# The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 16/A Punning Letter to Lord Pembroke 2

Also known as The Dying Words of Tom Ashe
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 Fountaine; and communicated to the Editor 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 shorthand. 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 punnic 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 Ratisbone. But now I understand his double meaning. I desire to be privately buried, for I think a publick 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. But as the mole crumbles the mold about her, so a man of small mold, before I am old, may molder away. Sometimes I've rav'd that I should revive; but physicians tell me, that when once the great artery has drawn the heart awry, we shall find the cor di all, in spite of all the highest cordial. — Brother, you are fond of Daffy's elixir; but, when death comes, the world will see that, in spite of Daffy, down Dilly. Whatever doctors may design by their medicines, a man in a dropsy drops he not, in spite of Goddard's drops, though none are reckoned such high drops? — I find death smells the blood of an Englishman: a fee faintly fumbled out will be a weak defence against his fee-fa-fum. P. T. are no letters in death's alphabet, he has not half a bit of either: he moves his sithe, but will not be moved by all our sighs. Every thing ought to put us in mind of death: Physicians affirm, that our very food breeds it in us; so that, in our dieting, we may be said to di eating. There is something ominous, not only in the names of diseases, as di-arrhœa, di-abetes, di-sentry; but even in the drugs designed to preserve our lives; as di-acodium, di-apente, di-ascordium. I perceive Dr. Howard (and I feel how hard) lay thumb on my pulse, then pulls it back, as if he saw lethum in my face. I see as bad in his; for sure there is no physick like a sick phiz. He thinks I shall decease before the day cease, but before I die, before the bell hath toll'd, and Tom Tollman is told that little Tom, though not old, has paid nature's toll, I do desire to give some advice to those that survive me. First, ​Let gamesters consider that death is hazard and passage, upon the turn of a die. Let lawyers consider it is a hard case. And let punners consider how hard it is to die jesting, when death is so hard in digesting.
As for my lord lieutenant the earl of Mungomerry, I am sure he be-wales my misfortune; and it would move him to stand by, when the carpenter (while my friends grieve and make an odd splutter) nails up my coffin. I will make a short affidavi-t, that, if he makes my epitaph, I will take it for a great honour; and it is a plentiful subject. His excellency may say, that the art of punning is dead with Tom. Tom has taken all puns away with him, Omne tulit pun-Tom. — May his excellency long live tenant to the queen in Ireland! We never Herberd so good a governor before. Sure he mun-go-merry home, that has made a kingdom so happy. I hear my friends design to publish a collection of my puns. Now I do confess, I have let many a pun go, which did never pungo: therefore the world must read the bad as well as the good. Virgil has long foretold it; Punica mala leges. I have had several forebodings that I should soon die; I have of late been often at committees, where I have sat de die in diem. I conversed much with the usher of the black rod: I saw his medals; and woe is me dull soul, not to consider they are but dead mens faces stamped over and over by the living, which will shortly be my condition.
Tell Sir Andrew Fountaine, I ran clear to the bottom, and wish he may be a late a river where I am going. He used to brook compliments. May his sand be long a running; not quick sand, like mine! Bid him avoid poring upon monuments and books; which is ​in reality but running among rocks and shelves, to stop his course. May his waters never be troubled with mud or gravel, nor stopped by any grinding stone! May his friends be all true trouts, and his enemies laid as flat as flounders! I look upon him as the most fluent of his race; therefore let him not despond. I foresee his black rod will advance to a pike, and destroy all our ills.
But I am going; my wind in lungs is turning to a winding sheet. The thoughts of a pall begin to apall me. Life is but a vapour, car elle va pour la moindre cause. Farewell: I have lived ad amicorum fastidium, and now behold how fast I di um!"
Here his breath failed him, and he expired. There are some false spellings here and there; but they must be pardoned in a dying man.
* ↑ See Journal to Stella, June 30, 1711.
* ↑ Thomas Ashe, Esq. descended from an ancient family of that name in Wiltshire, was a gentleman of fortune in Ireland. He was a facetious pleasant companion, but the most eternal unwearied punster that ever lived. He was thick and short in his person, being not above five feet high at the most, and had something very droll in his appearance. He died about the year 1719, and left his whole estate, of about a thousand pounds a year, to his intimate friend and kinsman Richard Ashe, of Ashefield, Esq. There is a whimsical story, and a very true one, of Tom Ashe, which is well remembered to this day. It happened, that, while he was travelling on horseback, and at a considerable distance from any town, there burst from the clouds such a torrent of rain as wetted him through. He galloped forward; and, as soon as he came to an inn, he was met instantly by a drawer: "Here," said he to the fellow, stretching out one of his arms, "take off my coat immediately." "No, Sir, I won't," said the drawer. "Pox, confound you," said Ashe, "take off my coat this instant." "No, Sir," replied the drawer, "I dare not take off your coat; for it is felony to strip an Ash." Tom was delighted beyond measure, frequently told the story, and said he would have given fifty guineas to have been the author of that pun. This little tract of Dr. Swift's, entitled, "The Dying Words of Tom Ashe," was written several years before the decease of Tom, and was merely designed to exhibit the manner in which such an eternal punster might have expressed himself on his deathbed.
* ↑ A nickname of Tom Ashe's brother.