The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

The religious world had a high prejudice against him for his manifold sins of speech, opinion, and life; they of course were not there. No party had so much more admiration of genius—conception of the lofty, intellectual achievements of the noble poet, discernment of the abundant qualifying, and, in fact, overbalancing grace and beauty, and even religious sentiment, which breathed through many of his writings—for no man had more ennobling and truly religious feelings rooted in his soul by the contemplation of the magnificence of God’s handiworks in creation; or felt occasionally, more deeply the spiritualizing influence that pervades nature;—no party had so much more of this tone of mind, than of their political or sectarian bias, as to forget all those minor things in his wonderful talent—his early death—his redeeming qualities, and last deeds—and the honour he had conferred, as an everlasting heritage, on this country.

In the evening, after the people who had attended the funeral were dispersed, I went down to the church and entered the vault. There was a reporter from one of the London newspapers copying the inscriptions on the coffins by the light of a lamp; and a great hobble-de-hoy of a farmer’s lad was kneeling on the case that contained the poet’s heart, and lolling on the coffin with his elbows, as he watched the reporter, in a manner that indicated the most perfect absence of all thought of the place where he was, or the person on whose remains he was perched.

In the churchyard, a group of the villagers were eagerly discussing the particulars of the funeral, and the character of the deceased. One man attempted to account for the apparently indifferent manner in which the clergyman performed the burial service, by his having understood that he felt himself disgraced by having to bury an atheist. “An atheist!” exclaimed an old woman, “tell me that he was an atheist! D’ ye think an atheist would be beloved by his servants as this man was? Why, they fret themselves almost to death about him. And d’ ye think they would have made so much of him in foreign parts? Why, they almost worshipped him as a god in Grecia!” giving the final a a sound almost as long as one’s finger. This was conclusive—the wondering auditors had nothing to reply—they quietly withdrew their several ways, and I mine.

The church was broken into soon after the funeral, and the black cloth with which the pulpit was hung on this occasion, carried away: and this is not the only forcible entry that has been made through Lord Byron’s being buried there; for the clerk told me, that when Moore came to see it with Colonel Wildman, being impatient of the clerk’s arrival, who lives at some distance, the poet had contrived to climb up to a window, open it, and get in, where the worthy bearer of the keys found him, to his great astonishment.

The indifference shewn by the people of Nottingham towards the great poet, would not seem to have abated, if we are to judge by the entries in an album kept by the clerk, and which was presented for that purpose about twelve years ago by Dr. Bowring. The signatures of visiters in 1834 amounted to upwards of eight hundred, amongst which appear the names of people from North and South America, Russia, the Indies, and various other distant places and countries, but few from Nottingham or its shire, who might be supposed to be amongst the best read and best informed portion of its population. This, however, must be allowed, that the names entered in the clerk’s book afford no just criterion of the number or quality of the visiters to the poet’s tomb, as many of the most poetical and refined minds might naturally feel reluctant to place their signatures in such a medley of mawkish sentiment as is always found in such albums. A few clergymen, we, however, were pleased to see, had there placed their names; and some dissenting ministers had ventured so far as to do likewise, and to preach some pretty little sermons over him in the book, which opens thus:

TO THE
Immortal and Illustrious Fame
OF
LORD BYRON,
THE FIRST POET OF THE AGE IN WHICH HE LIVED,
THESE TRIBUTES,
WEAK AND UNWORTHY OF HIM,
BUT IN THEMSELVES SINCERE,
Are Inscribed,
WITH THE DEEPEST REVERENCE.

July, 1825.

At this period no monument—not even so simple a slab as records the death of the humblest villager in the neighbourhood—had been erected to mark the spot in which all that is mortal of the greatest man of our day reposes; and he has been buried more than twelve months.—July, 1825.

So should it be: let o’er this grave
No monumental banners wave;
Let no word speak—no trophy tell
Aught that may break the charming spell,
By which, as on this sacred ground
He kneels, the pilgrim’s heart is bound.
A still, resistless influence,
Unseen, but felt, binds up the sense;
While every whisper seems to breathe
Of the mighty dead who sleeps beneath.
—And though the master-hand is cold,
And though the lyre it once controlled
Rests mute in death; yet from the gloom
Which dwells about this holy tomb,
Silence breathes out more eloquent,
Than epitaph or monument.
One laurel wreath—the poet’s crown—
Is here by hand unworthy thrown;
One tear that so much worth should die,
Fills, as I kneel, my sorrowing eye;
This is the simple offering,
Poor, but earnest, which I bring.
The tear has dried; the wreath shall fade,
The hand that twined it soon be laid
In cold obstruction—but the fame
Of him who tears and wreath shall claim
From most remote posterity,
While Britain lives, can never die!—J. B.

The following list contains almost all the names that are known to the public, or are distinguished by rank or peculiarity of circumstance:—