Affliction sore, long time he bore,
Physicians WAS in vain.
Next to it:
Pale consumption gave the silent BELOW, etc.
In our graveyard in Cowgate there is an epitaph upon old Mrs. Thomas, by which you are informed, that
Making carpets and beds she did pursue
With care and industry is very true,
The established religion she did profess
In hopes, through Christ, of Heaven to possess.
Such rubbish as that, under the veto of the present Cemetery Commissioners, will, I hope, soon disappear. But there is one in the Cathedral graveyard (the existence of which is not generally known), on the tombstone memorial of an old family of this place, and I trust it will not be allowed to disappear. It is very superior to what they generally are. It is on the right just as you go through the Arch by the Deanery, and is to the memory of one of the Richardson family:
Stranger pass by nor idly waste your time
In bad biography or bitter rhyme;
For what I am, this cumbrous clay ensures,
And what I was, is no affair of yours.
The old gentleman, as you see, has carried his cynical humour to the grave with him. It was quoted in an article in “Blackwood’s Magazine” on “Monumental Inscriptions” a few years since.
