that act. Another ancient Philosopher, chancing to fix his eyes
upon a dead body, regarded the same with slight, if not with
contempt, saying, “See the shell of the flown bird!” But it is not
to be supposed that the moral and tender-hearted Simonides was
incapable of the lofty movements of thought to which that other
Sage gave way at the moment while his soul was intent only upon
the indestructible being; nor, on the other hand, that he, in
whose sight a lifeless human body was of no more value than the
worthless shell from which the living fowl had departed, would
not, in a different mood of mind, have been affected by those
earthly considerations which had incited the philosophic Poet to
the performance of that pious duty. And with regard to this latter
we may be assured that, if he had been destitute of the capability
of communing with the more exalted thoughts that appertain to
human nature, he would have cared no more for the corse of the
stranger than for the dead body of a seal or porpoise which might
have been cast up by the waves. We respect the corporeal frame of
Man, not merely because it is the habitation of a rational, but of
an immortal Soul. Each of these Sages was in sympathy with the
best feelings of our nature; feelings which, though they seem
opposite to each other, have another and a finer connection than
that of contrast.—It is a connection formed through the subtle
progress by which, both in the natural and the moral world,
qualities pass insensibly into their contraries, and things
revolve upon each other. As, in sailing upon the orb of this
planet, a voyage towards the regions where the sun sets conducts
gradually to the quarter where we have been accustomed to behold
it come forth at its rising; and, in like manner, a voyage towards
the east, the birth-place in our imagination of the morning, leads
finally to the quarter where the sun is last seen when he departs
from our eyes; so the contemplative Soul, travelling in the
direction of mortality, advances to the country of everlasting
life; and, in like manner, may she continue to explore those
cheerful tracts till she is brought back, for her advantage and
benefit, to the land of transitory things—of sorrow and of tears.
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 remains of the
deceased and preserving their memory, 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.
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. Even were it not true that tombs lose their
monitory virtue when thus obtruded upon the notice of men 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 serious and
contemplative mind. To feel the force of this 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 grassless churchyard of a large town, with the still
seclusion 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 same temper as these have already been
expressed with true sensibility by an ingenuous Poet of the
present 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 uttering a wish that in past
times the practice had been adopted of interring the inhabitants
of large towns in the country;—
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 stayed:
*****
—wandered forth, where the cold dew of heaven
Lay on the humbler graves around, what time
The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds,
Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse,
‘Twere brooding on the dead inhumed beneath.
There while with him, the holy man of Uz,
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
‘Tis sweet to trace the consonance that links
As one, the works of Nature and the word
Of God.—JOHN EDWARDS.
A village churchyard, lying as it does in the lap of nature, may
indeed be most favourably contrasted with that of a town of
crowded population; and sepulture therein combines many of the
best tendencies which belong to the mode practised by the Ancients
with others peculiar to itself. The sensations of pious
cheerfulness, which attend the celebration of the sabbath-day in
rural places, are profitably 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.
As, then, both in cities and in villages, the dead are deposited
in close connection with our places of worship, with us the
composition of an epitaph naturally turns, still more than among
the nations of antiquity, upon the most serious and solemn
affections of the human mind; upon departed worth—upon personal
or social sorrow and admiration—upon religion, individual and
social—upon time, and upon eternity. Accordingly, it suffices, in
ordinary cases, to secure a composition of this kind from censure,
that it contain nothing that shall shock or be inconsistent with
this spirit. But, to entitle an epitaph to praise, more than this
is necessary. It ought to contain some thought or feeling
belonging to the mortal or immortal part of our nature touchingly
expressed; and if that be done, however general or even trite the
sentiment may be, every man of pure mind will read the words with
pleasure and gratitude. A husband bewails a wife; a parent
breathes a sigh of disappointed hope over a lost child; a son
utters a sentiment of filial reverence for a departed father or
mother; a friend perhaps inscribes an encomium recording the
companionable qualities, or the solid virtues, of the tenant of
the grave, whose departure has left a sadness upon his memory.
This and a pious admonition to the living, and a humble expression
of Christian confidence in immortality, is the language of a
thousand churchyards; and it does not often happen that anything,
in a greater degree discriminate or appropriate to the dead or to
the living, is to be found in them. This want of discrimination
has been ascribed by Dr. Johnson, in his Essay upon the epitaphs
of Pope, to two causes: first, the scantiness of the objects of
human praise; and, secondly, the want of variety in the characters
of men; or, to use his own words, “to the fact, that the greater
part of mankind have no character at all.” Such language may be
holden without blame among the generalities of common
conversation; but does not become a critic and a moralist speaking
seriously upon a serious subject. The objects of admiration in
human nature are not scanty, but abundant: and every man has a
character of his own to the eye that has skill to perceive it. The
real cause of the acknowledged want of discrimination in
sepulchral memorials is this: That to analyse the characters of
others, especially of those whom we love, is not a common or
natural employment of men at any time. We are not anxious
unerringly to understand the constitution of the minds of those
who have soothed, who have cheered, who have supported us; with
whom we have been long and daily pleased or delighted. The
affections are their own justification. The light of love in our
hearts is a satisfactory evidence that there is a body of worth in
the minds of our friends or kindred, whence that light has
proceeded. We shrink from the thought of placing their merits and
defects to be weighed against each other in the nice balance of
pure intellect; nor do we find much temptation to detect the
shades by which a good quality or virtue is discriminated in them
from an excellence known by the same general name as it exists in
the mind of another; and least of all do we incline to these
refinements when under the pressure of sorrow, admiration, or
regret, or when actuated by any of those feelings which incite men
to prolong the memory of their friends and kindred by records
placed in the bosom of the all-uniting and equalising receptacle
of the dead.
The first requisite, then, in an Epitaph is, that it should
speak, in a tone which shall sink into the heart, the general
language of humanity as connected with the subject of death—the
source from which an epitaph proceeds—of death, and of life. To
be born and to die are the two points in which all men feel
themselves to be in absolute coincidence. This general language
may be uttered so strikingly as to entitle an epitaph to high
praise; yet it cannot lay claim to the highest unless other
excellences be superadded. Passing through all intermediate steps,
we will attempt to determine at once what these excellences are,
and wherein consists the perfection of this species of
composition.—It will be found to lie in a due proportion of the
common or universal 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 exal
t 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 spiritualises
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
unconsciously 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 an idle tale? 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 impression which was a true abstract of the
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