APPENDIX VI.

ESSAY UPON EPITAPHS.*

Associates shall bemoan his death, or pine for his less he cannot pre-conceive this regret, he can form no thought of it; and therefore cannot possibly have a desire to leave such regret or remembrance behind t

Ir needs scarcely be said, that an Epitaph pre-sup- | stall, by the side of his companions, and is incapable of poses a Monument, upon which it is to be engraven. anticipating the sorrow with which his surrounding Almost all Nations have wished that certain external signs should point out the places where their Dead are interred. Among savage Tribes unacquainted with letters, this has mostly been done either by rude stones placed near the Graves, or by Mounds of earth | Add to the principle of love, which exists in the m raised over them. This custom proceeded obviously from a twofold desire; first, to guard the remains of the deceased from irreverent approach or from savage violation: and, secondly, to preserve their memory. "Never any," says Camden, "neglected burial but some savage Nations; as the Bactrians, which cast their dead to the dogs; some varlet Philosophers, as Diogenes, who desired to be devoured of fishes; some dissolute courtiers, as Mecenas, who was wont to say, Non tumulum curo; sepelit natura relictos.

I'm careless of a grave:-Nature her dead will save."

As soon as Nations had learned the use of letters, Epitaphs were inscribed upon these Monuments; in order that their intention might be more surely and adequately fulfilled. I have derived Monuments and Epitaphs from two sources of feeling: but these do in fact resolve themselves into one. The invention of Epitaphs, Weever, in his Discourse of Funeral Monuments, says rightly, “proceeded from the presage or fore-feeling of Immortality, implanted in all men naturally, and is referred to the Scholars of Linus the Theban Poet, who flourished about the year of the World two thousand seven hundred; who first bewailed this Linus their Master, when he was slain, in doleful verses, then called of him Elina, afterwards Epitaphia, for that they were first sung at burials, after engraved upon the Sepulchres."

And, verily, without the consciousness of a principle of Immortality in the human soul, Man could never have had awakened in him the desire to live in the remembrance of his fellows: mere love, or the yearning of Kind towards Kind, could not have produced it. The Dog or Horse perishes in the field, or in the

* See 'THE EXCURSION,' Book v, p. 602, Note.

ferior animals, the faculty of reason which exists in
Man alone; will the conjunction of these account *u*
the desire? Doubtless it is a necessary consequence f
this conjunction; yet not I think as a direct resul
but only to be come at through an intermediate thears
viz. that of an intimation or assurance within us, th
some part of our nature is imperishable. At least the
precedence, in order of birth, of one feeling to the
other, is unquestionable. If we look back upon t
days of childhood, we shall find that the time is not a
remembrance when, with respect to our own indise xal
Being, the mind was without this assurance; wherees
the wish to be remembered by our Friends or Kindred
after Death, or even in Absence, is, as we shall discover,
a sensation that does not form itself till the social
feelings have been developed, and the Reason has cor-
nected itself with a wide range of objects. Forlorn,
and cut off from communication with the best part of
his nature, must that Man be, who should derive ins
sense of immortality, as it exists in the mind of a Child,
from the same unthinking gaiety or liveliness of ama
Spirits with which the Lamb in the meadow, or any
other irrational Creature, is endowed; who swald
ascribe it, in short, to blank ignorance in the Child; t
an inability arising from the imperfect state of his
faculties to come, in any point of his being, into cen
tact with a notion of Death; or to an unreflect.ag
acquiescence in what had been instilled into him! H
such an unfolder of the mysteries of Nature, though be
may have forgotten his former self, ever noticed the
early, obstinate, and unappeasable inquisitiveness 4
Children upon the subject of origination! This JE
fact proves outwardly the monstrousness of those sa►
positions: for, if we had no direct external testing!
that the minds of very young Children meditate feet
ly upon Death and Immortality, these inquiries, which

