a certain period, and depositing them in charnel-houses. There is no reason to believe that Shakespeare wrote the lines himself. They were probably placed on his gravestone by those who had the care of his funeral. A correspondent of "Notes and Queries," (3rd S. II. 164), states that he found a similar inscription in Wimbledon Churchyard, on a tomb of the date of 1847.

EPITAPH ON THE WIFE OF SIR COPE D'OYLY. 1618. (Burke's "Extinct Baronetage.")

Would'st thou (Reader) draw to life
The perfect copy of a wife,

Read on, and then redeem from shame,
That lost, that honourable name.

This dust was once in spirit a Jael,
Rebecca in grace, in heart an Abigail,
In works a Dorcas, to the Church a Hannah,
And to her spouse Susanna.

Prudently simple, providently warie,

To the world a Martha, and to Heaven a Marie.

In "Wit Restored," 1658, ed. 1817, II. 233, there is a quaint epitaph of similar character on a matron :

Here lies a wife was chaste, a mother blest,

A modest matron, all these in one chest:

Sarah unto her mate, Mary to God,

Martha to men whilst here she had abode.

In the "Gentleman's Magazine," LXXX. Part II. 527, an epitaph of similar character at Grays, in Essex, is given:

Behold the silent grave; it doth embrace
A virtuous wife, with Rachel's lovely face,
Sarah's obedience, Lydia's open heart,
Martha's kind care, and Mary's better part.

EPITAPH ON WILLIAM WHEATLY.

(Wood's "Athenæ Oxonienses," ed. 1813, II. 639.)

The conceits of the writers known as the Metaphysical Poets, of whom Dr. Johnson, in his "Life of Cowley," has given a masterly account, were sometimes carried to an extent which might appear almost incredible. An example is exhibited in an epitaph in the

churchyard of Banbury over the grave of William Whatelie, or Wheatly, the vicar, a man of much learning, who died in 1639:

Whatsoe'er thou'lt say who passest by,

Why? here's enshrin'd celestial dust;

His bones, whose name and fame can't die,
These stones, as feoffees, weep in trust.
It's William Wheatly that here lies

Who swam to 's tomb in 's people's eyes.

There is a Latin distich of a period a little earlier, by Bernardus Bauhusius, on the death of Lipsius, in which the conceit by which grief is expressed is almost as singular. The translation, by James Wright, is of a date but little later ("Delitis Delitiarum," 204):

Some in rich Parian stone, in ivory

And marble some, Lipsius in tears doth lie.

In "A Farther Discourse on Epitaphs," by Camden, in Hearne's "Collection of Curious Discourses," an epigram is preserved "On the Removal of Queen Elizabeth's Body from Richmond to Whitehall by Water":

The Queen was brought by water to Whitehall,
At every stroke the oars tears let fall:

More clung about the barge, fish under water

Wept out their eyes of pearl, and swom blind after.

I think the bargemen might with easier thighs,

Have rowed her thither in her people's eyes.

For howsoe'er, thus much my thoughts have scann'd,
Sh'ad come by water, had she come by land.

Camden calls this "doleful"; Horace Walpole says it is " a most perfect example of the bathos."

HUGO GROTIUS,

When confined in the fortress of Loevestein on suspicion of favouring the Arminians, obtained permission to borrow books, which cam in and were returned in chests. His wife enabled him to effect his escape by concealing him in one of these chests, supposed by the guards to contain books. The following epigram was made on the event. It is translated from the Latin in "Selections from the French Anas," 1797, II. 17:

This chest, which to its master did convey
Full many a massy volume every day,

Unconscious now of greater weight and cares,
A living library in Grotius bears.

Owen addressed a Latin epigram "To Roger Owen, a learned Knight" (Book IV. 245), which Harvey thus translates:

Thou know'st the Britons' laws, their old, new rites,

And all that their whole history recites:

In thy discourse, thou'rt so profoundly read,

A living library seems in thine head.

Cowper, in the second of his odes "On the burning of Lord Mansfield's Library," rejoices in the care which preserved "his sacred head from harm," and adds:

There Memory, like the bee that's fed

From Flora's balmy store,

The quintessence of all he read
Had treasured up before.

ON A GARDENER.

