Farewell, great painter of mankind,
Who reach'd the noblest point of art;
Whose pictur'd morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart!
If genius fire thee, reader, stay;
If nature touch thee, drop a tear:-
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth's honor'd dust lies here.

Some distinguished men have amused themselves, while living, by inditing
epitaphs for themselves. Franklin, and the great lawyer and orientalist,
Sir William Jones, have left characteristic performances of this kind in
prose, and from Matthew Prior we have a mock-serious one in verse. The
latter has been often quoted, but it will bear repetition:

Nobles and heralds, by your leave,
Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior:
The son of Adam and of Eve,
Can Bourbon or Nassau go higher?

In the same spirit, but superior in tone and quality, is the following,
the authorship of which is unknown, "on a poor but honest man:"

Stop, reader, here, and deign to look
On one without a name,
Ne'er enter'd in the ample book
Of fortune or of fame.
Studious of peace, he hated strife;
Meek virtues fill'd his breast;
His coat of arms, "a spotless life,"
"An honest heart" his crest.
Quarter'd therewith was innocence,
And thus his motto ran:
"A conscience void of all offence,
Before both God and man."
In the great day of wrath, through pride
Now scorns his pedigree,
Thousands shall wish they'd been allied
To this great family.

The thought in Prior's is ludicrously expressed in the following, from a
monument erected in 1703, in the New Church burying-ground, Dundee, to the
memory of J. R.

Here lies a Man,
Com'd of Adam and Eve;
If any will climb higher,
I give him leave.

Amongst poetical epitaphs, of the more elaborate class, we must notice two
by Mason; one to the memory of his mother, in Bristol Cathedral, and the
other on a young lady named Drummond, in the church of Brodsworth,
Yorkshire. We have space for only the latter.

Here sleeps what once was beauty, once was grace;
Grace, that with tenderness and sense combined
To form that harmony of soul and face,
Where brainy shines the mirror of the mind.
Such was the maid that, in the morn of youth,
In virgin innocence, in nature's pride,
Blest with each art that owes its charms to truth,
Sank in her father's fond embrace, and died.
He weeps; O venerate the holy tear