Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/393

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ENGLISH BARDS, AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS.

351

Fit consummation of an earthly race680
Begun in folly, ended in disgrace,
While none but menials o'er the bed of death,
Wash thy red wounds, or watch thy wavering breath:
Traduced by liars, and forgot by all,
The mangled victim of a drunken brawl,
To live like Clodius,^[1] and like Falkland fall.^[2]

↑ Clodius—"Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur."—[MS.] [The allusion is to the well-known incidents of his intrigue with Pompeia, Cæsars wife, and his sacrilegious intrusion into the mysteries of the Bona Dea. The Romans had a proverb, "Clodius accuset Mœchos?" (Juv., Sat. ii. 27). That "Steenie" should lecture on the "turpitude of incontinence!" (The Fortunes of Nigel, cap. xxxii.)]
↑ I knew the late Lord Falkland well. On Sunday night I beheld him presiding at his own table, in all the honest pride of hospitality; on Wednesday morning, at three o'clock, I saw stretched before me all that remained of courage, feeling, and a host of passions. He was a gallant and successful officer: his faults were the faults of a sailor—as such, Britons will forgive them. ["His behaviour on the field was worthy of a better fate, and his conduct on the bed of death evinced all the firmness of a man without the farce of repentance—I say the farce of repentance, for death-bed repentance is a farce, and as little serviceable to the soul at such a moment as the surgeon to the body, though both may be useful if taken in time. Some hireling in the papers forged a tale about an agonized voice, etc. On mentioning the circumstance to Mr. Heaviside, he exclaimed, 'Good God! what absurdity to talk in this manner of one who died like a lion!'—he did more."—MS.] He died like a brave man in a better cause; for had he fallen in like manner on the deck of the frigate to which he was just appointed, his last moments would have been held up by his countrymen as an example to succeeding heroes.

[Charles John Carey, ninth Viscount Falkland, died from a wound received in a duel with Mr. A. Powell on Feb. 28, 1809. (See Byron's letter to his mother, March 6, 1809.) The story of "the agonized voice" may be traced to a paragraph in the Morning Post, March 2, 1809: "Lord Falkland, after hearing the surgeon's opinion, said with a faltering

[1] Clodius—"Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur."—[MS.] [The allusion is to the well-known incidents of his intrigue with Pompeia, Cæsars wife, and his sacrilegious intrusion into the mysteries of the Bona Dea. The Romans had a proverb, "Clodius accuset Mœchos?" (Juv., Sat. ii. 27). That "Steenie" should lecture on the "turpitude of incontinence!" (The Fortunes of Nigel, cap. xxxii.)]

[page393-2] I knew the late Lord Falkland well. On Sunday night I beheld him presiding at his own table, in all the honest pride of hospitality; on Wednesday morning, at three o'clock, I saw stretched before me all that remained of courage, feeling, and a host of passions. He was a gallant and successful officer: his faults were the faults of a sailor—as such, Britons will forgive them. ["His behaviour on the field was worthy of a better fate, and his conduct on the bed of death evinced all the firmness of a man without the farce of repentance—I say the farce of repentance, for death-bed repentance is a farce, and as little serviceable to the soul at such a moment as the surgeon to the body, though both may be useful if taken in time. Some hireling in the papers forged a tale about an agonized voice, etc. On mentioning the circumstance to Mr. Heaviside, he exclaimed, 'Good God! what absurdity to talk in this manner of one who died like a lion!'—he did more."—MS.] He died like a brave man in a better cause; for had he fallen in like manner on the deck of the frigate to which he was just appointed, his last moments would have been held up by his countrymen as an example to succeeding heroes.

[Charles John Carey, ninth Viscount Falkland, died from a wound received in a duel with Mr. A. Powell on Feb. 28, 1809. (See Byron's letter to his mother, March 6, 1809.) The story of "the agonized voice" may be traced to a paragraph in the Morning Post, March 2, 1809: "Lord Falkland, after hearing the surgeon's opinion, said with a faltering

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