---- Rectory, Hereford.
I think your correspondent A. B. R. is not quite correct in his version
of the epitaph of which he inquires the sense. It is evidently intended
for two hexameter verses, and, as I have heard it, runs thus:
"Quod fuit esse, quod est; quod non fuit esse, quod esse;
Esse quod est, non esse; quod est, non est, erit, esse."
I inclose a similar epitaph in another churchyard (the _locale_ of which
I do not know), which may serve to elucidate its meaning:
"That which a Being was, what is it? show:
That being which it was, it is not now.
To be what 'tis is not to be, you see;
That which now is not shall a Being be."