Then comes a Latin passage:—
Dum socios summa per vicos arte vehebam
Mors nigra præteriit—
Machina cassa mea est.
It may be translated:—
While I was conveying various passengers with the greatest skill, Black Death intervened—
My machine is broken.
An epitaph is (or was, for most of the stones in late years have been cleared away) in Winchester Cathedral yard to the last coachman of the Winchester and Southampton stage, but no record of it has been found.
Far away, in South Shropshire, on the north side of St. Lawrence’s churchyard, Ludlow, lies John Abingdon, who died in 1817, and who, according to his epitaph, “for forty years drove the Ludlow coach to London; a trusty servant, a careful driver, and an honest man.”
His labour done, no more to town
His onward course he bends;
His team’s unshut, his whip’s laid up,
And here his journey ends.
Death locked his wheels and gave him rest,
And never more to move,
Till Christ shall call him with the blest
To heavenly realms above.
In the same district, in the pretty churchyard of Stanton Lacy, may be found a stone to the memory of John Wilkes, of the Worcester and Ludlow Mail, killed in 1803 by its overturning in a flood. Some poetic friend inscribed this tribute:—
Alas! poor Wilkes, swift down the winding hill
The horses plunged into the fatal rill.
The quiv’ring bridge broke down beneath the weight,
And Wilkes was flung into the foaming spate.
On his prone form the coach then t ... (? toppled) o’er,
And he was crushed beneath, to rise no more.
No more to rise? No, no! Though here his work be ended,
To Heav’n we hope his spirit hath ascended.
Although on Earth his final drive be drove,
He’s entered on a longer Stage above,
Where, now his mortal days are past and gone—
He drives with Phœbus’ self the chariot of the Sun.
Then there is the epitaph on the driver of the coach that ran between Aylesbury and London, written by the Rev. H. Bullen, vicar of Dunton, in whose churchyard he is laid:—