Page:The Maclise Portrait-Gallery.djvu/28

 Over his grave, in the churchyard of Bushey, Hertfordshire, a tombstone has been erected. Upon one side it bears the following inscription in Roman capitals,—"William Jerdan, F.S.A.; born at Kelso, April 16, 1782, died at Bushey, July 17, 1869. Founder of the Literary Gazette, and its Editor for 34 years;" on the other side, "Erected as a tribute to his memory by his Friends and Associates in the Society of Noviomagus, 1874."

Some twelve months later were borne to their last resting-place, at Willesden, the remains of another editorial critic, whose career had been concurrently prolonged with that of Jerdan. This was the well-known, who, born at Penrhyn in 1785, died in June, 1870. He, like Jerdan, had outlived his generation and himself,— "Oblitusque suorum, obliviscendus et illis";— and only two carriages followed him to the grave! He used to relate how above one thousand persons followed his father, a popular Nonconformist divine, to the tomb. "There is a line to be drawn," as the Athenæum remarked, "between fuss and neglect."

 

—So for Maginn, who cites these rollicking verses as coming from "a friend." At this point, says he, "the song becomes scurrilous and abusive"; he suppresses, therefore, "the culpable verses,"—to my own huge regret, at least, I must confess,—and proceeds to the conclusion, "which is panegyrical":—

Our portrait is indeed, as Maginn terms it, "exquisite and taken at the witching hour"; but gives us the poet other than as Byron described him, "dressed to sprucery,—with a blue coat and new wig,—and looking as if Apollo had sent him a birthday suit or a wedding-garment." Still, the slight and facile sketch opposite, is happier, in my judgment, than Maclise's finished "three-quarter," where the poet holds his pencil-case like a syringe,—or even, I should say, to the fine likeness by Sir Thomas Lawrence (now finally housed in our National Portrait Gallery), if I were not