'" The bishop rose somewhat hastily, saying to his chaplain, "Come
along, Barnes; we shall have 'Rule, Britannia!' next."
Cuthbert Bede tells the story of a poetical clerk who was much aggrieved
because some disagreeable and naughty folk had maliciously damaged his
garden fence. On the next Sunday he gave out "a stave of his own
composing":
"Oh, Lord, how doth the wicked man;
They increases more and more;
They break the posts, likewise the rails
Around this poor clerk's door."
He almost deserved his fate for barbarously mutilating a metrical Psalm,
and was evidently a proper victim of poetical justice.
A Devonshire clerk wrote the following noble effort:--
"Mount Edgcumbe is a pleasant place
Right o'er agenst the Ham-o-aze,
Where ships do ride at anchor,
To guard us agin our foes. Amen."
Besides writing "hymns of his own composing," the parish clerk often
used to give vent to his poetical talents in the production of epitaphs.
The occupation of writing epitaphs must have been a lucrative one, and
the effusions recording the numerous virtues of the deceased are quaint
and curious. Well might a modern English child ask her mother after
hearing these records read to her, "Where were all the bad people
buried?" Learned scholars and abbots applied their talents to the
production of the Latin verses inscribed on old brass memorials of the
dead, and clever ladies like Dame Elizabeth Hobby sometimes wrote them
and appended their names to their compositions.
Pages:
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205