In later times this task
seems to have been often undertaken by the parish clerk with not
altogether satisfactory results, though incumbents and great poets,
among whom may be enumerated Pope and Byron, sometimes wrote memorials
of their friends. But the clerk was usually responsible for these
inscriptions. Master John Hopkins, clerk at one of the churches at
Salisbury at the end of the eighteenth century, issued an advertisement
of his various accomplishments which ran thus:
"John Hopkins, parish clerk and undertaker, sells epitaphs of
all sorts and prices. Shaves neat, and plays the bassoon.
Teeth drawn, and the Salisbury Journal read gratis every
Sunday morning at eight. A school for psalmody every Thursday
evening, when my son, born blind, will play the fiddle.
Specimen epitaph on my wife:
My wife ten years, not much to my ease,
But now she is dead, in caelo quies.
Great variety to be seen within. Your humble servant, John
Hopkins."
Poor David Diggs, the hero of Hewett's story of _The Parish Clerk_, used
to write epitaphs in strange and curious English. Just before his death
he put a small piece of paper into the hands of the clergyman of the
parish, and whispered a request that its contents might be attended to.
When the clergyman afterwards read the paper he found the following
epitaph, which was duly inscribed on the clerk's grave:
"Reader Don't stop nor shed no tears
For I was parish clerk For 60 years;
If I lived on I could not now as Then
Say to the Parson's Prases A loud Amen.
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