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.
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