John Mortimer, creator of the Rumpole series, died on Friday. He was 85. I only became a fan of his recently, reading three books of his year (breaking my usual rule of reading only one book by an author per year) and enjoying them immensely. Horace Rumpole was a witty, curmudgeonly lawyer who defends the occasionally innocent criminals of London, drinking his claret and quoting poetry liberally along the way.
Upon hearing the news of Mortimer's death, I flipped through the Rumpole of the Bailey and came across Rumpole quoting Keats' Ode to a Nightingale:
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain
But that seems to serious a note to end on, even if Rumpole is just battling the flu. So I prefer these lines, which Rumpole speaks in the same book, as my tribute to John Mortimer.
"'Fare thee well! and if forever still forever, fare thee well!' It takes a bad moment to make me fall back on Lord Byron."
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