“And then ye’ll take my gallant bill, My bill that pecks the corn, And give it to the Duke of Hamilton To be a hunting horn.”
Whether in prose or in verse—verse not seldom prosaic—a striking similarity of idea runs through them, from the will of the cochon of the fourth century, who gives his teeth to the quarrelsome, his ears to the deaf, his muscles to the weak, down to the will of Chatterton in the eighteenth century, who gives “all my vigour and fire of youth to Mr. George Catcott, being sensible he is most in want of it,” and “from the same charitable motive ... unto the Rev. Mr. Camplin, senior, all my humility.”
On earth all things decay and have their period, so all things may make their wills.
“Omnia tempus edax depascitur, omnia carpit, Omnia sede movet, nil sinit esse diu.”
The idea may be indefinitely extended. Among the writings of Thomas Nash, for instance, is a fantasy entitled “Summer’s Last Will and Testament.”
Summer loquitur.
“Enough of this, let me go make my will.... The surest way to get my will performed Is to make my executor my heir, And he, if all be given him, and none else, Unfallibly will see it well performed. Lions will feed, though none bid them fall to, Ill grows the tree affordeth ne’er a graft.
This is the last stroke my tongue’s clock must strike My last will, which I will that you perform: My crown I have disposed already of. Item, I give my withered flowers and herbs Unto dead corpses, for to deck them with; My shady walks to great men’s servitors, Who in their masters’ shadows walk secure; My pleasant open air, and fragrant smells, To Croydon and the grounds abutting round; My heat and warmth to toiling labourers, My long days to bondmen and prisoners— My fruits to Autumn, my adopted heir, My murmuring springs, musicians of sweet sleep, To murmuring malcontents, with their well-tuned ears, Channelled in a sweet falling quatorzain, Do lull their ears asleep, listening themselves....”
Peignot, in his “Choix de Testaments” (1829) made a beginning of a bibliography of imaginative or imaginary wills, among which he cites the last will of the Ligue in the “Satyre Ménippée.” It has eloquent and poignant passages.