Summary: Written not long before 31 January 1758 presumably at the request of John Clerke to commemorate his wife Jane who died 27 April 1757 aged 31. Inscribed on a mural tablet in St George's parish church, Beckenham, Kent, 1758. First published, as "An Epitaph copied from a Tomb-stone in a Country Church Yard", in The Gentleman's Magazine, October 1759.
References: Smith (ed.), Index (1989), item GrT 42, 83; Pearce, E. H. and Leonard Whibley (eds.), The Correspondence of Richard Hurd and William Mason (Cambridge, 1932), 168
Contents: Transcript, possibly in the hand of Richard Hurd, here untitled and headed "By Mr. Gray", together with a Latin version, in the papers of Richard Hurd.
Summary: Written between 27 March and 23 May 1767 for Mason's wife Mary who died on 27 March 1767 aged 28. Inscribed on a monument in Bristol Cathedral, [1767]. First published in The New Foundling Hospital for Wit (London, new edn. 1784), vi. 45. Transcripts of Mason's own epitaph on his wife beginning "Take, holy Earth, all that my soul holds dear", are at PwV 304 and 1010(ii), Portland Collection, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
References: Smith (ed.), Index (1989), item GrT 43, 83; Lonsdale (ed.), Poems (1969), 256
Contents: Autograph of Gray's four lines, preceding a transcript in Gray's hand of the 12 lines composed by Mason, the whole entitled "Epitaph", endorsed in the hand of Richard Hurd "Mr. Mason's Ep. on his wife in Mr. Gray's hand-writing", in the papers of Richard Hurd.