Elkanah Settle might have written that, as he did undoubtedly another,
"On the untimely death of Mrs. Annie Gray, who dyed of small pox":
Scarce have I dry'd my cheeks but griefs invite
Again my eyes to weep, my hand to write,
Which still return with greater force, being more
In weight and number than they were before.
A touch of Crabbe there--but enough of innocent death, which was not
in Catnach's line of business. He dealt in murder, from the convicted
murderer's standpoint. For us the _locus classicus_ is the Thavies Inn
Affair; but from the _Kentish Garland_ I gather "The Dying Soldier in
Maidstone Gaol," a later flower, written and published no longer ago
than 1857.
The dying soldier was Dedea Redanies, so called, though probably his
name should be spelt as it is rhymed, Redany. He was a Servian (not a
Serbian) from Belgrade, engaged in the Second British-Swiss Legion, an
armament of which I never heard before. Quartered at Shorncliffe, and
goaded by jealousy, he stabbed his young woman, and her sister, on the
cliffs above Dover, gave himself up, was tried and duly hanged. I
hope that is a plain statement, but none which I could make could be
plainer than Dedea's rhapsodist's:
Oh, list my friends to a foreign soldier
Whose name is Dedea Redanies--
My friends and kindred had no idea
That I should die on a foreign tree.
I loved a maiden, a pretty maiden,
In the town of Dover did she reside--
I sweetly kissed her and with her sister
I after killed and laid side by side.
That is admirably said, but not at all advantaged by subsequent
re-statement in something like fifteen verses. The colossal egotism
of the notorious criminal, however, provides him with a conclusion
oleaginous enough for a scaremonger of our own day, with a confusion
of _summject_ and _ommject_ very much after his heart. "O God," he
whines--
O God receive me, from pain relieve me,
Since I on earth can no comfort find--
To stand before thee, let me, in glory,
With poor Maria and sweet Caroline.
I should like Sir Conan Doyle to treat of this modest proposal in a
present lecture.