Epitaphologist

It would seem, indeed, that a doubly keen perception of the ludicrous had need to befriend any one who essays epitaph writing, lest he should be led to perorations like that which concludes an in memoriam to certain deceased members of / the ball family, / in Nuneaton churchyard: / When death shall strike, great will be your falls, / For you will be like these poor Balls. / No doubt a great deal must depend upon the propinquity, and also on the sincerity of the epitaphologist.

The second was some kind of professional student: his like were to be found in the patiently seated waiting lines of the career bureaus, always ready to file for some obscure and pointless occupation—numismatist, dressage instructor, Neurospora geneticist, epitaphologist, worm rancher.

The old stones, covered by wild dill and skunk cabbage, are an epitaphologist’s delight.

In a collection of epitaphs, the epitaphologist Lady Johnson-Ferguson noted that this was to be found upon a stone near Scotland’s highest railway station at Dalnaspidal.

One indication of this are proverbs: “lying like an epitaph,” if no longer current, certainly was proverbial in the nineteenth century and earlier in the twentieth, in English, French, and Italian as frequent references in the “epitaphologist” literature indicate.

Sir—The verse that puzzled your epitaphologist (“The inevitable hour”, December 23rd): / We dance round in a ring and suppose / But the secret sits in the middle and knows / is one of Robert Frost’s stray, whimsical couplets.