Haec ego lusi
Ad Sequanæ ripas, Tamesino a flumine longe
Jam senior, fractusque, sed ipsa morte meorum
Quos colui, patriæque memor, neque degener usquam.’
They who were of the prelate’s way of thinking made him, in one sense, speak, or be felt, even in his grave. The body of the Jacobite Bishop of Rochester had scarcely been deposited at the west end of the south aisle of Westminster Abbey, of which he had been the Dean, when copies of an epigrammatic epitaph were circulating from hand to hand, and were being read with hilarity or censure in the various London coffee-houses and taverns. It ran to another tune than that made upon him by Prior, namely:—
His foes, when dead great Atterbury lay,
Shrunk at his corse, and trembled at his clay.
Ten thousand dangers to their eyes appear,
Great as their guilt and certain as their fear!
T’ insult a deathless corse, alas! is vain;