Henley’s brilliant epitaph on George Moreland sums up not only that
artist’s life, but no less the life of too many before and since:
He coined himself into guineas, and so, like the reckless and
passionate spendthrift he was, he flung away his genius and his
life in handfuls, till nothing else was left him but the silence
and the decency of death.
(1823)