Thus ended a life, of which the moral lay, so to speak, out of it. The
worthies of Bath were true to the worship of Folly, whom Anstey so well,
though indelicately, describes as there conceiving Fashion; and though
Nash, old, slovenly, disrespected, had long ceased to be either beau or
monarch, treated his huge unlovely corpse with the honour due to the
great--or little. His funeral was as glorious as that of any hero, and
far more showy, though much less solemn, than the burial of Sir John
Moore. Perhaps for a bit of prose flummery, by way of contrast to
Wolfe's lines on the latter event, there is little to equal the account
in a contemporary paper:--'Sorrow sate upon every face, and even
children lisped that their sovereign was no more. The awfulness of the
solemnity made the deepest impression on the minds of the distressed
inhabitants. The peasant discontinued his toil, the ox rested from the
plough, all nature seemed to sympathise with their loss, and the muffled
bells rung a peal of bob-major.'
The Beau left little behind him, and that little not worth much, even
including his renown. Most of the presents which fools or flatterers had
made him, had long since been sent _chez ma tante_; a few trinkets and
pictures, and a few books, which probably he had never read, constituted
his little store.
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