Our next example is profuse of puns, some of which are rather obscure to younger readers, owing to the disuse of the old wooden press. It is the epitaph of a Scotch printer:-- Sacred to the memory of ADAM WILLIAMSON, Pressman-printer, in Edinburgh, Who died Oct. 3, 1832, Aged 72 years. All my stays are loosed; My cap is thrown off; my head is worn out; My box is broken; My spindle and bar have lost their power; My till is laid aside; Both legs of my crane are turned out of their path; My platen can make no impression; My winter hath no spring; My rounce will neither roll out nor in; Stone, coffin, and carriage have all failed; The hinges of my tympan and frisket are immovable; My long and short ribs are rusted; My cheeks are much worm-eaten and mouldering away: My press is totally down: The volume of my life is finished, Not without many errors; Most of them have arisen from bad composition, and are to be attributed more to the chase than the press; There are also a great number of my own: Misses, scuffs, blotches, blurs, and bad register; But the true and faithful Superintendent has undertaken to correct the whole. When the machine is again set up (incapable of decay), A new and perfect edition of my life will appear, Elegantly bound for duration, and every way fitted for the grand Library of the Great Author. The next specimen is less satisfactory, because devoid of the hope that should encircle the death of the Christian. It is the epitaph which Baskerville, the celebrated Birmingham printer and type founder, directed to be placed upon a tomb of masonry in the shape of a cone, and erected over his remains:-- Stranger Beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground, A friend to the liberties of mankind Directed his body to be inurned. May the example contribute to emancipate thy mind from the idle fears of superstition, and the wicked arts of priestcraft. It is recorded that "The tomb has long since been overturned, and even the remains of the man himself desecrated and dispersed till the final day of resurrection, when the atheism which in his later years he professed, will receive assuredly so complete and overwhelming a refutation." In 1599 died Christopher Barker, one of the most celebrated of the sixteenth century typographers, printer to Queen Elizabeth--to whom, in fact, the present patent, held by Eyre and Spottiswode, can be traced back in unbroken succession.