In such passages as this (and they are numerous) we have Dunton's nearest approach to the manner of the later graveyard poets and Hervey's prose Meditations among the Tombs (1746). This particular touch seems also to have been partly an addition made by Dunton himself; at least this entire dialogue bears the earmarks of his shoddy style. Strangely enough, the poets of death had not yet discovered the psychological advantage to be gained by localizing their abstractions. A few exceptions can be found, notably Beaumont's beautiful Lines upon the Tombs in Westminster Abbey; but they are remarkably few, and in no case had the possibility of definite locale been fully utilized. This was the one discovery left for Parnell and his school. And it is here that Dunton really had something to offer these funeral successors of his. But he was not content to stop at the grave. We are treated to all the terrible signs that are to precede the Final Judgment, an account of the Trial as full as that given by Michael Wigglesworth, and also the sufferings of souls in the flames of Hell.

Heavenly Pastimes (1685), a combination of prose and verse, may be dismissed briefly. It is another of the numerous seventeenth-century attempts to popularize the stories of the Old Testament. Though assigned in the title to the elder John Dunton, it is more probably an enterprise of the son's, probably too a dishonest

The last of his encyclopedic treatises on death was A MourningRing. In Memory of your Departed Friend (1692), an awesome mass including considerable material from his previous publications. This also is "Recommended as proper to be given at funerals." The idea of introducing the use of books as funeral

28 The following description from the Term Catalogues differs somewhat from the title actually used: "A very delightful New-year's gift, entituled, Heaven's Pastimes, or Pleasant Observations on all the most remarkable passages throughout the Holy Bible, newly allegorized, in several pleasant Dialogues, etc. To which is added, I. The miraculous manner of the Production of our Grandmother Eve, with the supposed manner of Adam's first Nuptial Addresses. 2. Eve's first Addresses to Adam, and industry in making Garments for her Husband. 3. Adam and Eve's Winter-Sutes, their Lodging and first Building, an account in what pretty manner they first invented fire, etc." (II, 113, Feb., 1685). The name of the author is not given. This is another of the books Dunton afterwards regretted having published. (Life and Errors, 1, 159.)

gifts had now been fructifying in his mind for ten years. By this time he had organized the Athenian Society. The subject had come up for discussion in this learned body, and his colleagues had heartily endorsed his opinion that a treatise on death was infinitely more appropriate at a funeral than were gifts of gloves, biscuits, wine, and the like.20 For special encouragement, a blank space had been left on the title-page for inserting the name of the deceased. By this time, too, the Compleat Library had been established. The issue for August, 1692, contains a five-page review of the book, praising it in unmeasured terms.30 The reviewer (John Dunton himself in all probability) thought it scarcely necessary to comment on the usefulness of such a treatise.

The wisest of Men said 'tis better to be in the House of Mourning, than the House of Rejoycing; and recommends the Meditations on Death and Judgment as the most effectual means, to stop even the Impetuous Current of Youth in their pursuit after the pleasures of sin. And therefore it may be presumed that a Book on this Subject needs not to be recommended to any good Christian, who makes it his work so to Live, as hourly expecting when his great Change will come.

Of the author it is said that he "spent a great part of his time in Holy and Devout Contemplations upon the things of another Life, as this excellent Piece plainly shews."

Preceding the elaborate title-page, which is framed in a black border, stands a frontispiece in four transverse compartments, depicting, respectively, a corpse laid out in a winding-sheet, a family

29 Quest. 1. I have heard that several good Men have order'd Books to be given away after their decease,-Query, Whether Books are not more proper to be given at Funerals, than Bisquits, Gloves, Rings, &c.

Answ. We vehemently suspect this Query is sent in by some Bookseller or other, who has either a great many Books fit for such a business, or is about to Print one that is design'd to that End. And the mischief is, we can't oblige the Bookseller, but we must at the same time draw upon us the Displeasure of the Confectioners, Glovers, and Goldsmiths, by intrenching on their Profits.—But to silence them, we assure 'em before-hand, the Project is ne'ere like to take, as long as Persons value their Hands and Palats, more than their Brains; which the generality of mankind are likely to do as long as Bisquits are eaten, or Rings are worn.-Now we have done with them, let's to the Bookseller; whose Question we Answer in the Affirmative.", etc. etc. Athenian Mercury, Vol. IV, No. xv, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 1691.

so Vol. 1, No. liii, pp. 265-70.

group mourning over a coffin, the funeral procession, and the burial. As in several other instances, the long title enumerates various items not found in the book. In fact, of the twelve divisions announced on the title-page only six are actually printed. If the original promise had been kept, the result would have been truly appalling; we should have had, besides the present contents, "The Sick-mans Passing-Bell" and "The Pilgrim's Guide From the Cradle to the Grave" reprinted, "A Conference between the Mourners," "A Walk among the Tombs," and "The Author's Tears, or Meditations on his own Sickness, Death, and Funeral." Actually the ingredients are: (1) "The House of Weeping," rearranged and greatly enlarged but retaining the original titlepage and illustrations; (2) "Death-Bed-Thoughts"; (3) "The Fatal Moment"; (4) "The Treatment of our Departed Friends after Their Death in Order to their Burial "; (5) "The Final Solemnity"; and (6) "An Account of the Death and last Sayings of the most Eminent Persons, from the Crucifixion of our Blessed Saviour, down to this point of time." 31 Charles II appears in this

