Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him even into the ’waste wide,’—­even to the coffin.  He was lying in state, when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face.  The tears which rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down the shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long since rendered almost hideous by drinking.  The stranger gazed with profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff’s wand, and touching the corpse’s face with it, suddenly altered his manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had arrested the corpse in the king’s name for a debt of L500.  It was the morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive.  But the corpse was the bailiff’s property, till his claim was paid, and nought but the money would soften the iron capturer.  Canning and Lord Sidmouth agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid.

Poor corpse! was it worth L500—­diseased, rotting as it was, and about to be given for nothing to mother earth?  Was it worth the pomp of the splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was borne to Westminster Abbey?  Was not rather the wretched old man, while he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of sympathy?  Folly; not folly only—­but a lie!  What recked the dead of the four noble pall-bearers—­the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London?  What good was it to him to be followed by two royal highnesses—­the Dukes of York and Sussex—­by two marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in want, and in misery?  Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr. Rogers and Dr. Bain.  But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet let the poet’s dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand of the bailiff.  There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet’s Corner, and there they laid him.  A simple marble was afforded by another friend without a title—­Peter Moore.