_Gravestone Inscription_ (Vol. viii., p. 268.).--The gravestone
inscription communicated by JULIA R. BOCKETT consists of the last four
lines of the ballad of "Death and the Lady" (see Dixon's _Ballads_, by
the Percy Society). They should be:
"The grave's the market-place where all men meet,
Both rich and poor, as well as small and great:
If life were merchandise that gold could buy,
The rich would live, the poor alone would die."
In the introduction to Smith's edition of Holbein's _Dance of Death_, the
editor says:
"The concluding lines have been converted into an epitaph, _to
be found in most of our village churchyards_."
Of the truth of which assertion the churchyard of Milton-next-Gravesend,
in Kent, furnishes an illustration, as I copied the lines from a stone
there some years ago. Being generally, I imagine, quoted from memory,
they do not appear to be exactly similar in any two instances.