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.

* * * * *

                          Whatsoever wrong

By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue,
Thou hast redeem’d, and opened us a mine
Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line
Of masculine expression, which, had good
Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood
Our superstitious fools admire, and hold
Their lead more precious than thy burnish’d gold,
Thou hadst been their exchequer.... 
Let others carve the rest; it will suffice
I on thy grave this epitaph incise:—­
Here lies a King, that ruled as he thought fit
The universal monarchy of wit;
Here lies two Flamens, and both these the best,—­
Apollo’s first, at last the True God’s priest.