clxiv Journal of Proceedings.
Those he would rather merit than obtain.
Bis private life in humble shades he spent,
Worthy a. palace, with a cell content.
Unwearied he would knowledge still pursue,
The only thing in which no mean he knew.
What more did add to these bright gifts, we find
A pure untainted Piety of mind.
England's blest Church engross'd his zealous care,
A truth his dying accents did declare.
Thus lost he in retirement his great breath ;
Thus dy'd he living, who thus lives in death.
Thus heav'n called his age's glory home,
And the bright wonder of the age to come.
Sir J. E. Smith in Rees' Cyclopaedia writes : "The authors of the
'Biographia Britannica ' are probably more correct in saying that he
declined the offer made him by the rector of a place of interment in the
chancel, choosing rather to repose with his ancestors in the churchyard.
He perhaps thought, with Bishop Hall, that ' the house of God ought not
to be made a repository for dead carcases.'"
In 1737 the monument, being nearly in ruins, was restored at the
charge of Dr. Legge and removed for shelter into the church, another
inscription, describing it as a cenotaph, being added. In 1782 Sir
Thomas Gery Cullum and others again repaired the tomb, adding a
third inscription (see ' Memorials of Ray,' p. 81), and apparently replac-
ing it in the churchyard. A further slight restoration, the last, mainly
of the inscription, was carried out after the visit of the Linnean Club,
and the foundation of the Ray Society in 1844.
In Linnaeus' copy of Derham's ' Select Remains of Ray,' Sir J. E.
Smith has pencilled the additional inscription by Sir T. G. Cullum, and
adds on a fly-leaf :
" A manuscript copy of Ray's epitaph as at p. 80. in the hand of
Dr. Coyte's father (of Ipswich), was sent me by Dr. Coyte, Jan. 23,
1800, with this note in the same hand. ' Scripsit hoc epitaphium,
M. A. S., Gulielmus Coyte, A.M., anno 1703 ; vel circiter id tempus—
sepultus hic excellentissimus in coementerio * fuerat vir, ecclesiae Black
Notley, sic dict., Essex.
' When Clusius knew each Plant Earth's Bosom yeilds,
He went a simpling to th' Elysian Feilds.'
To the word coemeterio (accidentally written coementerio) is a note
begun and scratched out thus—* ' I can't tell,' by which I suppose he
was going to say he could not tell whether it were in the church or
churchyard—a point Sir T. Cullum told me was doubtful.—J. E. S."
I should here, perhaps, explain that for some of the hitherto un-
published facts in the present paper I am indebted to the original
manuscripts of Ray's correspondence. These passed from Derham's
possession to that of his wife's nephew, George Scott, of Woolston Hall,
who, Derham having died in 1735, published the ' Select Remains of
John Ray,' in 1760. After Scott's death in 1780, they passed into the
possession of the Prideaux family, and were discovered a few years ago
by C. G. Prideaux-Brune. Esq., among the papers of Lady Prideaux, at.
Neatherton. in Devonshire. In 1884. Mr. Prideaux-Brune gave them to
J. D. Enys, Esq., by whom they were sold to the Trustees of the British
Museum, and they are now in the Botanical Department. Derham
seems to have intentionally omitted to print all personal matters, which
are now to us of the greatest interest.
Mr. E. A. Fitch, so well known as an entomologist, and therefore
qualified to speak of Ray's labours as an early explorer of the world of
insects, followed with a paper on :—