ECCLESIASTES.
["J.E.," "D.D.," and other correspondents, have also replied to this Query by references to Eccl. ix. 4.]
Curious Monumental Brass (No. 16. p. 247.)—If "RAHERE" will turn to Mr. Boutell's Monumental Brasses and Slabs, p. 148., he will there find a description as well as an engraving of what, from his account, I doubt not he will discover to be the identical fragment to which he refers. A foot legend, and what remains of a border inscription, is added to it. In the above work, pp. 147 to 155, and in the Oxford Architectural Society's Manual for the Study of Brasses, p. 15., "RAHERE" will find an account and references to numerous examples of palimpsest brasses, to which class the one in question belongs.
I presume that "RAHERE" is a young brass-rubber, or the fact of a plate being engraved on both sides would have presented no difficulty to him.
ARUN.
[We have received several other replies to this Query, referring to Mr. Boutell's Monumental Brasses: one from "W."; another from "A CORNISHMAN," who says,—
"The brass in question, when I saw it last, had been removed from the Rectory and placed in the tomb of Abbot Wheathampstead, in company with the famous one of Thomas Delamere, another Abbot of St. Albans."
Another from "E.V.," who states,—
"Other examples are found at St. Margaret's, Rochester (where the cause of the second engraving is found to be an error in costume in the first), St. Martins at Plain, Norwich, Hedgerly Church, Bucks, and Burwell Church, Cambridgeshire. Of this last, an engraving and description, by Mr. A.W. Franks, is given in the fourteenth part of the Publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society."
One from "WILLIAM SPARROW SIMPSON," who says,—