Round the Sanctums.

Otago Witness, Issue 1551, 30 July 1881, Page 27

Round the Sanctums.

Some Curious Epitaphs. Playing with language, experimenting on ishe meanings of words, punning on duplicate or triplicate significations, giving a Barcastio rub to these who are no longsr in a position to return the favour, displaying ignorance in attempts to manifest wit— are more abundant in the pi eparation of epitaphs than the world generally supposes. All is not solemnity and sorrow in the thoughts of the oonoootera of these effusions. Sometimes a pun or play on the name ii introduced, such as In the epitaph on John White :- Here lies John, a shining light, Whose name, life, actions all were White. The following was rather epigrammatic; than epitaphio, in regard to the .Rev John Chest :— Beneath this spot lios buried One Chost within another ; The outer chest was all that's good t Who says so of tho other? William Wilton, buried in Lambeth, certainly did not write the epitaph whioh bean relation to him :—: — Here lies W. W., Who never more will trouble you, trouble you. Nor, we may safely assert, did Owen Moore himself pen the following :— Owen Moore is gone away, Owin' more than he could pay. More likely to be genuine are those epitaphs whioh involve a bit of bad logic, syntax, or grammar in their composition. In a graveyard at Montroae ia said to be the following :— Here lyes the bodies of George Young and all their posterity For fifty years backward. And In Wrexham churchyard as follows :— < Here lies five babies and children dear, Three at Oswestry and two here. Akin to this in logical blundering is :— Here lies the remains of Thomas Milsolm, who died in Philadelphia, March, 1753 ; Had he lived he would have Been buried here. And another at Nettlebed, in Oxford* shire :— Here lies Father and Mother and Sister and I ; We all died within the space of one short year } We be all buried at Wimble, except I, And I be buried here. Others, again, are delightfully olrcam* stantial, such as that on John Adams ;— « Here lies John Adams, who received a thump, Bight ou the forehead, from the parish pump. Or a touch of jollity in them, as this from Newbury Churchyard :— Here lays John, with Mary hia bride— , They lived and they laughed while they was able^ , And at last was obliged to knock under the, table. ■ Or suggestively laconic, as in the following from St. Michael's Crooked lane :— Here lies, wrapped in clay, The body of William Wray; J ] . I have no more to say. Sarcastic epitaphs, not necessarily Involv* ing a pun on the name, are, we suspeot, aeldom to be found really engraved on tomb* stones ; and only in some oases written by relations of the deceased. If Dryden really wrote the epitaph on his wife, attributed to him, and which he intended for her tomb' stone, had he outlived her, he must indeed have felt and owed her but little affeotlon :— • Here lies my wife ; here let her lie ; She's now at rest, and so am I. One Mrs Shute gave oooaslon, we are told, for the following :—: — Here lies, cut down like unripe fruit, The wife of Deacon Amos Shute ; She died of drinking too much coffee, Army Dominy eighteen lorty. James Wyatt of course took no part in the oonoootion of this effusion :—: — At rest beneath this churchyard stone Lies stingy Jemmy Wyatt ; He died one morning just at ten, And saved a dinner by it. The occupation of a dyer has suggested many epitaphs of an obvious oharaoter, snob as:— | Ho dyed to live, and lived to dye. Also :- He died himself, and dyed no more. So many jokes were fired off at the late Sir William Curtis— an Alderman dls« tlngulshed for defective education and bad grammar— that we need not feel surprised att an epitaph couched thus : — Here lies William Curtis, Our late Lord Mayor, Who has left this here world, And gone to that there. A useful hint is wrapped up in the following :— Died of thin shoes, January, 1839. Many epitaphs seem to b? intended to en* lighten the public on some point which the friends of the deceased deem of importance. An epitaph on Ann Jennings, of Wolatanton, tells us that : — Some have children, some have none ; Here lies the mother of twenty-one. A donble epitaph records the mournful tale thus :— Here lies two brothers by misfortune surrounded ; One diod of his wounds, the other was drowned. A fatal disaster could hardly be recorded in briefer form than the following : — Here lies John Ross, Kicked by a hoss. Nor oonld a religious sentiment have bteefl more curtly and sarcastically expressed than as under : Here lies the body o( Gabriel John, Who died in seventeen hundred and on» ; Pray for tho soul of Gabriel John— If you don't like it, you can let it alone ; Tis all the same to Gabriel John, Who died in sevoutcon hundred and one. Many meohanical trades give rise to thd use of technical terms which, by a little manipulation, may be made applioable to human life, states of Health, disease and decline, death rod its surroundings. When auoh is the oaso, epitaph -makers are strongly tempted to make use of the verbal materials : thuu placed at their disposal. Any one o»a see, for example, how the trade of a brewer gives rise to the words — alo (hale), stoat r beer (bier), bitter, porter, cooper, and in What manner they oan be worked up tow \ gravestone purposes. A playlng-c»?dm»k»jf

