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EPITAPH ON SIR GEORGE SPEKE.

UNDER this ftone lies virtue, youth,

Unblemish'd probity, and truth:

Juft unto all relations known,

A worthy patriot, pious fon:

Whom neighbouring towns fo often fent,
To give their sense in Parliament;
With lives and fortunes trufting one,
Who fo difcreetly us'd his own.
Sober he was, wife, temperate;
Contented with an old eftate,

Which no foul avarice did increase,
Nor wanton luxury make lefs.

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his father dy'd,

And left him to an happy guide:

Not Lemuel's mother with more care
Did counsel or inftruct her heir;

Or teach with more fuccefs her fon
The vices of the time to fhun.
An heiress fhe; while yet alive,
All that was her's to him did give:
And he just gratitude did fhow
To one that had oblig'd him so :
Nothing too much for her he thought,
By whom he was so bred and taught,
So (early made that path to tread,
Which did his youth to honour lead)
His short life did a pattern give,

⚫How neighbours, hufbands, friends, should live.

The

The virtues of a private life

Exceed the glorious noise and ftrife,
Of battles won: in those we find
The folid intereft of mankind.

Approv'd by all, and lov'd fo well,
Though young, like fruit that 's ripe, he fell.

EPITAPH on Colonel CHARLES CAVENDISH.

ERE lies Charles Ca'ndish: let the marble

HR

stone,

That hides his afhes, make his virtue known.
Beauty and valour did his short life
grace;
The grief and glory of his noble race!
Early abroad he did the world furvey,
As if he knew he had not long to stay :
Saw what great Alexander in the East,
And mighty Julius conquer'd in the West.
Then, with a mind as great as theirs, he came
To find at home occafion for his fame:
Where dark confufion did the nations hide,
And where the jufter was the weaker fide.
Two loyal brothers took their Sovereign's part,
Employ'd their wealth, their courage, and their art:
The * elder did whole regiments afford;

The younger brought his conduct and his fword.

*William Earl of Devonshire..

Born

Born to command, a leader he begun,
And on the rebels lafting honour won:
The Horse, inftructed by their General's worth,
Still made the King victorious in the North:
Where Ca'ndish fought, the Royalists prevail'd;
Neither his courage nor his judgment fail'd:
The current of his victories found no stop,
Till Cromwell came, his party's chiefeft prop.
Equal fuccefs had set these champions high,
And both refolv'd to conquer or to die:
Virtue with rage, fury with valour, ftrove;
But that muft fall which is decreed above!
Cromwell, with odds of number and of fate,
Remov'd this bulwark of the Church and State:
Which the fad iffue of the war declar'd,
And made his task, to ruin both, lefs hard.
So when the bank neglected is o'erthrown,
The boundless torrent does the country drown.
Thus fell the young, the lovely, and the brave;
Strew bays and flowers upon his honour'd grave!

EPITAPH ON THE LADY SEDLEY.
ERE lies the learned Savil's heir;

H

So early wife, and lasting fair!
That none, except her years they told,
Thought her a child, or thought her old.
All that her father knew, or got,
His art, his wealth, fell to her lot:
And the fo well improv'd that stock,
Both of his knowledge and his flock;

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That Wit and Fortune, reconcil'd
In her, upon each other smil'd.
While the to every well-taught mind
Was fo propitiously inclin'd,

And gave fuch title to her store,

That none, but th' ignorant, were poor.
The Mufes daily found fupplies,
Both from her hands and from her eyes;
Her bounty did at once engage,

And matchless beauty warm their rage.
Such was this dame in calmer days,
Her nation's ornament and praife!
But when a ftorm disturb'd our reft,
The port and refuge of th' oppreft.
This made her fortune understood,
And look'd on as fome public good;
So that (her person and her state
Exempted from the common fate)
In all our civil fury the

Stood, like a facred temple, free.
May here her monument stand fo,
To credit this rude age! and show
To future times, that even we
Some patterns did of virtue fee:
And one fublime example had
of good, among fo many

bad.

EPITAPH,

EPITAPH,

To be written under the Latin Infcription upon the Tomb of the only Son of the Lord ANDOVER.

"T

IS fit the English reader should be told,

In our own language, what this tomb does hold. 'Tis not a noble corpfe alone does lie.

Under this stone, but a whole family:

His parents' pious care, their name, their joy,,
And all their hope, lies buried with this boy:
This lovely youth! for whom we all made moan,
That knew his worth, as he had been our own.

Had there been space, and years enough allow'd,.
His courage, wit, and breeding to have show'd,
We had not found, in all the numerous roll
Of his fam'd ancestors, a greater foul:

His early virtues to that ancient stock

Gave as much honour as from thence he took..
Like buds appearing ere the frosts are past,
To become man he made such fatal hafte;
And to perfection labour'd so to climb,
Preventing flow experience and time;

That 'tis no wonder death our hopes beguil'd:.
He 's feldom old, that will not be a child..

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