In the letter which, on his arrival in the Downs, June 29th, this gentleman addressed to Lord Byron’s executors, there is the following passage:—­“With respect to the funeral ceremony, I am of opinion that his Lordship’s family should be immediately consulted, and that sanction should be obtained for the public burial of his body either in the great Abbey or Cathedral of London.”  It has been asserted, and I fear too truly, that on some intimation of the wish suggested in this last sentence being conveyed to one of those Reverend persons who have the honours of the Abbey at their disposal, such an answer was returned as left but little doubt that a refusal would be the result of any more regular application.[1]

[Footnote 1:  A former Dean of Westminster went so far, we know, in his scruples as to exclude an epitaph from the Abbey, because it contained the name of Milton:—­“a name, in his opinion,” says Johnson, “too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion.”—­Life of MILTON.]

There is an anecdote told of the poet Hafiz, in Sir William Jones’s Life, which, in reporting this instance of illiberality, recurs naturally to the memory.  After the death of the great Persian bard, some of the religious among his countrymen protested strongly against allowing to him the right of sepulture, alleging, as their objection, the licentiousness of his poetry.  After much controversy, it was agreed to leave the decision of the question to a mode of divination, not uncommon among the Persians, which consisted in opening the poet’s book at random and taking the first verses that occurred.  They happened to be these:—­

  “Oh turn not coldly from the poet’s bier,
  Nor check the sacred drops by Pity given;
  For though in sin his body slumbereth here,
  His soul, absolved, already wings to heaven.”

These lines, says the legend, were looked upon as a divine decree; the religionists no longer enforced their objections, and the remains of the bard were left to take their quiet sleep by that “sweet bower of Mosellay” which he had so often celebrated in his verses.

Were our Byron’s right of sepulture to be decided in the same manner, how few are there of his pages, thus taken at hazard, that would not, by some genial touch of sympathy with virtue, some glowing tribute to the bright works of God, or some gush of natural devotion more affecting than any homily, give him a title to admission into the purest temple of which Christian Charity ever held the guardianship.

Let the decision, however, of these Reverend authorities have been, finally, what it might, it was the wish, as is understood, of Lord Byron’s dearest relative to have his remains laid in the family vault at Hucknall, near Newstead.  On being landed from the Florida, the body had, under the direction of his Lordship’s executors, Mr. Hobhouse and Mr. Hanson, been removed to the house of Sir Edward Knatchbull in Great George