“Well, what does it matter to us if we are to be forgotten before the spring showers fall a second time on our graves, as Porter was, except by two or three friends? What is it to the leaf that falls, killed by an untimely frost, whether it is remembered or forgotten by its fellows that still cling to the tree, to fall a little later in the season? Men are seldom remembered after death for anything that you or I would care to be remembered for. “Porter would not have cared to be remembered by many, nor by any one, unless with affection for his unbounded goodness of heart and generosity. Nor am I covetous of large remembrance among men. If I should die before him, I should wish, if I cared for anything here after death more than a dead leaf does, to have Oakes come to my grave, as I wish that he and I could go to that of Porter, and there repeat, in the language to which no translation can do justice, this exquisite threnody of Catullus: INFERIÆ AD FRATRIS TUMULUM. Multas per gentes et multa per æquora vectus, Advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis, Et mutum nequicquam alloquerer cinerem, Quandoquidem Fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum, Heu miser indigne frater ademte mihi Nunc tamen interea hæc prisco quæ more parentum Tradita sunt tristes munera ad inferias, Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu, Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. “Discontented with the translations whereof by Lamb, Elton, and Hodgson, I have endeavored this more literal one: “Through many nations, over many seas, Brother, to this sad sacrifice I come To pay to thee Death’s final offices, And, though in vain, invoke thine ashes dumb, Since Fate’s fell swoop has torn thyself from me,— Alas, poor brother, from me severed ruthlessly! “Therefore, meanwhile, these offices of sorrow, Which, by old custom of our fathers’ years To the last sacrifice assigned, I borrow, Flowing with torrents of fraternal tears, Accept, though only half my grief they tell,— And so, forever, brother, bless thee, and farewell!” Such as he has been above described was the man who for forty-three years best loved Edwin Forrest and whom in return Edwin Forrest best loved. How much this means, the narrative of their friendship that follows will show.