Farewell! great painter of mankind,
Who reached the noblest point of art,
Whose pictur’d morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart.
If genius fire thee, reader stay,
If nature move thee, drop a tear,
If neither touch thee, turn away,
For Hogarth’s honour’d dust lies here.
ST. MICHAEL’S, CROOKED LANE,
Here lyeth, wrapt in clay,
The body of William Wray;
I have no more to say.
ST. ANNE’S, SOHO.
On Theodore, King of Corsica, written by Horace Walpole.
Near this place is interred.
Theodore, King of Corsica,
Who died in this parish Dec. 11, 1756,
Immediately after leaving the King’s Bench prison,
By the benefit of the Act of Insolvency,
In consequence of which he resigned
His Kingdom of Corsica
For the use of his creditors.The grave great teacher to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings,
But Theodore this moral learn’d ere dead,
Fate pour’d its lessons on his living head,
Bestowed a kingdom and denied him bread.
Monmouthshire.
CHEPSTOW.
Here or elsewhere (all’s one to you or me),
Earth, air, or water, gripes my ghostly dust,
None knows how soon to be by fire set free;
Reader, if you an old try’d rule will trust,
You’ll gladly do and suffer what you must.
My time was spent in serving you and you.
And death’s my pay, it seems, and welcome too.
Revenge destroying but itself, while I
To birds of prey leave my old cage and fly;
Examples preach to the eye—care then (mine says)
Not how you end, but how you spend your days.
For thirty years secluded from mankind,
Here Marten lingered. Often have these walls
Echoed his footsteps, as with even tread
He paced around his prison. Not to him
Did Nature’s fair varieties exist,
He never saw the sun’s delightful beams,
Save when through yon high bars he poured
A sad and broken splendour.