Anno MDCLVI.
Obiit MDCCXXXI.
Apposita est SARA, conjux,
Antiqua FORDORUM gente oriunda; quam domi sedulam, foris paucis notam; nulli molestam, mentis acumine et judicii subtilitate praecellentem; aliis multum, sibi parum indulgentem: aeternitati semper attentam, omne fere virtutis nomen commendavit.
Nata Nortoniae Regis, in agro Varvicensi, Anno MDCLXIX;
Obiit MDCCLIX.
Cum NATHANAELE, illorum filio, qui natus MDCCXII, cum vires et animi et corporis multa pollicerentur, anno MDCCXXXVII, vitam brevem pia morte finivit. Johnson's Works, i. 150.
[1197] Hawkins (Life, p. 590) says that he asked that the stone over his own grave 'might be so placed as to protect his body from injury.' Harwood (History of Lichfield, p. 520) says that the stone in St. Michael's was removed in 1796, when the church was paved. A fresh one with the old inscriptions was placed in the church on the hundredth anniversary of Johnson's death by Robert Thorp, Esq., of Buxton Road House, Macclesfield. The Rev. James Serjeantson, Rector of St. Michael's, suggests to me that the first stone was never set up. It is, he says, unlikely that such a memorial within a dozen years was treated so unworthily. Moreover in 1841 and again in 1883, during reparations of the church, a very careful search was made for it, but without result. There may have been, he thinks, some difficulty in finding the exact place of interment. The matter may have stood over till it was forgotten, and the mason, whose receipted bill shews that he was paid for the stone, may have used it for some other purpose.
[1198] See ante, i. 241, and iv. 351.
[1199] 'He would also,' says Hawkins (Life, p. 579), 'have written in Latin verse an epitaph for Mr. Garrick, but found himself unequal to the task of original poetic composition in that language.'