“I love you, my sweet dear heart. Go I pray you please my love.”[366] There is a marriage gold ring of the time of Richard the Second of England, having a French motto, translated, _Be of good heart_, and bearing the figure of St. Catharine with her wheel, emblematical of good fortune, and St. Margaret, to whom Catholics address their devotions for safe delivery in childbirth.[367] The author has seen an old American ring, in the possession of a young man, whose grandfather presented it on his wedding day to his wife. It has a piece of jet set in it and is cut into raised angular facets. On the inside is engraved: “_First love Christ, that died for thee,_ _Next to him, love none but me._” _T. A. G._ John Dunton, a London bookseller and who is mentioned in the _Dunciad_, describes, in his autobiography, his wedding-ring: as having two hearts united upon it and this poesy: “_God saw thee_ _Most fit for me._” This would not seem to have attached to his second wife; for she left him and wrote in one of her letters, “I and all good people think you never married me for love, but for my money.” Dr. John Thomas, who was Bishop of Lincoln in 1753, married four times. The motto or poesy on the wedding-ring at his fourth marriage was: “If I survive, I’ll make them five.” This Rev. Dr. John Thomas was a man of genial humor. He used to tell a story of his burying a body; and a woman came “and pulled me,” said he, “by the sleeve in the middle of the service. ‘Sir, sir, I want to speak to you.’ ‘Prythee,’ says I, ‘woman, wait till I have done.’ ‘No, sir, I must speak to you immediately.’ ‘Why then, what is the matter?’ ‘Why sir,’ says she, ‘you are burying a man who died of the small-pox next to my poor husband, who never had it.’” § 20. Heroes, philosophers, poets--indeed, men of all classes leave remembrances in the shape of rings. The will of Washington contains this: “To my sisters-in-law Hannah Washington and Mildred Washington, to my friends Eleanor Stuart, Hannah Washington of Fairfield and Elizabeth Washington of Hayfield, I give each a mourning ring of the value of one hundred dollars. These bequests are not made for the intrinsic value of them, but as mementoes of my esteem and regard.” Shakspeare bequeathes such tokens to several friends--among them, to his brother players, whom he calls “my poor fellows”--“twenty shillings eight pence apiece to buy them rings.” Pope bequeathed sums of five pounds to friends, who were to lay them out in rings. This great poet was no admirer of funerals that blackened all the way or of gorgeous tombs: “As to my body, my will is that it be buried near the monument of my dear parents at Twickenham, with the addition after the words _filius fecit_ of these only, _et sibi_: _Qui obiit anno 17_--, _ætatis_--: and that it be carried to the grave by six of the poorest men of the parish, to each of whom I order a suit of gray coarse cloth as mourning.”