But the king's favour for his recompense.
One for religion, or his country's good,
That valu'd not his fortune, nor his blood.
One high in fair opinion, rich in praise,
20And full of all we could have wish'd, but days.
He that is warn'd of this, and shall forbear
To vent a sigh for him, or lend a tear;
May he live long and scorn'd, unpitied fall,
And want a mourner at his funeral.
An Epitaph.] This Dorset was the third earl, Richard. As a very young man he married the famous Lady Anne Clifford, whose ill-luck in husbands may have been partly caused, but must have been somewhat compensated, by her masterful temper. Dorset, who died young, was both a libertine and a spendthrift; but King seems to have thought well enough of him not only to write this epitaph, but to lend him, or guarantee for him, a thousand pounds (quite £3,000 to-day), which he had at any rate not got back thirty years afterwards. The present piece appears, with variants, in Corbet's Poems, but King seems to have the better claim. Hannah gives a considerable body of various readings from the Corbet version and one in the Ashmole MS. 38, but it hardly seems worth while to burden the page-foot with them, for the epitaph is mere 'common-form' and of no special interest.