[From Jonsonus Virbius , the volume of elegies issued after Jonson's death under the editorship of Brian Duppa, dean of Christ Church college, Oxford.]
This funerary epitaph was contributed by Sir Francis Wortley (1591-1652), who was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, fought on the Royalist side in the Civil War and was in the Tower of London 1644-9. He wrote Characters and Elegies (1646), moral essays and short poems, and Mercurius Britannicus his Welcome to Hell (1647).
The English translation is by Dr. Thomas Roebuck. The roman numerals at the end designate the year 1638, though an 'X' is missing. 'Id. Nonar:' seems to be short for 13 September, 1638, but note the discussion of this matter in Herford and Simpson, Moore Smith's review of The Jonson Allusion Book, p. 112, and, on the date of Jonson's death, Mark Bland, 'Jonson and the Legacies of the Past', pp. 398-9.
*****************************************Anno Dom. CIכ CIXXVII.
Id. Nonar:.
FR: WORTLEY,
Baronet.
(sig. I3v)
Behold
our Jonson,
Apollo
Of the Lyric and Dramatic poets,
who,
with the foresight of Minerva,
snatched
the Laurel from Greece and Rome itself.
And,
with a favourable omen,
he has translated it into our Britain:
Now,
a greater object of envy,
because of Fate, not Rivalry,
he has withdrawn.