These
Prospects Have All Faded," And So On For Several Long Lines In
Very Big Letters, Occupying A Good Deal
Of space on the wall.
But what and who was he, and what connection had he with Bath?
He was
A young man born in the West Indies who died in
Scotland, and later his mother, coming to Bath for her health,
"caused this inscription to be placed on the abbey walls"!
If this policy or tradition is still followed by the abbey
authorities, it will be necessary for them to build an annexe;
if it be no longer followed, would it be going too far to
suggest that these mural tablets to a thousand obscurities,
which ought never to have been placed there, should now be
removed and placed in some vault where the relations or
descendants of the persons described could find, and if they
wished it, have them removed?
But it must be said that the abbey is not without a fair
number of memorials with which no one can quarrel; the one I
admire most, to Quin, the actor, has, I think, the best or the
most appropriate epitaph ever written. No, one, however
familiar with the words, will find fault with me for quoting
them here:
That tongue which set the table on a roar
And charmed the public ear is heard no more.
Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,
Which spake before the tongue what Shakespeare writ.
Cold is that hand which living was stretched forth
At friendship's call to succor modest worth.
Here lies James Quin, deign readers to be taught
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In Nature's happiest mood however cast,
To this complexion thou must come at last.
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