ABSTRACT
[…] while I was in London the melancholly death of Lord Byron was announced in the public papers & I saw his remains born away out of the city on its last journey to that place were fame never comes tho it lives like a shadow & lingers like a sunbeam on his grave it cannot enter therefore it is a victory that has won nothing to the victor his funeral was blazed forth in the papers with the usual parade that accompanys the death of great men I happend to see it by chance as I was wandering up Oxford street on my way to Mrs Emmersons when my eye was suddenly arested by straggling gropes of the common people collected together & talking about a funeral I did as the rest did tho I coud not get hold of what funeral it coud be but I knew it was not a common one by the curiosity that kept watch on every countenance bye & bye the grope collected into about a hundred or more when the train of a funeral suddenly appeard on which a young girl that stood beside me gave a deep sigh & utterd Poor Lord Byron there was a mellancholy feeling of vanity for great names never are at a loss for flatterers that as every flower has its insect they dance in the sunbeams to share a liliputian portion of its splendour upon most countenances I looked up in the young girls face it was dark & beautiful & I could almost feel in love with her for the sigh she had utterd for the poet it was worth all the Newspaper puffs & Magazine Mournings that ever was paraded after the death of a poet since flattery & hypocrisy was babtizd in the name of truth & sincerity – the Reverend the Moral & fastidious may say what they please about Lord Byrons fame & damn it as they [please] – he has gaind the path of its eternity without them & lives above the blight of their mildewing censure to do him damage – the common people felt his merits & his power & the common people of a country are the best feelings of a prophecy of futurity they are the veins & arterys that feed & quicken the heart of living fame the breathings of eternity & the soul of time are indicated in that prophecy they did not stand gaping with suprise on the trappings & gaudy show (for there was not167 much appearance of that it looked like a neglected grandeur) or look on with apathisd indifference like the hird mutes in the spectacle but they felt it I coud see it in their faces they stood in profound silence till it passd not enquiring what this was or that was about the show as they do at the shadow of welth & gaudy trappings of a common great name – they felt by a natural impulse that the mighty was fallen & they movd in saddend silence the streets were lined as the procession passed on each side but they were all the commonest & the lower orders I was supprisd & gratified the windows & doors had those of the higher [orders] about them but they wore smiles on their faces & thought more of the spectacle then of the poet – the young girl that stood by me had counted the carriages in her mind as they passd & she told me there was 63 or 4 in all they were of all sorts & sizes & made up a motly show the gilt ones that led the processions were empty – the hearse lookd small & rather mean & the coach that followd carried his em[bers] in a urn over which a pawl was thrown tho one might distinguish the form of the [urn] underneath & the window seemd to be left open for that purpose – I believe that his liberal principals in religion & politics did a great deal towards gaining the notice & affections of the lower orders be as it will it is better to be beloved by those low & humble for undisguised honesty then flattered by the great for purchased & pensiond hypocrisy – […]
