If people mean anything at all by the expression “untimely death”, they must believe that some deaths run on a better schedule than others. Death in old age is rarely called untimely——a long life is thought to be a full one. But with the passing of a young person, one assumes that the best years lay ahead and the measures of that life was still to be taken..
History denies of course. Among prominent summer deaths, one recalls those of Marilyn Monroe and James Deans, whose lives seemed equally brief and complete. Writers cannot bear the fact that poet John Keats died at 26, and only half playful judge their own lives as failures when they past that year. The idea that life cut short is unfulfilled is illogical because lives are measured by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity virtue.
如果人们想通过“不合时的死亡”这个词表达什么的话，他们肯定相信有些死亡要比另一些死亡来的合时一些。老年时逝去很少被称为是不合时的——长命百岁被认为是完整的生命。但如果是一个年轻人逝去，人们会设想大好年华还在后面，还不能对生命做出评价。
历史当然会否认这种观点。在那些英年早逝的人当中，人们会想起玛丽莲·梦露，詹姆斯·迪恩斯。他们的生命看起来既短暂又完整。作家们难以接受死人济慈26岁即逝去的事实，只能半开玩笑地认为他们自己26岁还一事无成。那种认为中断的生命是不完整的想法是不合逻辑的，因为生命的价值是由他们留给世界的影响及其成就与美德来衡量的。