[Golias]

The great diarist and observer of the English Restoration has never, to my knowledge, been called a poet, but much of his writing is rhythmical, and some of his journal entries easily convert to blank verse. Here, with minimal modification, is a portion of his entry for the day he attended the funeral of the naval hero, Sir Christopher Myngs, who had fallen in a channel battle with the Dutch fleet. "His Royal Highness" is James Stewart, Duke of York, later King James II, who was then first lord of the Admiralty Board, of which Mr.Pepys was Secretary.


13 June, 1666:

...and so to Sir Christopher Mings' Funerall,
into the church, and there I heard the service
and stayed until they buried him, then out.
And there met with Sir Wm. Coventry
(who was there out of great generosity,
and no person of quality there but he)
and went with him into his Coach;
and being in it with him, there happened
this extraordinary case -- the most
Romantique that I ever heard of in my life,
and could not have believed it true
but I did see it -- which was this: About
a Dozen lusty, able, proper men
came to coach-side, with tears in their eyes, and one,
who spoke for the rest, begun and said to Sir Wm.,
"We are here, a Dozen of us, that long
have known and loved and served our dead commander,
Sir Christopher Mings, and now we have done
the last office of laying him in the ground.
We would be glad if we had any other
to offer after him, in revenge of him --
Our lives is all we have. If you will please
to get his Royal Highness to give us a Fireshipp,
here is a Dozen of us, out of all
which choose you one of us to be commander,
and the rest, whoever he is, will serve him, and,
if possible, do what shall show our memory
of our dead commander, and our revenge."

Sir Wm. Coventry was herewith much moved
(as well as I, who hardly could abstain
from weeping) and took their names; and so parted,
saying that he would move his Royal Highness
as in a most extraordinary thing.

The truth is that Sir Christopher Mings
was a very stout man, and a man of great parts,
of most excellent tongue among ordinary men;
and as Sir Wm. Coventry says, he could
have been the most useful man in the world at such
a pinch of time as this. And he was come
into great renowne at home, and more abroad,
in the West Indys. He had brought his family
into a way of being great. But dying
at this time, his memory and his name
(his father being always, and at this day,
a Shoemaker, and his mother a Hoyman's daughter,
of which he frequently was used to boast)
will, in a few months, be quite forgot, as if
he had never been, nor any of his name
be the better by it -- he having not had time
to collect any estate; but now is dead,
and poor rather than rich......




[This message has been edited by Golias (edited August 07, 2001).]

[Tim Murphy]

This is a most extraordinary composition, Wiley, and I shall leave it to others to criticize. Once each year I burn through all of Patrick O'Brian's nineteen Aubrey/Maturin novels to remind me of the conventions of civility in the 18th C. and how our language was once well spoken, not by poets, but by officers and gentlemen. Have you A.D. Hope's great book of epistolary poems set in that century, "The Age of Reason?" My life's ambition is to write a long poem consisting of extracts of the correspondence between Jefferson and Adams. When he died on July 4, 1826, Adam's last words were "Thomas Jefferson lives." Jefferson had died a few hour earlier, and it was the fiftieth anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.

[Golias]

Tim,

If you have not yet done so you MUST read Daniel Webster's great speech on the nearly simultaneous deaths of Jefferson and Adams. Now that was eloquence!

I don't have A.D. Hope's epistolary poems, but will get the book.

G.

[This message has been edited by Golias (edited August 07, 2001).]

[David Anthony]

Yes, our forebears had a wonderful feel for the rhythm and flow of language; especially in the 16th and 17th Century, as witness the Book of Common Prayer. Or the Authorised Version of the Bible, so much of which is poetry, even though it was translated by a committee.
Tim, I'm delighted to find another fan of Patrick O'Brian. I cannot understand how anybody could so entirely enter the spirit of another era, or write with such consistent and timeless elegance. To my regret, I've read all his Aubrey/Maturin novels now.
And so to bed.
Regards

[Tim Murphy]

Wiley, Can you direct me to Webster's speech on the web, or mail it to me? I'm dying to read it. A paraphrase in heroic couplets might make a great epithalamion to the project I have in mind.

David, delighted to find another O'Brian fan. I discovered him thanks to reviews published by Bill Buckley, a considerable sailor, and John Lehman, Reagan's secretary of the navy. I was grieved to learn recently that he is gone, but I live in hope that his lit. ex. will give us a successor to "Blue at the Mizzen."

Our forefathers spoke in iambic pentameter, and I once wrote a little cento to that effect, called "Our Stately Measure."

A new nation conceived in liberty,
we hold these truths to be self-evident.
Ask not what your country can do for you:
we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
I don't remember meeting Paula Jones.

[Golias]

Tim, Dartmouth U., where Webster was one of the first students, has a great Webster website. For the Adams-Jefferson speech, go to
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dwebster/s...jefferson.html


Enjoy...and please do not be put off by several typos in the text which I have already asked the Dartmouth webmaster to correct.


G

[This message has been edited by Golias (edited August 07, 2001).]

[Jim Hayes]

Golias, what a masterful contribution, I enjoyed greatly.

For an example of a speech uttered in the most trying of circumstance and fated to influence the republican ideals of Irishmen for centuries, might I commend you to;
www.robertemmet.org/ and click on speech.

Good to read you;

Jim

[conny]

I really have nothing to add but to say that I loved Pepys at school and hated Dickens with a passion.
Many thanks for posting this, something I would never have dreampt of doing. Also thanks for the signposts, especially the Adams-Jefferson speech which is wonderful.
If there is one, it deserves to be above the Eratosphere mantel piece.

DC

PS.
What is the earliest `American' verse you know of?
My very English English teacher hated all things
American and that speech has made me curious.Maybe
i`ll impose myself on that memory man fella...

[Tim Murphy]

Dear Colleagues, Many thanks for posting the links to these speeches. Frankly, I found Webster a bit long-winded, though from what we're told of his fabled delivery, I'm sure he held his audience. Jim, stirring stuff. Over here the only thing comparable is Patrick Henry's speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses, "Give me liberty or give me death." And young Nathan Hale on the scaffold, "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country."

[robert mezey]

If I'm not mistaken, Anne Bradstreet is our
earliest poet, "the 10th Muse lately sprung
up in America." (I'm not counting Indians,
obviously.) A few years later, the Bay
Psalm Book and Michael Wigglesworth.
I'm not a fan of the current fashion of
disinterring and anthologizing the crowd
of female poetasters for political reasons,
but Bradstreet is a real poet, and at her
best, very touching and charming.