CHAPTER XVIII
AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE
Among the deeply meditative, melodious, and eloquent poems of Wordsworth there is one—-about the burial of Ossian—that glances at the question of fitness in a place of sepulchre. Not always, for the illustrious dead, has the final couch of rest been rightly chosen. We think with resignation, and with a kind of pride, of Keats and Shelley in the little Protestant burial-ground at Rome. Every heart is touched at the spectacle of Garrick and Johnson sleeping side by side in Westminster Abbey. It was right that the dust of Dean Stanley should mingle with the dust of poets and of kings; and to see—as the present writer did, only a little while ago—fresh flowers on the stone that covers him, in the chapel of Henry the Seventh, was to feel a tender gladness and solemn content. Shakespeare's grave, in the chancel of Stratford church, awakens the same ennobling awe and melancholy pleasure; and it is with kindred feeling that you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who can be content that poor Letitia Landon should sleep beneath the pavement of a barrack, with soldiers trampling over her dust? One might almost think, sometimes, that the spirit of calamity, which follows certain persons throughout the whole of life, had pursued them even in death, to haunt about their repose and to mar all the gentleness of association that ought to hallow it. Chatterton, a pauper and a suicide, was huddled into a workhouse graveyard, the very place of which—in Shoe Lane, covered now by Farringdon Market—has disappeared. Otway, miserable in his love for Elizabeth Barry, the actress, and said to have starved to death in the Minories, near the Tower of London, was laid in a vault of St. Clement Danes, in the middle of the Strand, where never the green leaves rustle, but where the roar of the mighty city pours on in continual tumult. That church holds also the remains of William Mountfort, the actor, slain in a brawl by Lord Mohun; of Nat Lee, "the mad poet"; of George Powell, the tragedian, of brilliant and deplorable memory; and of the handsome Hildebrand Horden, cut off by a violent death in the springtime of his youth. Hildebrand Horden was the son of a clergyman of Twickenham and lived in the reign of William and Mary. Dramatic chronicles say that he was possessed of great talent as an actor, and of remarkable personal beauty. He was stabbed, in a quarrel, at the Rose Tavern; and after he had been laid out for the grave, such was the lively feminine interest in his handsome person, many ladies came, some masked and others openly, to view him in his shroud. This is mentioned in Colley Cibber's Apology. Charles Coffey, the dramatist, author of The Devil upon Two Sticks, and other plays, lies in the vaults of St. Clement; as likewise does Thomas Rymer, historiographer for William III., successor to Shadwell, and author of Foedera, in seventeen volumes. In the church of St. Clement you may see the pew in which Dr. Johnson habitually sat when he attended divine service there. It was his favourite church. The pew is in the gallery; and to those who honour the passionate integrity and fervent, devout zeal of the stalwart old champion of letters, it is indeed a sacred shrine. Henry Mossop, one of the stateliest of stately actors, perishing, by slow degrees, of penury and grief,—which he bore in proud silence,—found a refuge, at last, in the barren gloom of Chelsea churchyard. Theodore Hook, the cheeriest spirit of his time, the man who filled every hour of life with the sunshine of his wit and was wasted and degraded by his own brilliancy, rests, close by Bishop Sherlock, in Fulham churchyard,—one of the dreariest spots in the suburbs of London. Perhaps it does not much signify, when once the play is over, in what oblivion our crumbling relics are hidden away. Yet to most human creatures these are sacred things, and many a loving heart, for all time to come, will choose a consecrated spot for the repose of the dead, and will echo the tender words of Longfellow,—so truly expressive of a universal and reverent sentiment—
"Take them, O Grave, and let them lie
Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
As garments by the soul laid by
And precious only to ourselves."