From Curiosities of American Literature.
NOTHING more admirably illustrates the character of the founders of New England than their epitaphs, elegies, anagrams, and other portraitures of each other. Grave doctors of divinitymen more learned in classical literature and scholastic theology than any since their timeprided themselves upon the excellence of their puns and epigrams, and the cleverness shown by a few celebrated persons in their species of fashionable trifling constituted their principal claim to immortality. In the Magnalia Christi Americana, Thomas Shepard, a minister of Charlestown, is described as the greatest anagrammatizer since the days of Lycophron, and the pastoral care of the renowned Cotton Mather himself is characteristically described as distinguished for
Care to guide his flock and feed his lambs | |
By words, works, prayers, psalms, alms, andanagrams! |
JOHN WILSON, Anagr. JOHN WILSON | |
O change it not! no sweeter name or thing | |
Throughout the world within our ears shall ring! |
Our new-built church now suffers by this | |
Larger its Windows, but its Lights one less. |
Thomas Dudley, who came to Massachusetts in 1630 as deputy governor, was subsequently chief magistrate of the colony for several years. He died on the last day of July, 1653, in the seventy-third year of his age, and was buried in Roxbury, where, in the records of the Congregational Church, is preserved an anagram said to have been sent to him by some anonymous writer, in 1645.
THOMAS DUDLEY, Anagr. | |
Ah, old must dye! | |
A deaths head on your hand you need not weare | |
A dying head you on your shoulders beare. | |
You need not one to mynd you you must dye | |
You in your name may spell mortalitye. | |
Young men may dye, but old men, they dye must, | |
Twill not be long before you turn to dust. | |
Before you turn to dust! Ah! must old dye? | |
What shall young doe, when old in dust doe lye? | |
When old in dust lye, what New England doe? | |
When old in dust doe lye, its best dye too. |
ON HIMSELFBY THOMAS DUDLEY | |
Farewell, dear wife, children, and friends! | |
Hate heresy, make blessed ends, | |
Bear povertye, live with good men, | |
So shall we live with joy agen. | |
Let men of God in courts and churches watch | |
Oer such as doe a Toleration hatch, | |
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice | |
To poison all with heresy and vice. | |
If men be left and otherwise combine, | |
My epitaphsI dyed no Libertyne! |
Here lies Thomas Dudley, that trusty old stud | |
A bargains a bargain, and must be made good! |
Donne nor Cowley ever produced anything more full of quaint conceits, antitheses, and puns, than the elegy written by Benjamin Woodbridge, in 1654, on John Cotton:
Here lies magnanimous humility, | |
Majesty, meekness, Christian apathy, | |
On soft affections; liberty, in thrall | |
A simple serpent, or serpentine dove. | |
Neatness embroidered with itself alone, | |
And devils canonized in a gown, | |
A living, breathing Bible; table where | |
Both covenants at large engraven are; | |
Gospel and law, ins heart, had each its column; | |
His head an index to the sacred volume; | |
His very names a title-page, and next | |
His life a commentary on the text. | |
Oh, what a monument of glorious worth, | |
Where, in a new edition, he comes forth, | |
Without errata, may we think hell be | |
In leaves and covers of eternity. |
The celebrated epitaph of Dr. Franklin is supposed to have been suggested by this; but the lines of Joseph Capen, a minister of Topsfield, on Mr. John Foster, an ingenious mathematician and printer, bear to it a still closer resemblance:
Thy body which no activeness did lack, | |
Nows laid aside, like an old almanack; | |
But for the present onlys out of date; | |
Twill have at length a far more active state; | |
Yea, though with dust thy body soiled be, | |
Yet at the resurrection we shall see | |
A fair edition, and of matchless worth. | |
Free from errata, new in heaven set forth; | |
Tis but a word from God, the great Creator, | |
