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After dinner I fell into company with some gentlemen who were talking about the coming guild that ancient local festival, which is so clear to the people of Preston, that they are not likely to allow it to go by wholly unhonoured, however severe the times may be. Amongst them was a gray-haired friend of mine, who is a genuine humorist. He told us many quaint anecdotes.
"Unwept and unhonoured, may be," said I to my friend, "but they shall not go all unsung, though humble be the rhyme"; so here is the rhyme I affixed to an old nail on the mouldering side of the Janita C. Williams: You who have done your work and asked no praise, Mouldering in these unhonoured waterways, Carrying but simple peace and quiet fire, Doing a small day's work for a small hire You need not praise, nor guns, nor flags unfurled, Nor all such cloudy glories of the world; The laurel of a simple duty done Is the best laurel underneath the sun, Yet would two strangers passing by this spot Whisper, "Old boat you are not all forgot!"
Well then, let it be with one person of all others the fittest for it: but by this means the power will be still more contracted, and a greater number than before continue unhonoured. But some one may say, that it is wrong to let man have the supreme power and not the law, as his soul is subject to so many passions.
But they did not fall unhonoured or unwept. In the churches of the faithful in that same city, the sobs of mournful lamentation were mingled with the solemn prayers for their eternal rest, and, from thousands of wailing women and stricken-hearted men, the prayers for mercy, peace, and pardon, for the souls of MICHAEL O'BRIEN, WILLIAM PHILIP ALLEN, and MICHAEL LARKIN, rose upwards to the avenging God.
When his harrassed brain should be solaced by music, will he listen patiently to stupid remarks? I fear not. The man of letters suffers keenlier than people suspect from sharp, cruel noises, from witless observations, from social misconceptions of him of every kind, from hard utilitarian wisdom, and from his own good things going to the grave unrecognised and unhonoured.
A few days later the same unhonoured spot received the mortal remains of Matthew Tone. "He had a more enthusiastic nature than any of us," writes his brother, Theobald Wolfe Tone, "and was a sincere Republican, capable of sacrificing everything for his principles."
I tell you that his courage, his honesty and his devotion will be held in reverence by his countrymen long after you have sunk into your unremembered and unhonoured graves." He towered there in silence for a full half minute and there was not so much as a murmur of reply.
And now all moved away in the pride and wealth of their prizes, their brows bound with scarlet ribbons; when, hardly torn loose by all his art from the cruel rock, his oars lost, rowing feebly with a single tier, Sergestus brought in his ship jeered at and unhonoured.
Well then, these of the better sort shall have it: but must not then all the other citizens live unhonoured, without sharing the offices of the city; for the offices of a city are its honours, and if one set of men are always in power, it is evident that the rest must be without honour.
But John Ardworth had that solidity of understanding which betokens more than talent, and which is the usual substratum of genius. He would not depend alone on the precarious and often unhonoured toils of polemical literature for that distinction on which he had fixed his steadfast heart.
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