occasion his lordship held a
confirmation in the church on 5 November, when it is said the clerk
gave out the Psalm in the usual way, adding, "in a stave of my own
composing":

"This is the day that was the night
When the Papists did conspire
To blow up the King and Parliament House
With Gundy-powdy-ire."

[Footnote 69: My kind correspondent, the Rev. J.B. Hughes, abstains from
mentioning the name of the parish.]

My informant cannot vouch for the truth of this story, but he can for
the fact that when Bishop Phillpotts on another occasion visited the
church his lordship was surprised to hear the clerk give out at the end
of the service, "Let us sing in honour of his lordship, 'God save the
King.'" The bishop rose somewhat hastily, saying to his chaplain, "Come
along, Barnes; we shall have 'Rule, Britannia!' next."

Cuthbert Bede tells the story of a poetical clerk who was much aggrieved
because some disagreeable and naughty folk had maliciously damaged his
garden fence. On the next Sunday he gave out "a stave of his own
composing":

"Oh, Lord, how doth the wicked man;
They increases more and more;
They break the posts, likewise the rails
Around this poor clerk's door."

He almost deserved his fate for barbarously mutilating a metrical Psalm,
and was evidently a proper victim of poetical justice.

A Devonshire clerk wrote the following noble effort:--

"Mount Edgcumbe is a pleasant place
Right o'er agenst the Ham-o-aze,
Where ships do ride at anchor,
To guard us agin our foes. Amen."

Besides writing "hymns of his own composing," the parish clerk often
used to give vent to his poetical talents in the production of epitaphs.
The occupation of writing epitaphs must have been a lucrative one, and
the effusions recording the numerous virtues of the deceased are quaint
and curious. Well might a modern English child ask her mother after
hearing these records read to her, "Where were all the bad people
buried?" Learned scholars and abbots applied their talents to the
production of the Latin verses inscribed on old brass memorials of the
dead, and clever ladies like Dame Elizabeth Hobby sometimes wrote them
and appended their names to their compositions. In later times this task
seems to have been often undertaken by the parish clerk with not
altogether satisfactory results, though incumbents and great poets,
among whom may be enumerated Pope and