Literary last words

From The Guardian:

Portrait-of-George-Gordon-019

Terry Breverton selects some of literature's most memorable farewells, from Samuel Johnson to James Joyce

LORD BYRON 1788 – 1824
‘Come, come, no weakness; let’s be a man to the last!’

Byron was attended by two young doctors on his death bed in Missolonghi.

Faced with the terrible problem of treating a world-famous figure for an illness which neither knew anything about, they fell back on the usual treatment of the time – to bleed the patient and so reduce his fever. Byron resisted, saying that there had been 'more deaths by lancet than by the lance', but gave in when warned that the disease could ‘deprive him of reason'. The weakened poet sank into unconsciousness and died under his terrified doctors' hands. After the autopsy the doctors blamed each other for the death

More here.