Here lyeth John Cruker, a maker of bellowes,
His craftes-master and King of good fellowes;
Yet when he came to the hour of his death,
He that made bellowes, could not make breath.
The next epitaph, on Joseph Blakett, poet and shoemaker of Seaham, is said
to be from Byron's pen:--
Stranger! behold interr'd together
The souls of learning and of leather.
Poor Joe is gone, but left his awl--
You'll find his relics in a stall.
His work was neat, and often found
Well-stitched and with morocco bound.
Tread lightly--where the bard is laid
We cannot mend the shoe he made;
Yet he is happy in his hole,
With verse immortal as his sole.
But still to business he held fast,
And stuck to Phoebus to the last.
Then who shall say so good a fellow
Was only leather and prunella?
For character--he did not lack it,
And if he did--'twere shame to Black it!