31 The make-up of this book is an interesting bibliographical curiosity. in itself. Part I, "The House of Weeping," is preceded by its original frontispiece, commendatory poems, and title-page, including the date 1682. This frontispiece is very similar to that which precedes the entire volume, and the commendatory poems are used to introduce both the work as a whole and "The House of Weeping"; consequently they are repeated verbatim within the space of a few pages. The British Museum Catalogue indicates that "The House of Weeping" included in A Mourning-Ring (1692) is a mere reproduction from the edition of 1682; but this is not the case. The original eight sermons are here increased to eighteen, various "ejaculations" are added, and there is a complete rearrangement. On p. 266 occurs "The End of the House of Weeping." But the discovery was made that three of the 1682 sermons had been omitted. A new pagination begins here (p. 1), and these missing pieces are inserted under the numbers given to them in the original edition (I, VI, VII); the result is a duplication of these numbers. The new pagination is now continued to p. 296. The final portion of the volume is paginated as 161 to 256. This description is based on B. M. copy 700. a. 6, which is called the second edition; but apparently it is so called with reference only to "The House of Weeping." The two other so-called second editions of A Mourning Ring (852. c. 15 and G-131724) show that cheaper copies were issued without the illustrations, the separate title-page for "The House of Weeping," and the three sermons inserted after p. 266. A Mourning Ring was licensed for publication June, 1693 (T. C. п, 463). It was again entered, with twelve other books for Dunton, Nov., 1693 (II, 472).

galaxy of the morituri-salutamus, but his most famous death-bed remark is not quoted. Of the new material found in The Mourning-Ring, easily the best is the set of short prose-pieces headed "Death-Bed-Thoughts." No reader at all familiar with the style of Dunton and his fraternity would hesitate a moment to pronounce this section an outright forgery, whether he recognized the sources or not. As a matter of fact, the "Proemium," or introductory essay, is taken bodily (with the exception of a brief sentence that escaped the eye of the copyist) from Bishop Hall's eloquent Meditation upon Death.32 The contents that follow this exordium were appropriated from another work equally distinguished for its preciosity of style, The Forerunner of Eternity, or Messenger of Death: sent to Healthy, Sick, and Dying Men, a translation made from the Latin of Hieremias Drexelius by William Croyden in 1642.

By this time Dunton must have decided that he had exhausted this particular vein or, to state the case in more practical terms, he had probably rifled all the best treatises that could be levied upon with impunity. The field was also being invaded by dangerous competitors. He now ventured upon a more sensational type of piety. The Compleat Library for December, 1692 announces the forthcoming publication of "a new and singular Piece of serious Novelty, that well merits the Reflection of this loose Age." 33 The issue for the next month devotes five pages to a review of the book. It is called The Second Spira, being a fearful Example of an Atheist, who Died in Despair at Westminster, December 8th, 1692. . . By J. S. a Minister of the Church of England, a frequent Visiter of him in his whole Sickness. (1693).35 This proved to be Dunton's best seller. He says

32 Meditations and Vowes, Divine and Morall, etc., ed. 1621, p. 537. II, 71.

33

34 Ibid., II, 75-81.

...

35 As a publisher Dunton had speculated heavily in dying speeches. In June, 1683, he was given permission to Publish "A necessary Companion for a serious Christian . . . To which is added, The Deathbed Counsel of a late Reverend Divine to his Son, an Apprentice in London." (T. C. II, 24). "A Collection of the dying Speeches, Letters, and Prayers, of those Eminent Protestants who suffered in the West of England and elsewhere, under the cruel Sentence of the Lord Jeffreys" was entered May, 1689 (II, 258); the same work enlarged was entered June, 1689 (11, 280) and

in his Life and Errors that the sale amounted to 30,000 copies in six weeks.36 The selection of the title was a stroke of genius. Nothing had ever so satisfied the morbid desire of English Calvinists to know just how a doomed "reprobate," a soul predestined ab aeterno to become a vessel of divine wrath-felt at the approach of death as did a book describing in detail the dying agonies of the Italian lawyer Francis Spira, a sixteenth-century convert to the Protestant religion who finally yielded to the threats of the Roman Catholic Church, made a recantation, and thereby incurred certain destruction, as of course he was all along predestined to do. A Relation of the Fearfull Estate of Francis Spira, translated from the Italian by Nathaniel Bacon, was first published in 1638. Edition followed edition until 1784. This is the book, it will be recalled, that almost drove John Bunyan to madness while he was laboring under the fear that he, too, had been marked for reprobation. Bunyan's vivid account of Spira's mental torture, in Grace Abounding, had done much to advertise the tragedy. The story of Rochester's death-bed penitence as reported in Robert Parsons's funeral sermon and Burnet's account (1680) was still good reading; 37 but Rochester's struggle, excellent though it was of its kind, concluded too mildly to satisfy the greedy sensationalist. Nothing could have been more opportune in 1692 than the discovery of a second Spira, one near home. By this time, too, the belief in Calvinistic reprobation had so far cooled and the growth of skepticism become so alarming that a terrified atheist on his death-bed was the most edifying and pleasing spectacle that could have been presented to an orthodox public. Dunton was fishing in excellent water. Of the content of the

a fourth edition Nov. 1693 (II, 486). See Life and Errors, I, 201-2. In Nov., 1690 (T. C. п, 330), he entered "The wonders of Free Grace, or A compleat History of all the remarkable Penitents that have been executed at Tyburn and elsewhere, for these last thirty years. To which is added, A Sermon preached in the hearing of a condemn'd Person immediately before his execution. By Increase Mather," and again Nov. 1693 (II, 472). At the same time he entered two books describing the trials of New England witches (II, 476). There is no record of a license for The Second Spira, although Dunton refers to one (Life and Errors, 1, 268). 36 1, 157.

37 Compare Thomas Flatman's poem On the Death of the Earl of Rochester.