Only The Good Die Young 👼

Very nice epitaph for this young man of 19 years..

Here
Lie inter’d
the Remains of
ELI BROOKS Son
of John Brooks Esq/qsl:r & Anna
his wife, who Departed this
Life Oct:r 25/6th Ætat. 19: a
Youth of promising ge/onius. &
an obliging disposition desirous
of making all around him happ.^y.
Just as he had entered upon his
collegiate stue/dies, and was giv/wen his
Friends & Aequantance rais’d
Expectations of this future
usefulness, Death market him
for his Prey: in the mornin^g
of Life called him to
the Grave.
Notice above how I’ve bold-italicized the typos which seem to be both alterations to text as well as insertions (^) of letters.

Here are two examples in the enlargement below:

Notice the doubled “Esq.”. This had to be the result of an originally misspelled Esq. as Eqs. The engraver was as neat as he could be as he used the shaft of the original “S” as the lower stem of the “new q”. Logically that’s the only way I can see this happening.

Check out the over-date so beautifully executed... After looking at it really closely, the only thing I can say is that the 5 and the 6 are cut to the same depth with such a fluid overlap that the ONLY clue as to which came first.. is the top most tip of the 6 which does appear to be under the “th” which suggests to me.. that the 6 with the year was cut first. Upon learning of the typo, the engraving must have used the addition of the “th” to ever so slightly mask at least a tiny portion of the erroneous 6.

Note the word “genius” where the letter “e” appears to have been created from an erroneously cut letter “o”.

The word “studies” shows us a letter “d” for some reason has an “e” as part of the letter.. just a careless mistake. Also notice the word “given” where the letter “w” floats over letter “i”.. as if he cut the modern “given” first but then decided to add the archaic “giwen”?