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The epigrams upon his death, in the form of epitaphs, dealt most terribly with "his ignominious memory" as Burchard has it. Of these the Master of Ceremonies collected upwards of a score, which he gives in his Diarium. "Hac Janus Baptista jacet Ferrarius urna, Terra habuit corpus, Bos bona, Styx animam."
I was penning nothing less than my own artistic damnation. Self-condemned, indeed, I had been this long time; but I was now making the world a party to the sentence. The crowning of Andriaovsky involved my own annihilation; his "Life" would be my "Hic Jacet." And yet I was prepared, nay, resolved, to write it. I had started, and I would go forward.
Passing by a world of artistic beauties which never tire the eyes, but soon would tire the chronicler and reader, stepping over the broad bronze slab in the floor which covers the dust of the haughty primate Porto Carrero, but which bears neither name nor date, only this inscription of arrogant humility, HIC JACET PULVIS CINIS ET NIHIL, we walk into the verdurous and cheerful Gothic cloisters.
Then judging it all very idle, he tore the letter in two. It was a gesture made before relapsing into a silence which he had intended should be eternal. At the very moment when Paliser was being run through the gizzards, he, turning a page of life, had scrawled on it Hic jacet.
Catherine, built at his own expense, lies buried Cairasco, the bard whom Cervantes recognised as his master in style. His epitaph, dating A.D. 1610, reads Lyricen et vates, toto celebratus in orbe, Hic jacet inclusus, nomine ad astra volans. A statue to him was erected opposite the old 'Cairasco Theatre' in 1876.
At this moment I should have been cursing and smoking cheap tobacco in Battersea unless I had got sick of it all and done the hic jacet business, a strong probability. Never did a girl behave more sensibly. Some day I hope to tell her so; of course when she has married somebody else. Then I'll paint her portrait, and make her the envy of a season by Jove, I will!
Thence to the porter's, in the absence of the butler, and did drink of the College beer, which is very good; and went into the back fields to see the scholars play. And so to the chapel, and there saw, among other things, Sir H. Wotton's stone with this Epitaph: Hic jacet primus hujus sententiae Author: Disputandi pruritus fit ecclesiae scabies.
At that moment, when we in our wanderins had reached the furthest extremity that we attained onto, I tell you my blood friz, an my har riz in horror! Methought it were all up with Solomon; and when I see his hat, it seemed to me jest as though I was a regardin with despairin eye his tumestun whereon war graven by no mortial hand the solemn an despairin epigram, 'Hic jacet!
The next year I quibbled again in three or four lines against him, then he printed twenty-two sheets against me. I was persuaded by Dr. Gauden, late Bishop of Exeter, to let him alone; but in my next year's Anglicus, in August observations, I wrote, Hâc in tumbâ jacet Presbyter & Nebulo, in which very month he died.
There is no inscription remaining to point out for whom this figure was intended; but Gall, in his "Antiquities of Winchester," gives the following inscription as having existed on the monument: "Hic jacet Willielmus comes de insula Vana, alias Wincall;" the parish of that name lies on the river Itchin, and might formerly have been insulated.
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