(Vol. vii., p. 498.)
The lines which your correspondent R. VINCENT attributes to Sir Walter
Scott are part of an old English inscription which Longfellow quotes in
_Outremer_, p. 66., and thus describes in a note:
"I subjoin this relic of old English verse entire.... It is copied from
a book whose title I have forgotten, and of which I have but a single
leaf, containing the poem. In describing the antiquities of the church
of Stratford-upon-Avon, the writer gives the following account of a
very old painting upon the wall, and of the poem which served as its
motto. The painting is no longer visible, having been effaced in
repairing the church:
"'Against the west wall of the nave, on the south side of the arch, was
painted the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket, while kneeling at the altar
of St. Benedict, in Canterbury Cathedral. Below this was the figure of
an angel, probably St. Michael, supporting a long scroll, upon which
were seven stanzas in old English, being an allegory of mortality.'"
The lines given at p. 498. of "N. & Q." seem to be taken from the two
following stanzas, which stand third and fourth in the old inscription:
"_Erth apon erth wynnys castellys and towrys,_
_Then seth erth unto erth thys ys all owrys._
When erth apon erth hath bylde hys bowrys,
Then schall erth for erth suffur many hard schowrys.
"Erth goth apon erth as man apon mowld,
Lyke as erth apon erth never goo schold,
_Erth goth apon erth as gelsteryng gold,_
_And yet schall erth unto erth rather than he wold._"
{577}
Dugdale, in his _Antiquities of Warwickshire_, p. 517., tells us that John
de Stratford, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Edward III.,
built a chapel on the south side of the church, "to the honour of God and
of St. Thomas the Martyr;" and as at p. 521. he describes it as "in the
south ile of the said church," the west wall of this chapel answers very
well the description of the position of the painting, and inscription. But
in _The Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. xv. p. 238., _the chapel of
the gild of the Holy Cross_, in the centre of the town, is mentioned as the
place in which the pictures were discovered, during some repairs which it
underwent in the year 1804.
I have since ascertained that the work to which Longfellow refers is
Weaver's _Account of Stratford-upon-Avon_.