If a man who had lived a righteous, sober
and godly life died while playing cards or in innocent laughter,
with no opportunity for the ministrations of a priest, his chances
for the next world were thought to be slim. On the other hand, a
damnable scoundrel on the scaffold, with the clergyman's assurances
assented to, was supposed to be jerked into heaven. This view of
life and death was firmly held even by so sincere and profound a
thinker as Hamlet: which explains his anguish at the fate of his
father killed in his sleep, and his own refusal to slay the villain
Claudius at prayer.
It is probable that thousands of worshippers who now devoutly pray
to be delivered from sudden death, would really prefer that exit to
any other. The reason is clear enough: it is to avoid the pain of
slow dissolution, the sufferings of the death-bed, and the horrible
fear of the dark. Now Browning boldly asks that he may be spared
nothing of all these grim terrors. True to his conception of a poet,
as a man who should understand all human experiences, he hopes that
he may pass conscious and aware through the wonderful experience of
dying.
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