Start not, nor deem my spirit fled;
      In me behold the only skull
    From which, unlike a living head,
      Whatever flows is never dull.

    I lived, I loved, I quaff’d, like thee;
      I died:  let earth my bones resign. 
    Fill up, thou canst not injure me;
      The worm hath fouler lips than mine.

    Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
      In aid of others, let me shine,
    And when, alas! our brains are gone,
      What nobler substitute than wine.

    Quaff while thou canst.  Another race,
      When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
    May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,
      And rhyme and revel with the dead.

    Why not? since through life’s little day
      Our heads such sad effects produce;
    Redeem’d from worms and wasting clay,
      This chance is theirs, to be of use.

The skull, it is said, is buried beneath the floor of the chapel at Newstead Abbey.

FOOTNOTES: 

[6] Sussex Archaeological Collections xiii. 162-3.

[7] See Notes and Queries, 4th S., XI. 64.

[8] Told by Mr. Moncure Conway in Harper’s Magazine.

[9] “Tales and Legends of the English Lakes,” 96-7.

[10] “Harland’s Lancashire Legends,” 1882, 65-70.

[11] “British Goblins,” 1880, p. 146.

CHAPTER III.

Eccentric vows.

    No man takes or keeps a vow,
    But just as he sees others do;
    Nor are they ’bliged to be so brittle
    As not to yield and bow a little: 
    For as best tempered blades are found
    Before they break, to bend quite round,
    So truest oaths are still more tough,
    And, tho’ they bow, are breaking-proof. 
               Butler’s “Hudibras,” Ep. to his Lady, 75.

Some two hundred and fifty years ago, the prevailing colour in all dresses was that shade of brown known as the “couleur Isabelle,” and this was its origin:—­A short time after the siege of Ostend commenced, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Isabella Eugenia, Gouvernante of the Netherlands, incensed at the obstinate bravery of the defenders, is reported to have made a vow that she would not change her chemise till the town surrendered.  It was a marvellously inconvenient vow, for the siege, according to the precise historians thereof, lasted three years, three months, three weeks, three days, and three hours; and her highness’s garment had wonderfully changed its colour before twelve months of the time had expired.  But the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, in no way dismayed, resolved to keep their mistress in countenance, and, after a struggle between their loyalty and their cleanliness, they hit upon the compromising expedient of wearing dresses of the presumed colour, finally attained by the garment which clung to the Imperial Archduchess by force of religious obstinacy.  But, foolish and eccentric as was the conduct of Isabella Eugenia, there have been persons gifted, like herself, with sufficient mental power and strength of character to keep the vows they have sworn.