(“If a carouse at night do make thee ill,
For morning medicine drink of wine thy fill”)
Let us hope that this extraordinary receipt for “hot coppers” was intended satirically, or else given seriously as the only advice that a confirmed toper was likely to follow in any case. But the use of classical adjuncts to adorn Christian tombs, which to-day appears so incongruous to us, was popular enough at the time of the Renaissance, and readers of Robert Browning’s poetry will call to mind the story of the dying Bishop’s injunction to his heirs concerning his tomb in St Praxed’s church at Rome:
“The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod thyrsus with a vase or so,
The Saviour at His sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,
And Moses with the tables....”