culations: "Augusta--Ada--my sister, my child. Io lascio qualche
cosa di caro nel mondo. For the rest, I am content to die." At six on the
evening of the 18th he uttered his last words, "[Greek: _Dei me nun
katheudein_];" and on the 19th he passed away.

Never perhaps was there such a national lamentation. By order of
Mavrocordatos, thirty-seven guns--one for each year of the poet's life--
were fired from the battery, and answered by the Turks from Patras with an
exultant volley. All offices, tribunals, and shops were shut, and a
general mourning for twenty-one days proclaimed. Stanhope wrote, on
hearing the news, "England has lost her brightest genius--Greece her
noblest friend;" and Trelawny, on coming to Mesolonghi, heard nothing in
the streets but "Byron is dead!" like a bell tolling through the silence
and the gloom. Intending contributors to the cause of Greece turned back
when they heard the tidings, that seemed to them to mean she was headless.
Her cities contended for the body, as of old for the birth of a poet.
Athens wished him to rest in the Temple of Theseus. The funeral service
was performed at Mesolonghi. But on the 2nd of May the embalmed remains
left Zante, and on the 29th arrived in the Downs. His relatives applied
for permission to have them interred in Westminster Abbey, but it was
refused; and on the 16th July they were conveyed to the village church of
Hucknall.

CHAPTER XI.

CHARACTERISTICS, AND PLACE IN LITERATURE.

Lord Jeffrey at the close of a once-famous review quaintly laments: "The
tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber, and the
rich melodies of Keats and Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of
Wordsworth, and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the
field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry, and the
blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride." Of the
poets of the early part of this century, Lord John Russell thought Byron
the greatest, then Scott, then Moore. "Such an opinion," wrote a
_National_ reviewer, in 1860, "is not worth a refutation; we only smile at
it." Nothing in the history of literature is more curious than the
shifting of the standard of excellence, which so perplexes criticism. But
the most remarkable feature of the matter is the frequent return to power
of the once discarded potentates. Byron is resuming his place: his spirit
has come again to our atmosphere; and every buddi