The same month witnessed the passing away of Lord Derby, "the Rupert of Debate," a statesman somewhat out of his element in a period of non-intervention; a great country-gentleman, sportsman, and scholar. Punch, whose memorial verses in these years did not err as a rule on the side of brevity, compressed his tribute within the compass of a sonnet, in which there is a happy reference to Lord Derby's love of Homer and of children, for he was the patron of Edward Lear, the laureate of the best, because the most unalloyed, nonsense:—
LORD DERBY
Born, 1799. Died, 1869.
Withdrawing slow from those he loved so well,
Autumn's pale morning saw him pass away:
Leave them beside their sacred dead to pray,
Unmarked of strangers. Calmer memories tell
How nobly Stanley lived. No braver name
Glows in the golden roll of all his sires,
Or all their peers. His was the heart that fires
The eloquent tongue, and his the eye whose aim