tougge'e&rGut, shuffled, game, dealt, honours, counting,, tricks,. &o, The brickmaker supplies the epitaph-compiler with clay, fire, halfburned, remoulded. A mechanical engineer employs technical terms which may be easily transferred to some of the conditions and events of human life : set up, valves, engine, stopped, boiler, hob water, coked, flame, guiding-wheels, whistle, clock, steam, To the blacksmith wo are indebted for hot., cool, cold, ashas, forging, vice, blowing, hisa, snvil, hammer, spark,", bellows, temper, and the phrase 'strike while the itoi-.'h hot,' From tho we&srer can be borrowed thread, web, I W4.rr), woof, weft, pattern, check, crossed, fußtian, garments. The cobbler tells us of hia all (awl), sole (soul), stall, last, welt, elastic;' while the tailor is equally roady with suit, skein, thread, twist, shears, surtoat, staytape, pressed, remnent. The trade of "a printer' is very prolific in terms which can in this way be utilized for epltaphio purposes. Snob, for example, as volume, book, page, print, dcliv. red, press, author, founder, leaf, title, augmented, corrected, contents, cover, lettering, binding, gilding, forme, Imposing, bed, rmtfcer, copy, type, distributed, imprint, impression, pye, worn-out character, recast, mould. Nor is that iof a> watchmaker much less so — as witness the technical terms and phrases vertical, horizontal, wound up, regulated, set going, hours, moments, time, maker, key, period, go wrong, mainspring, outer case/ works, pivot, pinions, jewelled, stopped. If we are to accept as genuine all the epitaphs copied Into the printed collections, many examples exist of these applications Oi. trade technicalities to gravestone purposes. One is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, relating to himself, but with a blank left for the date of death—' The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer — like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding— lies here, food for worms. : "Set 1 the work itself shall not be lost ; for it will appear once more in a new addition, corrected and amended by its author.' Another, said to have been suggested for but not by this famous printer-philosopher-stateeman, dependsf or Buch merit as it possesses on an ingenious nse of some of the types or characters employed by printers — ' Benjamin Franklin, the *of his profession; the type of honesty; the ! of all ; and although the J93T of Death has put a . to his existence, each § of his life has been without a ||.' ( ■ The epitaph on the driver of one of the Aylesbury coaches was so managed as to bring in the coaching terms journey, whiphand, way-bill, account, drive, stage, and * show you : the way.' Lord Byron is credited with an epitaph on an old neighbour of his near :—: — John Adams lies here, of the Parish of Southwell, A carrier, who carried his can to his mouth well ; He carried so much, and he carried so fast, He could carry no more, so was carried at last. For the liquor he drank, being too much for one, He could notcarry off, bo he's now carri-on. When the oelebrated General Wolfe died, A premium was offered for the best-written epitaph on that brave officer. A number of poets of all descriptions entered the competition, and- among the rest was one who addressed his communication to the editor of thp Public Ledger as follows :— He marched .without dread or f ears, At the.head of,his bold grenadiers ; And what was more remarkable— nay, very particular, He clilabed up rocks that were quite perpendicular. Perhaps the most unexpected of all epitaphs are those in which the mourning relatives of the deceased endeavour to make a little money out of their grief, or to convert their sorrow into a little bit' of trading or ebppkeeping. We must acquit the dead man of any participation in the manoeuvre ; the epitaph is written when he is no longer in a condition to criticise it ; and his poor bones are made ancillary to a trade Advertisement. Take the following as an example:— «Here lies fcise body of Jaineo Hambrick, -who was accidentally shot in the Paous Elver by a young man with one of Colt's large revolvers, with no ktopper for the hammer to rest on. It was one of the oldSashioned Boit, brass mounted ; and of such is the kingdom of Heaven.' Or the following :—ln: — In one of the cemeteries near Paris, a Binall lamp soikh years ago wrs kept burning under en urn over a grave ; and an inscription on the gravestone ran thus when translated into Knglieh : ' Here lies Pierre "Victor Founier, iuvnator of the Everlasting 3Lamp> winch consumed only one centime's <worti» oi oil in one hour. He was a good lather, eon, and husband. His inconsolable widow contlnuts bis business in- Rue aux Trois. Gcoda sen c to all parts of the city. D:> not mintage the opposite shop for this. 1 A tapster at Upton on-Severn certainly had an eye to the main chance, if he really inscribed the following epitaph on his father's gtavostone : — Beneath this stone, in hope of Zion, i '©th lie the .landlord of the Lion ; His son keeps on the business still, ilesigned unto the Heavenly will. And not lt>?s so an American sfconemacon, who made the same tombstone serve the double purpose of a mortuary memorial and a trade advertisement : — • Here lies Jane Smith, wife of Thomas Smith, marble-cutter. This monument was erected by her husband as a tribute to her memory, and a3 o specimen of hia work. Monuments in this stylo, two hundred and fifty dollars.' The lady to whom is attributed one graveyardiffuslonhad her thoughts unquestionably •directed, if not to trade and shwpkeeplng, at leaßt lo tcatrimonial possibilities :— 'Sacred •to the memory of James H. R , who died August 6th, 1800. His widow, who mourn b as one who can be comforted, aged twentyfour, and possessing every quality for a good wife, lives at .' We have in an earlier paragraph ventured on a Burmiee that some epitapha have never gone boyend the limits of pen and ink, and cannot be trusted as veritable examples of graveyard literature. Mr Shirley Hibberd, an Industrious .collector of epitaphs, corroborates this view. He says :— ' Are there | not hundreds of epitaphs ia print which have ao existence except as printers' paragraphs 1 1 have collected epitaphs for ye.ara past ; and it is surprising how many (and those Borne' of the beßt in a literary sense) defy -every attempt to trace them to sepulchral sources.' The Frenoh are more prone than ourselves 4o indulge in imaginary gravestone compo- j qttfoMi 'i QWifig perhaps to tta fcrent epigram-