It shall be done when he saith Imprimatur. |
One of the most poetical of the epitaphs of this period is that by Cotton Mather on the Rev. Thomas Shepard, before mentioned, who died in 1649:
Heare lies intombed a heavenly orator, | |
From the great King of kings Ambassador | |
Mirrour of virtues, magazine of artes, | |
Crown to our heads, and loadstone to our heartes. |
The following lines are from the monument of the Rev. Richard Mather, who died in Dorchester, in 1669, aged seventy-three:
Richardus hic dormit Matherus, | |
Sed nec totus nec mora diu tuma, | |
Lætatus genuisse pares. | |
Incertum est utrum doctior an melior | |
Anima et gloria non queunt humani. | |
(sic) |
Divinely rich and learned Richard Mather, | |
Sons like him, prophets great, rejoiced his father. | |
Short time his sleeping dust heres coverd down; | |
Nor his ascended spirit or renown. |
Here, in a tyrants hand, doth captive lye | |
A rare synopsis of divinitye. | |
Old patriarchs, prophets, gospel bishop meet | |
Under deep silence in their winding sheet. | |
All rest awhile, in hopes and full intent, | |
When their King calls, to sit in Parliament. |
Governor Theophilus Eaton, of New Haven, died at an advanced age, on the seventh of January, 1657. His son-in-law, Deputy-Governor William Jones, and his daughter, are buried near him, and are alluded to in the lines upon the monument erected to his memory:
Eaton, so famed, so wise, so meek, so just | |
The phnix of our worldhere lies in dust. | |
His name forget New England never must. | |
T attend you syr, undr these framed stones | |
Are come yr honrd son and daughter Jones, | |
On each hand to repose yr weary bones. |
The next is from an old monument in Dorchester:
Heare lyes our captaine, who major | |
Of Suffolk was withall, | |
A goodly magistrate was he, | |
And major generall! | |
Two troops of horse with him here come, | |
Such worth his love did crave, | |
Ten companyes of foot, also, | |
Mourning marcht to his grave. | |
Let all who read be sure to keep | |
The faith as he has don; | |
With Christ he now lives crownd; his name | |
Was Humphrey Atherton. | |
He died the 16th of November, 1661. |
In the same cemetery lies the body of James Humfrey, one of the ruling elders of Dorchester, who departed this life May 12th, 1686, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. His epitaph, like many of that period, is in the form of an acrostic:
Inclosed within this shrine is precious dust, | |
And only waits the rising of the just; | |
Most useful while he lived, adornd his station, | |
Even to old age he served his generation; | |
Since his decease, thought of with veneration. | |
How great a blessing this ruling elder, he | |
Unto this church and town, and pastors three; | |
Mather the first did by him help receive, | |
Flint he did next his burden much relieve. | |
Renowned Danforth did he assist with skill; | |
Esteemed high by all, bearing fruit until | |
Yielding to death, his glorious seat did fill. |
In costly verse, and most laborious rhymes, | |
He dishd up truths right worthy our regard. |
THE EXCELLENT MICHAEL WIGGLEWORTH | |
Remembered by some good tokens | |
His pen did once meat from the eater fetch; | |
And now hes gone beyond the eaters reach. | |
His body, once so thin, was next to none; | |
From hence hes to unbodied spirits flown. | |
Once his rare skill did all diseases heal; | |
And he does nothing now uneasy feel. | |
He to his Paradise is joyful come, | |
And waits with joy to see his Day of Doom. |
He who among physicians shone so late, | |
And by his wise prescriptions conquerd Fate, | |
Now lies extended in the silent grave, | |
Nor him alive would his vast merit save. | |
But still his fame shall last, his virtues live, | |
And all sepulchral monuments survive. | |
Still flourish shall his name; nor shall this stone | |
Long as his piety and love be known. |
Many of the elegies preserved in the Magnalia, Mortons New England Memorial, and other works of the time, are not less curious than the briefer tributes engraven upon the tombstones of the Pilgrims.