Says Browne in his _Britannia's Pastorals_
(Book ii. s. 1):--
But ere he ended his melodious song,
An host of angels flew the cloud among,
And rapt this swan from his attentive mates
To make him one of their associates
In heaven's faire choir.
One S. A. Cokain writes:--
If, honour'd Colin, thou hadst lived so long
As to have finished thy Fairy song,
Not only mine but all tongues would confess,
Thou hadst exceeded old M{ae}onides.
He was buried near Chaucer--by his own wish, it is
said--in Westminster Abbey, 'poetis funus ducentibus,'
with poets following him to the grave--bearing the
pall, as we might say--the Earl of Essex furnishing the
funeral expenses, according to Camden. It would seem
from a passage in Browne's _Britannia's Pastorals_
'that the Queen ordered a monument to be erected over
him, but that the money was otherwise appropriated by
one of her agents.' The present monument, restored in
1778, was erected by Anne, Countess of Dorset, in 1620.
His widow married again before 1603, as we learn
from a petition presented to the Lord Chancellor of
Ireland in that year, in which Sylvanus sues to recover
from her and her husband Roger Seckerstone certain
documents relating to the paternal estate. She was
again a widow in 1606.
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