■ matic power of their language. One of their epitaphs gives a rub at the Academic Francaise, evidently out of favour with the concocter : — ' Here lies Piron, who was nothing, not even an Academician.' Fontaine, in one part of an epitaph attributed to him, described himself as having disposed of his time very easily, seeing that he divided it Into two portions, one tor sleeping, and one for doin^ nothing. An epitaph on a prodigal decurois that lie delighted ia not paying his creditors, the only debt he 6ver paid was the debt of nature. One reason assigned for a husband honouring his deceased wife with a tombstone was because •the last day of her life was the first of his happiness.' An epitaph on Cardinal Richelieu declared that ' Here lies a famous Cardinal, who did nore harm than good; the good he did he did badly ; the bad he did he did well.' An epitaph oa Rosseau pronounced that his life had been too long by just one half : 'For thirty years an object of admiration, for the other thirty an object of commiseration.' Of a humpback or bossu we are told that 'as he had carried a burden ©n his back all his life, he deserved now to have a rest.'

Notwithstanding these literary witsters, there can bo no question of the genuineneJS of numberless epitaphs. They for the most part belong to the weak side of human nature. The display of small vanities, the unoonsoious manifestation of ignorance, the thirst for strokes of humour, regardless of the contingencies of time and place; the tendency to punning and displays of wit, the yearning to ' push ' for profit and trade even a"; the side of the grave j the flattering conceit of seeing one's own literary produotfons permanently graven on stone— all enter Into the account. — Chambers' Journal,