("Wit Restored," published 1658. Reprinted 1817, II. 232.)
Could he forget his death that every hour
Was emblem'd to it, by the fading flower?
Should he not mind his end? Yes, sure he must,
That still was conversant 'mongst beds of dust.

Unhappily, it is too commonly the case that those who are "emblemed to" death are the very persons who think the least of their own end. The callousness which is bred by habit is inimitably drawn out by Shakespeare in the grave-diggers' scene in "Hamlet," where the singing of the one clown and the play of wit of both, is only interrupted by the order of the one to the other, "Go, get thee to Yaughan, and fetch me a stoup of liquor."

COLONEL JOHN LILBURN,

Born in 1618, was called, says Granger, "Freeborn John," and was the most hardened and refractory of all the seditious libellers of the time. He was, moreover, of such a quarrelsome disposition, that it was appositely said of him, Wood tells us, "that, if there was none living but he, John would be against Lilburn, and Lilburn against John." This saying was probably the origin of the following epigram on his death, which is found in Grey's notes to Butler's "Hudibras," ed. 1806, II. 271; and in other places:

Is John departed, and is Lilburn gone?
Farewell to both, to Lilburn and to John.

Yet being dead, take this advice from me,
Let them not both in one grave buried be:
Lay John here, and Lilburn thereabout,

For if they both should meet, they would fall out. Butler is supposed to allude to Lilburn in his description of the perverse haberdasher (" Hudibras," Part III. Canto ii. 437):

For he at any time would hang,
For th' opportunity t' harangue;
And rather on a gibbet dangle,

Than miss his dear delight to wrangle.

An old anonymous "Epitaph on a Litigious Man," given in a "Collection of Epitaphs, &c.," 1806, I. 124, may be compared with the epigram on Lilburn:

Here lies a man who in his life

With every man had law and strife,
But now he's dead and laid in grave,
His bones no quiet rest can have:
For lay your ear unto this stone,
And you shall hear how every bone

Doth knock and beat against each other;

Pray for his soul's health, gentle brother.

M. Blainville, in his "Travels," preserves a droll epitaph on a man and his wife, from a marble found near the church of S. Agnes at Rome; thus translated from the Latin by C:

Stay, traveller-a miracle behold!

A man and wife lie here, and do not scold;
But who we are I name not. Then do I;
The drunken Bebrius, traveller, here doth lie,
He who calls me a drunkard.-Ha! true wife,
That tongue still wrangles, e'en deprived of life

EPITAPH ON ROBERT BARGRAVE, WHO DIED IN 1659,
AGED FIVE YEARS. IN CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.
("History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Rochester,
&c., &c.," 1723, 60.)

Farewell, sweet boy! and farewell all in thee,
Blest parents can in their best children see;
Thy life to woo us unto heaven was lent us,

Thy death to wean us from the world is sent us.

An epitaph by Mrs. Barber, on a son of Lord Mountcashell, who died in childhood, may be compared (Barber's "Poems on Several Occasions," 1735, 147):

Sir Isaac Newton, when at school at Grantham, busied himself very much in drawing, and furnished his room in the house of Mr. Clarke, the apothecary, where he lodged, with pictures of his own making. Mrs. Vincent, whose mother was Mr. Clarke's second wife, and who lived in the same house with Sir Isaac, told Dr. Stukeley that he wrote the following verses under a picture of King Charles I., and thinks that he made them himself (Letter from Dr. Stukeley to Dr. Mead, Nichols' "Illustrations of Literary History," IV. 30):

A secret art my soul requires to try,

If prayers can give me what the wars deny.
Three crowns distinguish'd here in order do
Present their objects to my knowing view.
Earth's crown, thus at my feet, I can disdain,
Which heavy is, and, at the best, but vain.
But now a crown of thorns I gladly greet,
Sharp is this crown, but not so sharp as sweet:
The crown of glory that I yonder see

Is full of bliss and of eternity.

There is something incongruous in quoting the revolutionary Milton after these touching lines on the Martyr King; but the following passage, at the close of the second book of "Paradise Regained," is applicable to the thought expressed by the monarch:

Yet not for that a crown,

Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns,

Brings dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights,

To him who wears the regal diadem,

When on his shoulders each man's burden lies.

Yet he, who reigns within himself, and rules
Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.