Joseph Green, Boston wit and satirical poet, was best known for his humorous verse comments on public figures and events in eighteenth-century New England. A comic epitaph, composed for him by an anonymous friend, captured his reputation for wit:

Siste Viator, here lies one,
Whose life was whim, whose soul was pun,
And if you go too near his hearse
He'll joke you, both in prose and verse.

Green was born in Boston, and, after he received his A. B. degree from Harvard in 1726, he began a prosperous career in Boston as a merchant and for a time a distiller. While little is known about his personal life, his verse suggests that he was a shrewd social observer with a tendency to wry mockery. His political leanings were Loyalist, and he was strongly enough identified with opposition to the Revolution that in 1775 he was forced to abandon his...