Des Barreaux, it is said, wrote, on his death-bed, that sonnet which is well known, and which is translated in the “Spectator.”
Margaret of Austria, when she was nearly perishing in a storm at sea, composed for herself the following epitaph in verse:
“Beneath this tomb is high-born Margaret laid,
Who had two husbands, and yet died a maid.”
She was betrothed to Charles VIII. of France, who forsook her. Being next intended for the Spanish Infant, in her voyage to Spain she wrote these lines in a storm.
Roscommon, at the moment he expired, with an energy of voice (says his biographer) that expressed the most fervent devotion, uttered two lines of his own version of “Dies Iræ!”
Waller, in his last moments, repeated some lines from Virgil: and Chaucer took his farewell of all human vanities by a moral ode, entitled, “A ballad made by Geffrey Chauycer upon his dethe-bedde lying in his grete anguysse.”
“The muse that has attended my course (says the dying Gleim, in a letter to Klopstock[4]) still hovers round my steps to the very verge of the grave.” A collection of songs, composed by old Gleim on his death-bed, it is said, were intended to be published.
Chatellard, a French gentleman, beheaded in Scotland, for having loved the Queen, and even for having attempted her honour, Brantome says, would not have any other viaticum than a poem of Ronsard. When he ascended the scaffold, he took the hymns of this poet, and for his consolation read that on death; which, he says, is well adapted to conquer its fear. He preferred the poems of Ronsard to either a prayer-book or his confessor: such was his passion.
The Marquis of Montrose, when he was condemned by his judges to have his limbs nailed to the gates of four cities, the brave soldier said that, “he was sorry he had not limbs sufficient to be nailed to all the gates of the cities in Europe, as monuments of his loyalty.” As he proceeded to his execution, he put this thought into beautiful verse.
Philip Strozzi, when imprisoned by Cosmo the First, great Duke of Tuscany, was apprehensive of the danger to which he might expose his friends, (who had joined in his conspiracy against the duke,) from the confessions which the rack might extort from him. Having attempted every exertion for the liberty of his country, he considered it no crime therefore to die. He resolved on suicide. With the point of the sword, with which he killed himself, he first engraved on the mantle-piece of the chimney, this verse of Virgil: