Stockwell.
Minor Notes.
Curious Epitaph.—In the Diary of Thomas Moore, Charles Lamb is said at a certain dinner party to have "quoted an epitaph by Clio Rickman, in which, after several lines in the usual jog-trot style of epitaph, he continued thus:
'He well perform'd the husband's, father's part,
And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.'"
There is an epitaph in the churchyard of Newhaven, Sussex, in which the last of these two lines occurs, but which does not answer in other respects to the character of the one quoted by Lamb. On the contrary, it is altogether eminently quaint, peculiar, and consistent. The stone is to the memory of Thomas Tipper, who departed this life May the 14th, 1785, aged fifty-four years; and the upper part is embellished with a representation, in bas-relief, of the drawbridge which crosses the river, whence it might be inferred that the comprehensive genius of Mr. Tipper included engineering and architecture. The epitaph runs thus:
"Reader, with kind regard this grave survey,
Nor heedless pass where Tipper's ashes lay.
Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt and kind,