re all know they are perpetually making concerning it follows, as a final inference, that without the belief be whence, do necessarily include correspondent habits in Immortality, wherein these several desires origin{ interrogation concerning the whither. Origin and ate, neither monuments nor epitaphs, in affectionate or rodency are notions inseparably co-relative. Never laudatory commemoration of the Deceased, could have da Child stand by the side of a running Stream, existed in the world. andering within himself what power was the feeder of Simonides, it is related, upon landing in a strange se perpetual current, from what never-wearied sources Country, found the Corse of an unknown person lying he body of water was supplied, but he must have been by the Sea-side; he buried it, and was honoured vitably propelled to follow this question by another: throughout Greece for the piety of that act. Another Towards what abyss is it in progress? what receptacle ancient Philosopher, chancing to fix his eyes upon a In contain the mighty influx?" And the spirit of dead Body, regarded the same with slight, if not with e answer must have been, though the word might be contempt; saying, "See the Shell of the flown Bird!" or Ocean, accompanied perhaps with an image But it is not to be supposed that the moral and tender. athered from a Map, or from the real object in Nature hearted Simonides was incapable of the lofty movements - these might have been the letter, but the spirit of of thought, to which that other Sage gave way at the e answer must have been as inevitably,-a recepta- moment while his soul was intent only upon the indee without bounds or dimensions;-nothing less than structible being; nor, on the other hand, that he, in finity. We may, then, be justified in asserting, that whose sight a lifeless human Body was of no more le sense of Immortality, if not a co-existent and twin value than the worthless Shell from which the living rth with Reason, is among the earliest of her Offspring: fowl had departed, would not, in a different mood of ad we may further assert, that from these conjoined, mind, have been affected by those earthly considerations ad under their countenance, the human affections are which had incited the philosophic Poet to the performradually formed and opened out. This is not the ance of that pious duty. And with regard to this ace to enter into the recesses of these investigations; latter we may be assured that, if he had been destitute at the subject requires me here to make a plain avowal, of the capability of communing with the more exalted at, for my own part, it is to me inconceivable, that thoughts that appertain to human Nature, he would e sympathies of love towards each other, which grow have cared no more for the Corse of the Stranger than its our growth, could ever attain any new strength, for the dead body of a Seal or Porpoise which might t even preserve the old, after we had received from have been cast up by the Waves. We respect the outward senses the impression of Death, and were corporeal frame of Man, not merely because it is the the habit of having that impression daily renewed habitation of a rational, but of an immortal Soul. Each ad its accompanying feeling brought home to ourselves, of these Sages was in Sympathy with the best feelings nd to those we love; if the same were not counter-of our Nature; feelings which, though they seem opcted by those communications with our internal Being, posite to each other, have another and a finer conneca.ch are anterior to all these experiences, and with tion than that of contrast.-It is a connection formed hich revelation coincides, and has through that coin- through the subtle progress by which, both in the nalence alone (for otherwise it could not possess it) a tural and the moral world, qualities pass insensibly into ower to affect us. I confess, with me the conviction their contraries, and things revolve upon each other. absolute, that, if the impression and sense of Death As, in sailing upon the orb of this Planet, a voyage were not thus counterbalanced, such a hollowness would towards the regions where the Sun sets, conducts graervade the whole system of things, such a want of dually to the quarter where we have been accustomed respondence and consistency, a disproportion so as to behold it come forth at its risings; and, in like ading betwixt means and ends, that there could be manner, a voyage towards the East, the birth-place in repose, no joy. Were we to grow up unfostered by our imagination of the morning, leads finally to the a genial warmth, a frost would chill the spirit, so quarter where the Sun is last seen when he departs enetrating and powerful, that there could be no mo- from our eyes; so the contemplative Soul, travelling in es of the life of love; and infinitely less could we the direction of mortality, advances to the Country of ave any wish to be remembered after we had passed everlasting Life; and, in like manner, may she conay from a world in which each man had moved tinue to explore those cheerful tracts, till she is 't like a shadow.-If, then, in a Creature endowed brought back, for her advantage and benefit, to the to the faculties of foresight and reason, the social land of transitory things-of sorrow and of tears. etiens could not have unfolded themselves uncounenanced by the faith that Man is an immortal being; dif, consequently, neither could the individual dying ve had a desire to survive in the remembrance of his ellows, nor on their side could they have felt a wish preserve for future times vestiges of the departed;

On a midway point, therefore, which commands the thoughts and feelings of the two Sages whom we have represented in contrast, does the Author of that species of composition, the Laws of which it is our present purpose to explain, take his stand. Accordingly, recurring to the twofold desire of guarding the Re

it may be said that a sepulchral Monument is a tribute to a Man as a human Being; and that an Epitaph (in the ordinary meaning attached to the word) includes this general feeling and something more; and is a record to preserve the memory of the dead, as a tribute due to his individual worth, for a satisfaction to the sorrowing hearts of the Survivors, and for the common benefit of the living which record is to be accomplished, not in a general manner, but, where it can, in close connection with the bodily remains of the deceased: and these, it may be added, among the modern Nations of Europe, are deposited within, or contiguous to, their places of worship. In ancient times, as is well known, it was the custom to bury the dead beyond the Walls of Towns and Cities; and among the Greeks and Romans they were frequently interred by the waysides.

