The end of this, one of the most pathetic of histories, was at hand;
the end was not the less pathetic because it came in so homely a
fashion. On a cold day in March he stopped his coach in the snow on his
way to Highgate, to try the effect of cold in arresting putrefaction. He
bought a hen from a woman by the way, and stuffed it with snow. He was
taken with a bad chill, which forced him to stop at a strange house,
Lord Arundel's, to whom he wrote his last letter--a letter of apology
for using his house. He did not write the letter as a dying man. But
disease had fastened on him. A few days after, early on Easter morning,
April 9, 1626, he passed away. He was buried at St. Albans, in the
Church of St. Michael, "the only Christian church within the walls of
old Verulam." "For my name and memory," he said in his will, "I leave it
to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages."
So he died: the brightest, richest, largest mind but one, in the age
which had seen Shakespeare and his fellows; so bright and rich and large
that there have been found those who identify him with the writer of
_Hamlet_ and _Othello_.
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