Page:Dublin University Review vol 1 pt 1.pdf/92

56 An equally good parallel to this is found in Sydford churchyard, Devonshire:—

Here lies, in horizontal position,

The outside of, watchmaker,

Whose abilities in that line were an honour to his profession.

Integrity was the Main-Spring, and Prudence the Regulator. In all the actions of his life, humane, generous and liberal, his Hand never stopped till he had relieved distress. So nicely regulated were all his Actions that he never went wrong, except when set a-going by people who did not know his Key; even then he was easily set right again. He had the art of disposing his time so well that his Hours glided away in one continual round of pleasure and delight, till an unlucky Minute put a period to his existence. He departed this life 14th November, 1802, aged 55, wound up in hopes of being taken in hand by his Maker, and of being thoroughly cleaned and repaired, and set a-going in the world to come.

There is an intentional use of vulgar images in the next, on David Fletcher, smith to Lincoln church, 1744:—

My sledge and hammer lie reclined;

My bellows, too, have lost their wind;

My fire's extinguish'd; forge decay'd;

And in the dust my vice is laid;

My coal is spent; my iron's gone;

The last nail's driven—my work is done.

And pitched in the same key is the following:—

Here lieth, a maker of bellows,

He's crafts-master and king of good fellows;

Yet when he came to the house of his death,

He that made bellows could not make breath.

There is a neat turn in the couplet, 'On little Stephen, a noted fiddler in Suffolk:—

and Time are now both even:

beat Time; now Time's beat.

In Lincoln Cathedral, there is the following Latin inscription, 1616, to Dr. Otwell Hill:—

sacer sacratus nomine Christi

Hoc in Monte Deum nocte dieque colens:

Hoc in Monte Dei populo jus dicit, et inde

Moribus infames ad meliora vocat.

Excipiunt Montes Domini Montem morientem,

Mons Lincoln corpus, Monsque Sion animam.

which has thus been quaintly translated:—

'Tis, a holy Hill, and truly sooth to say,

Upon this Hill he praisèd still the Lord both night and day.

Upon this Hill, this did cry aloud the Scripture letter,

And strove your wicked villains by good counsel to make better.

And now this, though under stones, has the Lord's Hills to lie on:

For Lincoln Hill has got his bones, his soul the Hill of Sion.'

There is a quaint humour in the unpuritanical religious sentiment expressed in the quatrain on Jane Parker in Peterborough Cathedral, 1653:—

Here lyeth a midwife, brought to bed,

Deliveresse deliverèd;

Her body being churchèd here,

Her soul gives thanks in yonder sphere.

We have a good example of vulgar imagery and objectionable gaiety in the following:—

A plain unvarnished tale surely is that on the rector of Hampton Redware, Staffordshire:—

Nothing vulgar, gay, or ecstatic here, but the simple fact 'writ large.' Pity the faithful chronicler did not add to the statistics of the good man's life, culled from the parish register, and make imperishable the number of christenings, marriages, and burials performed during his ministry.

Thernot. Maiden, come forth: the woods keep watch for thee;

Within the drowsy blossom hangs the bee;

'Tis morn: thy sheep are wandering down the vale—

'Tis morn: like old men's eyes the stars are pale,

And thro' the odorous air love-dreams are winging—

'Tis morn, and from the dew-drench'd wood I've sped

To welcome thee, Naschina, with sweet singing. [Sitting on a tree-stem, he begins to tune his lute.

Colin. Come forth: the morn is fair; as from the pyre

Of sad Queen Dido shone the lapping fire