mains of the deceased and preserving their memory, | Even were it not true that tombs lose their monitory virtue when thus obtruded upon the Notice of Me occupied with the cares of the World, and too often sullied and defiled by those cares, yet still, when Death is in our thoughts, nothing can make amends for the want of the soothing influences of Nature, and for the absence of those types of renovation and decay, which the fields and woods offer to the notice of the ser and contemplative mind. To feel the force of th sentiment, let a man only compare in imagination the unsightly manner in which our Monuments are crowded together in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost gras less Church-yard of a large Town, with the still sec sion of a Turkish Cemetery, in some remote place and yet further sanctified by the Grove of Cypress in which it is embosomed. Thoughts in the sure temper as these have already been expressed with true sensibility by an ingenuous Poet of the preser day. The subject of his Poem is "All Saints Church Derby:" he has been deploring the forbidding and unseemly appearance of its burial-ground, and utter a a wish, that in past times the practice had becs adopted of interring the Inhabitants of large Towns a the Country.

I could here pause with pleasure, and invite the Reader to indulge with me in contemplation of the advantages which must have attended such a practice. We might ruminate upon the beauty which the Monuments, thus placed, must have borrowed from the surrounding images of Nature- from the trees, the wild flowers, from a stream running perhaps within sight or hearing, from the beaten road stretching its weary length hard by. Many tender similitudes must these objects have presented to the mind of the Traveller leaning upon one of the Tombs, or reposing in the coolness of its shade, whether he had halted from weariness or in compliance with the invitation, "Pause, Traveller!" so often found upon the Monuments. And to its Epitaph also must have been supplied strong appeals to visible appearances or immediate impressions, lively and affecting analogies of Life as a Journey-Death as a Sleep overcoming the tired Wayfarer-of Misfortune as a Storm that falls suddenly upon him-of Beauty as a Flower that passeth away, or of innocent pleasure as one that may be gathered-of Virtue that standeth firm as a Rock against the beating Waves; of Hope "undermined insensibly like the Poplar by the side of the River that has fed it," or blasted in a moment like a Pine-tree by the stroke of lightning upon the Mountain-top-of admonitions and heart-stirring remembrances, like a refreshing Breeze that comes without warning, or the taste of the waters of an unexpected Fountain. These, and similar suggestions, must have given, formerly, to the language of the senseless stone a voice enforced and endeared by the benignity of that Nature with which it was in unison.-We, in modern times, have lost much of these advantages; and they are but in a small degree counterbalanced to the Inhabitants of large Towns and Cities, by the custom of depositing the Dead within, or contiguous to, their places of worship; however splendid or imposing may be the appearance of those Edifices, or however interesting or salutary the recollections associated with them.

"Then in some rural, calm, sequestered spot,
Where healing Nature her benignant look
Ne'er changes, save at that lorn season, when,
With tresses drooping o'er her sable stole,
She yearly mourns the mortal doom of man,
Her noblest work, (so Israel's virgins erst,
With annual moan upon the mountains wept
Their fairest gone) there in that rural scene,
So placid, so congenial to the wish
The Christian feels, of peaceful rest within
The silent grave, I would have strayed:

-wandered forth, where the cold dew of heavER
Lay on the humbler graves around, what time
The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds,
Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse,
"I were brooding on the dead inhumed beneath
There while with him, the holy man of le
O'er human destiny I sympathised,
Counting the long, long periods prophecy
Decrees to roll, ere the great day arrives
Of resurrection, oft the blue-eyed Spring
Had met me with her blossoms, as the Dove,
Of old, returned with olive leaf, to cheer
The Patriarch mourning o'er a world destroyed:
And I would bless her visit; for to me
"T is sweet to trace the consonance that Inks
As one, the works of Nature and the word
Of God.".

of pious cheerfulness, which attend the celebration | love, is not a common or natural employment of Men of the Sabbath-day in rural places, are profitably at any time. We are not anxious unerringly tc chastised by the sight of the Graves of Kindred and Friends, gathered together in that general Home towards which the thoughtful yet happy Spectators themselves are journeying. Hence a Parish Church, in the stillness of the Country, is a visible centre of a community of the living and the dead; a point to which are habitually referred the nearest concerns of both.

