...cynical mood, summed up his experience in the following couplet, intended for his epitaph : — . " Life is a jest, and all things show it : I thought so once, but now I know it." We cannot let that couplet go without saying that life is a stern sort of jesting — that life is...

...contented, how many dissatisfied! The epitaph in Westminster Abbey involuntarily rose to my mind : " Life is a jest*, and all things show it: I thought so once, but now I know it." The rising sun on the 30th of July was the harbinger of * Would not dream be a more appropriate word...

...uncomfortable amount of awe and veneration, we have a great deal of genuine love. The worthless couplet — " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, but now I know it" — the mere expression of a mood of the poet's mind, should never have been placed on the monument,...

...1553, and died in the year 1598." There again, in memory of Gay, is the following strange couplet : " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, but now I know it." And here is a record of one Matthew Prior, a poet and diplomatist, who wrote his own epitaph in these...

...with so prelatic a place. The man. too, on whose monument is inscribed his own impious couplet — ' Life is a jest, and all things show it, I thought so once, and now I know it,' has surely no claims to be honoured by a Church which regards all such ideas of...

...of John Gay and Handel exhibit ! On the former is the epitaph written by himself and for himself : " Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it." Before the figure of the other is placed the " Messiah," opened at the passage,...

...one's feelings are shocked by that foolish epitaph on Gay's slab, written, I believe, by himself: — " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, and now I know it." But then, even this may excite a train of thought which, though not tending to...

...von dem Dichter selbst verfafste, etwas frivol klingende Inschrift nicht fehlen dürfen. Sie lautet: Life is a jest, and all things show it: I thought so once, but now I know it. Obwohl von Gays Dichtungen heutzutage nur noch seine Fabeln lebendig sind, ist doch, der Kuhm seines...

...John Gay and Handel exhibit ! On the former, is the epitaph written by himself, and for himself: — " Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, and now I know it." Before the figure of the other is placed the " Messiah," opened at the passage...

...the monuments of John Gay and Handel exhibit ! On the former, is the epitaph written by himself : " Life is a jest, and all things show it ; I thought so once, and now I know it." Before the figure of the other is placed the " Messiah," opened at the passage...