St. Patrick’s is the Westminster Abbey of Ireland, and many of her most famous men are either buried within its walls or have tablets erected to their memory. John Philpott Curran, the great advocate and orator, and Samuel Lover, the song writer and novelist, whose “Handy Andy” and “Widow Machree,” are perhaps the best examples of Irish humor in literature, are honored with tablets; and Carolan, the last of the bards for whom Ireland was once so celebrated. He died in 1788. M.W. Balfe, author of that pretty little opera, “The Bohemian Girl,” and many beautiful ballads, including “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” has a tablet inscribed with these words:
“The most celebrated, genial and beloved of Irish musicians, commendatore of Carlos III. of Spain, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Born in Dublin, 15 May, 1808, died 20th of Oct., 1870.”
Balfe was born in a small house on Pitt Street, Dublin, which bears a tablet announcing the fact.
The man who wrote that stirring poem, “The Burial of Sir John Moore,” which begins,
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried,”—
lies in St. Patrick’s. His name was Charles Wolfe, and he was once the dean of the cathedral.
In the right-hand corner of the east transept is a monument to the memory of a certain dame of the time of Elizabeth, named Mrs. St. Leger. She was thirty-seven years old at the time of her death, and, her epitaph tells us, had “a strange, eventful history,” with four husbands and eight children, all of whom she made comfortable and happy.
On the other side is a tablet to commemorate the fact that Sir Edward Fitten, who died in 1579, was married at the age of twelve years and became the father of fifteen children,—nine sons and six daughters.
The famous Archbishop Whately, the gentleman who wrote the rhetoric we studied in college, and who once presided over this diocese, is buried in a stately tomb, and his effigy, beautifully carved in marble, lies upon it.