PROFESSIONAL GRAVESTONES.


It is more than likely that somewhere will be found a pictorial
accompaniment to the verse which has been often used as an epitaph
for a village blacksmith. I have met with the lines in two or
three versions, of which the following, copied in the churchyard at
Aberystwith, appears to be the most complete:

"My sledge and hammer lie reclined;
My bellows too have lost their wind;
My fire extinct, my forge decay'd,
And in the dust my vice is laid.
My coal is spent, my iron's gone;
My nails are drove, my worck is done."

There are many instances in which the implements of his craft are
depicted upon an artizan's tomb; these also for the most part being
of the eighteenth century. In the churchyard at Cobham, a village made
famous by the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, is a gravestone
recording the death of a carpenter, having at the head a shield
bearing three compasses to serve as his crest, and under it the usual
tools of his trade--square, mallet, compasses, wedge, saw, chisel,
hammer, gimlet, plane, and two-foot rule.

FIG. 56.--AT COBHAM, KENT.

"To Richard Gransden, carpenter, died 13th
March, 1760."