Microcosmography / or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters

No. X. MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTION

IN STREGLETHORP CHURCH, NEAR NEWARK-UPON-TRENT, IN LINCOLNSHIRE.

[From Le Neve's Monumenta Anglicana[BT]. 8vo. Lond. 1718. vol. iii. p. 182.]

Stay, reader, and observe Death's partial doom,
A spreading virtue in a narrow tombe;
A generous mind, mingled with common dust,
Like burnish'd steel, cover'd, and left to rust.
Dark in the earth he lyes, in whom did shine
All the divided merits of his line.
The lustre of his name seems faded here,
No fairer star in all that fruitful sphere.
In piety and parts extreamly bright,
Clear was his youth, and fill'd with growing light,
A morn that promis'd much, yet saw no noon;
None ever rose so fast, and set so soon.
All lines of worth were centered here in one,
Yet see, he lies in shades whose life had none.

But while the mother this sad structure rears,	}
A double dissolution there appears—
He into dust dissolves, she into tears.

Richardus Earle [BU], Barn^tus.
Obijt decimo tertio die
Aug^ti Anno Dom. 1697.
Ætatis suÆ 24.

FOOTNOTES:

[BT] Two other epitaphs appear in this collection, on the Earles of Norfolk, with whom I cannot find our author to have had the least connection. A full account of this family may be seen in Blomefield's History of Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 531.

[BU] The title was created by Charles the First, July 2, 1629, and, I believe, became extinct at the decease of this person.

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