, in his masterpiece, moralises on the truism that be men ever so much alarmed and frightened when apprehending themselves in danger of dying, yet no sooner are they cleared from this apprehension, than even the fears of it are erased from their minds. It is much later in the same story, that the “hero’s” avowed resolution, at a crisis in his fortunes, to sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto him, is ridiculed by a cynical acquaintance, as the effect merely of low spirits, and confinement—with the quotation of “some witticisms about the devil when he was sick.” The epigram in question is a favourite allusion with novelists and moralists of all sorts and sizes. There is a border freebooter of Scott’s, who, having recovered from a severe illness, thanks to the medical skill of the Black Dwarf, greets his benefactor, on horseback, all in bandit array, as soon as convalescent. “So,” said the dwarf, “rapine and murder once more on horseback!” “On horseback?” said the bandit; “ay, ay, Elshie, your leech-craft has set me on the bonnie bay again.” “And all those promises of amendment which you made during your illness forgotten?” continued Elshender. “All clear away, with the water-saps and panada,” returned the unabashed convalescent. “Ye ken, Elshie, for they say ye are weel acquent wi’ the gentleman, “‘When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be; When the devil was well, the devil a monk was he.’” For it is not every vow taken in a panic, to become a monk if spared, that is kept as Luther’s was—“devil” though the anti-Lutherans of his day might account and call him. Young Martin saw one of his friends struck dead by his side, by a stroke of lightning, in 1505; and the sight moved him to utter on the instant a vow to St. Anne that he would become a monk if he were himself spared. “The danger passed over, but he did not seek to elude an engagement wrung from him in terror. He solicited no dispensation from his vow.” Brother Martin _ipso facto_ approved himself no member of the fraternity of what Le Sage calls _vous autres, messieurs les diables_, in a passage that indirectly bears upon our theme, for it refers to the proverbial worthlessness of promises coming from that quarter: “Voilà de belles promesses, répliqua l’Ecolier; mais vous autres, messieurs les diables, on vous accuse de n’être pas fort réligieux à tenir ce que vous promettez.” The epigram runs, if not rhymes, as well in Latin as in English: “Ægrotat dæmon, monachus tunc esse volebat; Dæmon convaluit, dæmon ut ante fuit.”