It is not known with certainty who the Robert Young of this poem was. Gullans (Ayton, p. 337) was unable to identify him; and William Duguid Geddes tentatively suggested that he was one of the six sons of James VI and I's tutor, Sir Peter Young, and for whom Arthur Johnston wrote an epitaph 'when he died of dropsy' ('hydrope extincto'; see Musa Latina Aberdonensis, vol. 2, p. 35). However, Johnston's epitaph may not refer to the same person, and there is no internal evidence linking the two beyond the name of the dedicatee. Metre: elegiac couplets.
Epitaphium Robertii Iunii (n.d.)
[p72]
Epitaphium Robertii Iunii
1Iunius hic situs est. nullo plus funere Musae,
aut Charites madidis condoluere genis.
Iam docti periere sales, jam Musa, lepores
Hellados et Latii fundere sueta, silet.
5Nec quicquam aut Solymas lustrasse aut marmora Romae,
profuit, aut si quae rudera Memphis habet. 1
Scilicet immensum cum perlustraveris orbem,
in patriam reditus 2 non nisi morte patet.
[p72]
Epitaph of Robert Young
Young has been buried here. Neither the Muses or the Graces grieved more with tear-stained cheeks for any other death. Now learned wit has died, now his Muse, so accustomed to pouring out the delights of Greece and Latium, falls silent. It avails no one to have wandered over Jerusalem or the marbles of Rome, or even those ruins Memphis has: clearly when you wandered over the vast world, a path back to your homeland did not present itself unless through death.
