More serious charges have, however, been made, and they are summarized in Davis’s “Travels in America,”[15] which was published in 1803. I have already noticed one of these,--the charge that his letter on air-baths was taken from Aubrey’s “Miscellanies,”--which, on examination, I cannot find to be sustained. Davis also charges that Franklin’s famous epitaph on himself was taken from a Latin one by an Eton school-boy, published with an English translation in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for February, 1736. Franklin’s epitaph is already familiar to most of us: The Body of Benjamin Franklin Printer (Like the cover of an old book Its contents torn out And stript of its lettering and gilding) Lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be lost For it will (as he believed) appear once more In a new and more elegant edition Revised and corrected by The Author. The Eton boy’s was somewhat like it: Vitæ Volumine peracto Hic Finis Jacobi Tonson Perpoliti Sociorum Principis; Qui Velut Obstetrix Musarum In Lucem Edivit Fœlices Ingenii Partus. Lugete, Scriptorum chorus, Et Frangite Calamos; Ille vester, Margine Erasus, deletur! Sed hæc postrema Inscriptio Huic primæ Mortis Paginæ Imprimatur, Ne Prælo Sepulchri Commissus, Ipse Editor careat Titulo: Hic Jacet Bibliopola Folio vitæ delapso Expectans novam Editionem Auctiorem et Emendatiorem. One of these productions might certainly have been suggested by the other. But Franklin’s grandson, William Temple Franklin, who professed to have the original in his possession, in his grandfather’s handwriting, said that it was dated 1728, and it is printed with that date in one of the editions of Franklin’s works. If this date is correct, it would be too early for the epitaph to have been copied from the one in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for February, 1736. It might be said that possibly the Eton boy knew of Franklin’s epitaph; but I cannot find that it was printed or in any way made public before 1736. There is no reason why both should not be original, for everybody wrote epitaphs in that century.