The most ingenious of the Puritan poets was the Rev. Michael Wigglesworth,
whose "Day of Doom" is the most remarkable curiosity in American
literature. "He was as skilled," says one of his biographers, "in physic
and surgery as in diviner things;" and when he could neither preach nor
prescribe for the physical sufferings of his neighbors,--
"In costly verse, and most laborious rhymes,
He dished up truths right worthy our regard."
He was buried in Malden, near Boston, and his epitaph was written by
Mather.