He was of stature moderately tall, of a straight and equally-proportioned body; to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible addition of comeliness.

The melancholy and pleasant humor were in him so contempered, that each gave advantage to the other, and made his company one of the delights of mankind.

His fancy was inimitably high, equalled only by his great wit; both being made useful by a commanding judgment.

His aspect was cheerful, and such as gave a silent testimony of a clear-knowing soul, and of a conscience at peace with itself.

His melting eye showed that he had a soft heart, full of compassion; of too brave a soul to offer injuries, and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others.

He did much contemplate (especially after he entered into his sacred calling) the mercies of Almighty God, the immortality of the soul, and the joys of heaven; and would often say, in a kind of sacred ecstasy, "Blessed be God that he is God, only and divinely like himself."

He was by nature highly passionate, but more apt to reluct at the excesses of it; a great lover of the offices of humanity, and of so merciful a spirit, that he never beheld the miseries of mankind without pity and relief.

He was earnest and unwearied in the search of knowledge; with which his vigorous soul is now satisfied, and employed in a continual praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body; that body, which once was a temple of the Holy Ghost, and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust. But I shall see it reänimated.

FEBRUARY 15, 1639.

J. WALTON.

AN EPITAPH

WRITTEN BY

DR. CORBET, LATE BISHOP OF OXFORD,

ON HIS FRIEND, Dr. DONNE.

He that would write an epitaph for thee,
And write it well, must first begin to be
Such as thou wert; for none can truly know
Thy life and worth, but he that hath lived so.
He must have wit to spare, and to hurl down,
Enough to keep the gallants of the town.
He must have learning plenty; both the laws,
Civil and common, to judge any cause;
Divinity great store above the rest,
Not of the last edition, but the best.
He must have language, travel, all the arts,
Judgment to use, or else he wants thy parts.
He must have friends the highest, able to do,
Such as Mæcenas, and Augustus too.
He must have such a sickness, such a death,
Or else his vain descriptions come beneath.
He that would write an epitaph for thee
Should first be dead; let it alone for me.

TO THE MEMORY OF

MY EVER DESIRED DR. DONNE.

AN ELEGY,

BY H. KING, LATE BISHOP OF CHICHESTER.

To have lived eminent, in a degree

Beyond our loftiest thoughts, that is, like thee;
Or t' have had too much merit, is not safe,
For such excesses find no epitaph.

At common graves we have poetic eyes
Can melt themselves in easy elegies;
Each quill can drop his tributary verse,
And pin it, like the hatchments, to the hearse :
But at thine, poem or inscription

(Rich soul of wit and language) we have none. Indeed a silence does that tomb befit,

Where is no herald left to blazon it.
Widowed Invention justly doth forbear
To come abroad, knowing thou art not there:
Late her great patron, whose prerogative
Maintained and clothed her so, as none alive
Must now presume to keep her at thy rate,
Though he the Indies for her dower estate.
Or else that awful fire, which once did burn
In thy clear brain, now fallen into thy urn,
Lives there to fright rude empirics from thence,
Which might profane thee by their ignorance.

Whoever writes of thee, and in a style
Unworthy such a theme, does but revile

Thy precious dust, and wakes a learned spirit,
Which may revenge his rapes upon thy merit.
For all a low-pitched fancy can devise
Will prove at best but hallowed injuries.

Thou, like the dying swan, didst lately sing
Thy mournful dirge in audience of the king;
When pale looks and faint 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.
Oh! hadst thou in an elegiac knell
Rung out unto the world thine own farewell,
And in thy high, victorious numbers beat
The solemn measures of thy grieved retreat,
Thou might'st the poet's service now have missed,
As well as then thou didst prevent the priest:
And never to the world beholden be,

So much as for an epitaph for thee.

I do not like the office: nor is 't fit

Thou, who didst lend our age such sums of wit,
Shouldst now reborrow from her bankrupt mine
That ore to bury thee which first was thine
Rather still leave us in thy debt; and know,
Exalted soul! more glory 't is to owe
Thy memory, what we can never pay,
Than with embased coin those rites defray.

Commit we then thee to thyself, nor blame Our drooping loves, that thus to thine own fame