B - The Dying Speech of Tom Ashe

Summary

Headnote

For Lord Pembroke, the addressee of this piece, and Thomas Ashe, its supposed speaker, see Headnote to ‘A Dialogue in the Castilian Language’ (Appendix A).

For a reading of ‘The Dying Speech of Tom Ashe’, see Wyrick. Material from this speech would later be included in Sheridan's Ars Pun-ica (1719).

The text, including the headnote recounting the textual transmission and the footnotes, is taken from 1765b. Along footnote introduces ThomasAshe, whose imagined death is the subject.

A LETTER TO THE EARL OF PEMBROKE,

Pretended to be the Dying Speech of Tom Ashe, whose Brother, the Reverend Dillon Ashe, was nicknamed Dilly^∗

[Given to Dr. MONSEY BY SIR ANDREW FOUNTAIN, and communicated to theEditor of these Volumes by that ingenious, learned, and very obliging Gentleman.]

Tom Ashe died last night. It is conceived he was so puffed up by my Lord Lieutenant's favour, that it struck him into a fever. I here send you his dying speech, as it was exactly taken by a friend in short-hand. It is something long, and a little incoherent; but he was several hours delivering it, and with several intervals. His friends were about the bed, and he spoke to them thus:

MY FRIENDS,

It is time for a man to look grave, when he has one foot there. I once had only a punnick fear of death, but, of late, I have pundred it more seriously. Every fit of coffing hath put me in mind of my coffin; though dissolute men seldomest think of dissolution. This is a very great alteration: I, that supported myself with good wine, must now be myself supported by a small bier.——A fortune-teller once looked on my hand, and said, This man is to be a great traveller: He will soon be at the Diet of Worms, and from thence go to Rat-is-bone. But now I understand his double meaning. —— I desire to be privately buried, for I think a public funeral looks like Bury Fair; and the rites of the dead too often prove wrong to the living. Methinks the word itself best expresses the number, neither few nor all. ——A dying man should not think of obsequies, but ob se quies.——Little did I think you would so soon see poor Tom stown under a tomb stone.