No-the thoughtful look, the sigh,

and perhaps the involuntary tear, would testify that it had a sane, a generous, and good meaning; and that on the Writer's mind had remained an impres sion which was a true abstract of the character of the deceased; that his gifts and graces were remem bered in the simplicity in which they ought to be remembered. The composition and quality of the mind of a virtuous man, contemplated by the side of the Grave where his body is mouldering, ought to appear, and be felt as something midway between what he was on Earth walking about with his living frailties, and what he may be presumed to be as a Sprit in Heaven.

lie in a due proportion of the common or universal an idle tale? feeling of humanity to sensations excited by a distinct and clear conception, conveyed to the Reader's mind, of the Individual, whose death is deplored and whose memory is to be preserved; at least of his character, as, after death, it appeared to those who loved him and lament his loss. The general sympathy ought to be quickened, provoked, and diversified, by particular thoughts, actions, images, circumstances of age, occupation, manner of life, prosperity which the Deceased had known, or adversity to which he had been subject; and these ought to be bound together and solemnised into one harmony by the general sympathy. The two powers should temper, restrain, and exalt each other. The Reader ought to know who and what the Man was whom he is called upon to think of with interest. A distinct conception should be given (implicitly where it can, rather than explicitly) of the Individual lamented. But the Writer of an Epitaph is not an Anatomist, who dissects the internal frame of the mind; he is not even a Painter, who executes a portrait at leisure and in entire tranquillity; his delineation, we must remember, is performed by the side of the Grave; and, what is more, the grave of one whom he loves and admires. What purity and brightness is that virtue clothed in, the image of which must no longer bless our living eyes! The character of a deceased Friend or beloved Kinsman is not seen, no-nor ought to be seen, otherwise than as a Tree through a tender haze or a luminous mist, that spiritualizes and beautifies it; that takes away, indeed, but only to the end that the parts which are not abstracted may appear more dignified and lovely, may impress and affect the more. Shall we say, then, that this is not truth, not a faithful image; and that, accordingly, the purposes of commemoration cannot be answered? — It is truth, and of the highest order! for, though doubtless things are not apparent which did exist; yet, the object being looked at through this medium, parts and proportions are brought into distinct view which before had been only imperfectly or uncon-anxious for one another in one spirit; our hopes t sciously seen it is truth hallowed by love the joint offspring of the worth of the Dead and the affections of the Living! This may easily be brought to the

test.

Let one, whose eyes have been sharpened by personal hostility to discover what was amiss in the character of a good man, hear the tidings of his death, and what a change is wrought in a moment!-Enmity melts away; and, as it disappears, unsightliness, disproportion, and deformity, vanish; and, through the influence of commiseration, a harmony of love and beauty succeeds. Bring such a Man to the Tombstone on which shall be inscribed an Epitaph on his Adversary, composed in the spirit which we have recommended. Would he turn from it as from

It suffices, therefore, that the Trunk and the main Branches of the Worth of the Deceased be boldly and unaffectedly represented. Any further detail, minutely and scrupulously pursued, especially if this be done with laborious and antithetic discriminations, most inevitably frustrate its own purpose; forcing the pes ing Spectator to this conclusion, either that the Dead did not possess the merits ascribed to him, er that they who have raised a monument to his mener, and must therefore be supposed to have been close!r connected with him, were incapable of perceiving them merits; or at least during the act of composition hal lost sight of them; for, the Understanding having boot, so busy in its petty occupation, how could the beart of the Mourner be other than cold and in either of these cases, whether the fault be on the part of the buried Person or the Survivors, the Memorial is unaffecting and profitless.

Much better is it to fall short in discriminatin than to pursue it too far, or to labour it unfeeling r For in no place are we so much disposed to del upon those points, of nature and condition, where all Men resemble each other, as in the Temple where the universal Father is worshipped, or by the se of the Grave which gathers all Human Beings to itself, and "equalizes the lofty and the low." We sui” and we weep with the same heart; we love and ETF

to the same quarter; and the virtues by which ar are all to be furthered and supported, as patien meekness, good-will, temperance, and temperate desires, are in an equal degree the concern of us a'. Let an Epitaph, then, contain at least these actinledgments to our common nature; nor let the se of their importance be sacrificed to a balance of o posite qualities or minute distinctions in individes character; which if they do not, (as will for the test part be the case) when examined, resolve these ye into a trick of words, will, even when they are tra and just, for the most part be grievously out of place, for, as it is probable that few only have exp.cred these intricacies of human nature, so can the tracing