[From Jonsonus Virbius , the volume of elegies issued after Jonson's death under the editorship of Brian Duppa, dean of Christ Church college, Oxford.]
Fortescue has commendatory verses in Sir John Beaumont's Bosworth Field (1629), Sir Thomas Hawkins's translation of Horace's odes (1635), and J.A. Rivers's Devout Rhapsodies (1648).
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I parled once with Death, and thought to yeeld,
When thou advised'st me to keepe the field,
Yet if I fell, thou couldst upon my Hearse,
Breathe the reviving spirit of thy Verse.
I live, and to thy gratefull Muse would pay,
A Parallell of thanks, but that this day
Of thy faire Rights, through th'innumerous light,
That flowes from thy Adorers, seems as bright,
As when the Sun darts through his golden Haire,
His Beames Diameter into the Aire.
In vaine I then strive to increase thy glory,
These Lights that goe before make dark my story.
Onely Ile say, Heaven gave unto thy Pen
A Sacred power, immortalizing men,
And thou dispensing Life immortally,
Do'st now but sabbatize from worke, not dye.
GEORGE FORTESCUE
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