Note 532 — CANTO THE FOURTH[375]
Reading edition
[Charlotte Augusta (b. January 7, 1796), only daughter of the Prince Regent, was married to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, May 2, 1816, and died in childbirth, November 6, 1817.
Other poets produced their dirges; but it was left to Byron to deal finely, and as a poet should, with a present grief, which was felt to be a national calamity.
Southey's "Funeral Song for the Princess Charlotte of Wales" was only surpassed in feebleness by Coleridge's "Israel's Lament." Campbell composed a laboured elegy, which was "spoken by Mr ... at Drury Lane Theatre, on the First Opening of the House after the Death of the Princess Charlotte, 1817;" and Montgomery wrote a hymn on "The Royal Infant, Still-born, November 5, 1817."
Not a line of these lamentable effusions has survived; but the poor, pitiful story of common misfortune, with its tragic irony, uncommon circumstance, and far-reaching consequence, found its vates sacer in the author of Childe Harold.]