Читать книгу Curious Epitaphs, Collected from the Graveyards of Great Britain and Ireland. - Andrews William - Страница 3

The trade of printer is rich in technical terms available for the writer of epitaphs, as will be seen in the following examples.

Our first inscription is from St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, placed in remembrance of England’s benefactor, the first English printer: —

To the memory of

William Caxton,

who first introduced into Great Britain the Art of Printing;

And who, A.D. 1477 or earlier, exercised that art in the

Abbey of Westminster

This Tablet,

In remembrance of one to whom the literature of this

country is so largely indebted, was raised,

anno Domini MDCCCXX., by the Roxburghe Club,

Earl Spencer, K.G., President

The next is in memory of one Edward Jones, ob. 1705-6, æt. 53. He was the “Gazette” Printer of the Savoy, and the following epitaph was appended to an elegy, entitled, “The Mercury Hawkers in Mourning,” and published on the occasion of his death: —

Another is on a noted printer and bookseller in his day, Jacob Tonson, who died in 1735: —

The volume of his life being finished, here is the end of Jacob Tonson. Weep, authors, and break your pens; your Tonson, effaced from the book, is no more; but print the last inscription on this last page of death, for fear that, delivered to the press of the grave, he, the Editor, should want a title. Here lies a bookseller, the leaf of his life being finished, awaiting a new edition, augmented and corrected.

The celebrated Dr. Benjamin Franklin imitated the above, and designed it for himself: —

The body of B. Franklin, Printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be wholly lost, for it will, as he believed, appear once more, in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and amended by the Author. He was born Jan. 6, 1706. Died – , 17 – . B.F.

Franklin died on the 17th of April, 1790, aged eighty-four years. After the death of this sturdy patriot and sagacious writer, the following singular sentiment was inscribed to his memory: —

Benjamin Franklin, the * of his profession; the type of honesty; the! of all; and although the ☞ of death put a. to his existence, each § of his life is without a ||.

On a plain, flat slab in the burial-ground of Christ-church, Philadelphia, the following simple inscription appears over the remains of the good man and his worthy wife: —

The pun on the supersession of an old edition by a new and revised one, has often been worked out, as in the following example, which is that of the Rev. John Cotton, who died in New England, in 1652: —

A notable epitaph was that of George Faulkner, the alderman and printer, of Dublin, who died in 1775:

In the churchyard of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, is a good specimen of a typographical epitaph, placed in remembrance of a noted printer, who died in the year 1818. It reads as follows:

Here lie the remains of L. Gedge, Printer

Like a worn-out character, he has returned to the Founder,

Hoping that he will be re-cast in a better and

more perfect mould

Our next example is profuse of puns, some of which are rather obscure to younger readers, owing to the disuse of the old wooden press. It is the epitaph of a Scotch printer: —

Sacred to the memory of

Adam Williamson,

Pressman-printer, in Edinburgh,

Who died Oct. 3, 1832,

Aged 72 years

All my stays are loosed;

My cap is thrown off; my head is worn out;

My box is broken;

My spindle and bar have lost their power;

My till is laid aside;

Both legs of my crane are turned out of their path;

My platen can make no impression;

My winter hath no spring;

My rounce will neither roll out nor in;

Stone, coffin, and carriage have all failed;

The hinges of my tympan and frisket are immovable;

My long and short ribs are rusted;

My cheeks are much worm-eaten and mouldering away:

My press is totally down:

The volume of my life is finished,

Not without many errors;

Most of them have arisen from bad composition,

and are to be attributed more to the chase than the press;

There are also a great number of my own:

Misses, scuffs, blotches, blurs, and bad register;

But the true and faithful Superintendent has undertaken to correct the whole

When the machine is again set up

(incapable of decay),

A new and perfect edition of my life will appear,

Elegantly bound for duration, and every way fitted

for the grand Library of the Great Author

The next specimen is less satisfactory, because devoid of the hope that should encircle the death of the Christian. It is the epitaph which Baskerville, the celebrated Birmingham printer and type founder, directed to be placed upon a tomb of masonry in the shape of a cone, and erected over his remains: —

Stranger

Beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground,

A friend to the liberties of mankind

Directed his body to be inurned

May the example contribute to emancipate thy mind

from the idle fears of superstition, and the

wicked arts of priestcraft

It is recorded that “The tomb has long since been overturned, and even the remains of the man himself desecrated and dispersed till the final day of resurrection, when the atheism which in his later years he professed, will receive assuredly so complete and overwhelming a refutation.”

In 1599 died Christopher Barker, one of the most celebrated of the sixteenth century typographers, printer to Queen Elizabeth – to whom, in fact, the present patent, held by Eyre and Spottiswode, can be traced back in unbroken succession.

We shall bring to a close our examples of typographical epitaphs with the following, copied from the graveyard of St. Michael’s, Coventry, on a worthy printer who was engaged over sixty years as a compositor on the Coventry Mercury: —

Here

lies inter’d

the mortal remains

of

John Hulm,

Printer,

who, like an old, worn-out type,

battered by frequent use, reposes in the grave

But not without a hope that at some future time

he might be cast in the mould of righteousness,

And safely locked-up in the chase of immortality

He was distributed from the board of life

on the 9th day of Sept., 1827,

Aged 75

Regretted by his employers,

and respected by his fellow artists