The deep that swallows diamonds and gold;
Fame ev'n thy sacred relics does pursue,
Richer than all the treasures of Peru:
While the kind sea thy breathless body brings
Safe to the bed of honour and of kings.
Elegy on the Earl of Sandwich.] Pepys's (the first) Earl, who perished at the fight of Solebay in 1672. The duplication (see next piece) looks as if Flatman had had some personal connexion with him. At any rate there are expressions which are not the mere conventions of such writing. Line 6, and in fact the whole vigorous triplet in which it occurs, must be connected with the nearly certain facts that Sandwich's advice would have prevented the most unfavourable of the conditions under which the English fought; that the Duke of York not only would not listen but hinted at cowardice on Sandwich's part; and that the Earl in consequence, not only, as Mr. David Hannay (A Short History of the Royal Navy, i. 423) says, 'fought the ship on this the last and most glorious day of his life, with determined courage', but refused to attempt to save his life by swimming, when she was grappled by a fireship and burnt. Moreover, the last lines express the fact that the body was only recovered after being washed ashore some days after the battle, when it was duly buried in Westminster Abbey, 'the bed of honour and of kings'.
An Epitaph on the Earl of Sandwich.
Here lies the dust of that illustrious man,