Originally published in Pearson's Weekly (C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.) vol.1 #6 (30 Aug 1890).
Homer actually died of a broken heart from disappointment through not guessing a riddle, and Anacreon was choked with a grape stone. Sophocles, according to one tradition, died of joy at being victor in his last tragic contest, and Alexis, writes Plutarch, fell dead on the stage while they were crowning him with laurel. Coming down to later times the fate of the unfortunate Abbe Prévost, author of "Manon Lescaut" and other novels, was peculiarly sad. In passing through the Forest of Chantilly he was seized with an apoplectic fit, and carried by some woodcutters to the village surgeon as dead. He proceeded to open the body, when the wretched man was aroused to a consciousness of his agonies and the horror of his situation from which he shortly afterwards expired. Both in past and modern times a not uncommon cause of death has been excessive laughter. Margutte succumbed to uncontrollable laughter provoked by the comical efforts of a monkey to accoutre itself in a pair of boots. Pietro Aretina, a well-known Italian litterateur of the Renaissance, was so tickled at a certain story, that leaning his chair back to laugh with greater freedom he slipped, and dashed out his brains on the marble floor.
Numerous striking instances of death from fright and fear have occurred at various times. Montaigne tells of a man who was pardoned upon the scaffold, and was found to have expired while waiting the stroke.
Frederick I. of Prussia was sleeping one day in his armchair when his wife, Louisa of Mecklenburg, hopelessly mad, having escaped from her keepers, made her way to his private apartments, and, after wounding herself by breaking through a glass door, appeared before her husband. The King, from whom her malady had been kept secret, was so horrified at her aspect that he he saw before him the "White Lady," Whose apparition has invariably been supposed to announce the death of a prince of the house of Brandenburg. At that moment he was seized with a violent fever, of which he died.
The poet Shenstone died as eccentrically as he lived. It appears that "he had quarrelled with his housekeeper, and relapsing into a fit of sulks, he insisted on sleeping in a cart in the back-yard. The result was a fever which carried him off."
Persona in the most robust state of health have died from the expectation of dying. The abbess of a French convent, the Princess Gonzaga of Cleves, and Gruise, the contemporary Archbishop of Rheims, hoaxed one of the nuns by night, and exhorted her as a person who was about to die. While in the act of their cruel and heartless scheme they whispered to each other, "She is just departing." But to their astonishment she actually died.
A case is related of a condemned man who was handed over to some French physicians, who, to try the effects of the imagination, told him that it was intended to despatch him by bleeding. Without the loss of a drop of blood his spirit died within him from the mental impression, and when the veil was raised he had ceased to live.
Goldsmith fell a victim to the foolish praatice of prescribing for himself. Nicholas Breakspeare, the only Englishman who ever attained the eminence of the Papal throne, was choked by a fly. Many strange instances are recorded of death having accelerated by a strong presentiment. Hogarth, for example, when asked one day the nature of his next design, replied, "The end of all things." "In that case," replied one of his friends, "there will be an end of the painter." "There will," he said. The next day he commenced his concluding work with the greatest diligence, and after giving it the last touch, broke his pallette in pieces and said, "I have finished." Within a few months he died.
A number of learned and famous men have died from excessive grief. To quote one pathetic instance, we are told how Guidi, surnamed the Italian Pindar, while on his journey to present Pope Clement XI. with the beautifully illuminated copies of the six Homilies of the Pontiff, which he had turned into verse, discovered a typographical error, which caused him such grief that he was seized with apoplexy and expired some hours afterwards. The death of Sir John Suckling was almost unparalleled, having been produced by a penknife in his boots. He had been robbed by his valet, who fled, and knowing that his master would pursue him as soon as the theft was discovered, he stuck the blade of a pen-knife in his boot. Suckling, perceiving that he had been robbed, acted as the villain anticipated, and plunging his foot into the boot, ran the knife into the flesh, and died of the consequences.