The leaves at the end of this little book are filled up with two
copies of funeral verses on Dean Donne. These are unsigned, but we
know from other sources to whom to attribute them. Each is by an
eminent man. The first was written by Dr. Henry King, then the royal
chaplain, and afterward Bishop of Chichester, to whom the Dean had
left, besides a model in gold of the Synod of Dort, that painting of
himself in the winding-sheet of which we have already spoken. This
portrait Dr. King put into the hands of Nicholas Stone, the sculptor,
who made a reproduction of it in white marble, with the little urn
concealing the feet. This was placed in St. Paul's Cathedral, of which
King was chief residentiary, and may still be seen in the present
Cathedral King's elegy is very prosy in starting, but improves as it
goes along, and is most ingenious throughout. These are the words in
which he refers to the appearance of the dying preacher in the pulpit:
_Thou (like the dying Swan) didst lately sing
Thy mournful dirge in audience of the King;
When pale looks, and weak accents of thy breath
Presented so to life that piece of death,
That it was feared and prophesied by all
Thou thither cam'st to preach thy funeral_.
The other elegy is believed to have been written by a young man of
twenty-one, who was modestly and enthusiastically seeking the company
of the most famous London wits. This was Edward Hyde, thirty years
later to become Earl of Clarendon, and finally to leave behind him
manuscripts which should prove him the first great English historian.
His verses here bespeak his good intention, but no facility in
rhyming.
It was left for the riper disciples of the great divine to sing his
funerals in more effective numbers. Of the crowd of poets who attended
him with music to the grave, none expressed his merits in such
excellent verses or with so much critical judgment as Thomas Carew,
the king's sewer in ordinary. It is not so well known but that we
quote some lines from it:
_The fire
That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic choir,
Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath,
Glow'd here awhile, lies quench'd now in thy death.
The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee, the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away,
And fresh invention planted; thou disdt pay
The debts of our penurious bankrupt age_.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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