It is an oft-repeated story. Even so we see great Darius
"Deserted at his utmost need By those his former bounty fed; On the bare ground exposed he lies Without a friend to close his eyes."
So we see glorious Alexander the Great, dying as a fool dieth, remorseful, drunken, disappointed, at Babylon. So we see our great Plantagenet:--
"Mighty victor, mighty lord, Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye afford A tear to grace his obsequies."
So we see Louis XIV., _le grand monarque_, peevish, _ennuyé_, fortunate no longer, an old man of seventy-seven left in his vast lonely palace with his great-grandson, a frivolous child of five, and saying to him, "_J'ai trop aime la guerre; ne m'imitez point_." So we see the last great conqueror of modern times, embittering his dishonoured island-exile by miserable disputes with Sir Hudson Lowe about etiquette and champagne. But among all the "sad stories of the deaths of kings" none ends a purer glory with a more pitiful decline than the poet-king of Israel, whose songs have been to so many thousands their delight in the house of their pilgrimage. Truly David's experience no less than his own may have added bitterness to the traditional epitaph of his son on all human glory: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."
[56] 1 Chron. xxiii. 1.
[57] 2 Sam. v. 5.
[58] It is mentioned by Galen, vii.; Valesius, _De Sacr. Philos._, xxix., p. 187; Bacon, _Hist. Vitæ et Mortis_, ix. 25; Reinhard, _Bibel-Krankheiten_, p. 171. See Josephus, _Antt._, VII. xv. 3.
[59] Now Solam, near _Zerin_ (Jezreel), five miles south of Tabor (Robinson, _Researches_, iii. 462), on the south-west of Jebel el-Duhy (Little Hermon), Josh. xix. 18; 1 Sam. xxviii. 4.
[60] Æsch., _Sept. c. Theb._, 690.
[61] See Psalm cxxii. 3-5.
[62] See Kittel, ii. 147.