ys_, wherein the writer says:

"What a lively effigy--short, stout, hardy, self-complacent,
perfectly satisfied, and perhaps even proud of his
profession, and content to be exhibited with all its insignia
about him! Two queens had passed through his hands into that
bed which gives a lasting rest to queens and to peasants
alike. An officer of death, who had so long defied his
principal, could not but have made some impression on the
minds of bishop, dean, prebends, and other magnates of the
cathedral, and hence, as we may suppose, the erection of this
lively portraiture of the old man, which is believed to have
been only once renewed since it was first put up. Dr. Dibdin,
who last copied it, tells us that 'old Scarlett's jacket and
trunkhose are of a brownish red, his stockings blue, his
shoes black, tied with blue ribbons, and the soles of his
feet red. The cap upon his head is red, and so also is the
ground of the coat armour.'" Beneath the portrait are these
lines:

YOU SEE OLD SCARLETTS PICTURE STAND ON HIE
BUT AT YOUR FEETE THERE DOTH HIS BODY LYE
HIS GRAVESTONE DOTH HIS AGE AND DEATH TIME SHOW
HIS OFFICE BY THEIS TOKENS YOU MAY KNOW
SECOND TO NONE FOR STRENGTH AND STURDYE LIMM
A SCARBABE MIGHTY VOICE WITH VISAGE GRIM
HEE HAD INTER'D TWO QUEENES WITHIN THIS PLACE
AND THIS TOWNES HOUSEHOLDERS IN HIS LIVES SPACE
TWICE OVER: BUT AT LENGTH HIS OWN TURNE CAME
WHAT HE FOR OTHERS DID FOR HIM THE SAME
WAS DONE: NO DOUBT HIS SOUL DOTH LIVE FOR AYE
IN HEAVEN: THOUGH HERE HIS BODY CLAD IN CLAY.

On the floor is a stone inscribed "JULY 2 1594 R.S. aetatis 98." This
painting is not a contemporary portrait of the old sexton, but a copy
made in 1747.

The sentiment expressed in the penult couplet is not uncommon, the idea
of retributive justice, of others performing the last offices for the
clerk who had so often done the like for his neighbours. The same notion
is expressed in the epitaph of Frank Raw, clerk and monumental mason, of
Selby, Yorkshire, which runs as follows:

Here lies the body of poor FRANK RAW
Parish clerk and gravestone cutter,
And this is writ to let you know
What Frank for others used to do
Is now for Frank done by another[48].

[Footnote 48: _Curious Epitaphs_, by W.