A BUNDLE OF EPITAPHS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3246, 26 November 1881, Page 4

A BUNDLE OF EPITAPHS.

A writer in the Bombay Gazette says : — When we die the most that the greater part of us can expect in the way of epitaph is the customary remark, as some friend spies our name among the obituary notices : " Hullo! here's Jones dead. Not a bad fellow, but decidedly weak. Never saved a rupee in his life, and died in debt, I'll be bound. Well, well! Who's for a game of billiards this morning ?" and so Jones's careeer is summed up, and the matter dismissed ; and in truth Jones's death is a matter of very little importance to anyone —except perhaps to Jones. Those who have read Lever's delightful " Dodd Family Abroad " will remember tho pathetic way Mrs Dodd laments the death of her cousin Jones M'Carthy, or, as the good lady herself expresses it, " My poor relative, the late Jones of the Folly, one of the last surviving members of the great M'Carthy stock, in the west of Ireland. Grief and sorrow for the miserable condition of his country preyed upon him and made him seek obliteration in drink ; and more's the pity, for he Wfts a man of enlarged understanding and capacious mind. My heart overflows when I think of the beautiful sentiments I've heard from him at different times. He loved his country, and it was a treat to hear him praise it. ' Ah !' he would say, ' there is but one blot on her —the judges is roquet-, the Government's rogues, the grand jury's JOgues, and the people is villains.' He died as he lived, a little in drink, put a true patriot." Mr Dodd was hardly so enthusiastic about the deceased, for when his wife said to him, " They're to bury him in Cloughdesman Abbey," he drily said, "They need not take much trouble about embalming him, my dear, for there's more whisky soaked into him than would preserve a whole family." There's something pathetic, too, in the following verso, setting forth as it does the uncertainty of human life, and with a certain amount of charity not always found in epitaphs giving the deceased the benefit of a doubt: There's Tim Molloy, That darlin , boy That married widow Koeley ; One year ho wed, The next he's dead, I'm tould he drank too freely. • Some epitaphs are rather curt and abrupt, as if the dear departed had carried rather a querulous spirit into the grave with him, and delighted even in death to give utterance to something bitter ; as witness this from Peterborough church : — Header, puss on, nor idly waste your timo In bad biography or bitter rhyme; What I am now this cumbrous clay ensures, ' And what I was ia no affair of yonra. Jar more genial than t),i a i s that quaint epitaph in.a churchyard in "Wiltshire, over the tomb of an honest publican, whose son must have possessed that keen eye to tho main chance so commonly found" in yciy pious persons. It runs thus : — Beneath this stone awaiting Zion, Is laid the landlord of the Lion ; Resigned to the Almighty will, His son conducts the business still. Tho epitaph that now follows is somewhat longeu, and is undoubtedly genuine, |as anyone will see who notes the quaint and homely phraseology employed, and the pleasant conceits which embellish ifcy"-It was given me by a clergyman in England, who copied it from an old tombstone in 'Newhaven church-

yard, and as far as I know, ifc ha? never beon in print before : — /' Reader, with kind regards this /rave survey. Nor heedless pasa where Tipper's ashe3 lay ; Honest he was, ingenuous, olunt, and kind, _ And dated do what few d»re do-speak his mind. Philosophy and history Well he knew, , Was versed in physio, i>nd in surgery too. / 'The best old stingo he both brewed and sold, ' Nor.did he knavish Act to get his gold, He played throughout a varied, comic part, And. knew immortal Iludibras by heart. Reader, in veryiruth such was tho man ; •Bo better, wiser, laugh more if you can, It -would bo hard to find a more complete picture of ?nine host as he used to be in England, and one can quite see Tipper smoking his pipe of an evening, drinking his glass of home-brewed, and enjoying a langli at the last joke brought by some genial traveller. His epitaph was probably composed by tho village school-master, doubtless a firm ally in pipe and glass, and who, being of a generous mind, rated Tipper's learning nearly as high as he did his own. The reasons for which some peoplo desire to live in their monuments strike their successors in the world as somewhat quaint. For instance, there is a Eoad Lane Church, in London, the following eloquent testimonial to Mr Birch, who for many years manfully resisted the introduction of what he considered a pestilent heresy, viz., vaccination. Here it is, in all the glory of umlimited capital letters : THE PRACTICE OF COWPOXOTO, WHICH FIBST BECAME OENEBAL IN HIS DAY, TTNDATXNTED BY THE OVERWHELMING INFLUENCE OF POWER AND PREJUDICE AND THE VOICE OF NATIONS, HE TJNIFORHLY AND UNTIL DEATH PERSEVERINGI/Y OPPOSED. There can be little doubt that the 'illustrious Mr Birch composed this epitaph himself, and it very likely soothed him under illness, or the disappointment of his hopless struggles against vaccination, to think that this mute protest would so long survive him. Of a simpler kind is that poetic tribute to the memory of Peter Potter, of whom it ;is so touchingly rerorded : Here lies Peter Potter, who Died at the age of seventy-two Of a long and painfull illness that He bore with fortitude—though fat, Much regretted by this poem, And all who had the happiness to know him.