The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and WomenMarvin, Frederic Rowland
History
The Last Words (Real and Traditional) of Distinguished Men and Women
Marvin, Frederic Rowland
Last words
[33] Jeremy Bentham, when he firmly believed that he was near his
last hour, said to one of his disciples, who was watching over
him:--"I now feel that I am dying. Our care must be to minimize the
pain. Do not let any of the servants come into the room, and keep
away the youths. It will be distressing to them, and they can be of
no service. Yet I must not be alone, and you will remain with me,
and you only, and then we shall have reduced the pain to the least
possible amount."
Bentham dreaded the silence and darkness of the grave, and wished to
remain even after his death in a world of living men. He left his
body to Dr. Southwood Smith who was to perform certain experiments
to ascertain that no life remained. After these experiments the
following disposition was to be made of his remains: "The skeleton
Dr. Smith shall cause to be put together in such manner that the
whole figure may be seated in a chair usually occupied by me when
living, in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in
thought in the course of the time employed in writing. I direct that
the body, thus prepared, shall be transferred to my executor, and
that he shall cause the skeleton to be clothed in one of the suits
of black usually worn by me. The body so clothed, together with the
chair and the staff in my later years borne by me, he shall take
charge of, and for containing the whole apparatus he shall cause to
be prepared an appropriate box or case, and shall cause to be
engraved in conspicuous characters on a plate to be affixed thereon,
and also in the glass case in which the preparations of the soft
parts of my body shall be contained, as, for example, in the manner
used in the case of wine decanters; my name at length with the
letters _ob_: followed by the day of my decease. If it should so
happen that my personal friends and other disciples should be
disposed to meet together on some day, or days of the year for the
purpose of commemorating the founder of the Greatest Happiness
System of Morals and Legislation, my executor shall cause to be
conveyed into the room in which they meet the case with its
contents."
Humphry Repton, author of a delightful book on "Landscape Gardening
and Landscape Architecture," requested that his remains might be
deposited in a "garden of roses." He selected a small enclosure by
the church of Aylsham, in Norfolk, one of the most lovely spots in
all England, where were a number of roses and vines, as his last
resting place. On the monument over his grave, after his name and
age, are these lines written by himself:--
"Not like the Egyptian tyrants--consecrate,
Unmixt with others shall my dust remain;
But mouldering, blended, melting into earth,
Mine shall give form and colour to the rose;
And while its vivid blossoms cheer mankind,
Its perfum'd odour shall ascend to heaven."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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