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 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 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
character of the deceased; that his gifts and graces were
remembered 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 Spirit in
heaven.
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,
must inevitably frustrate its own purpose; forcing the passing
Spectator to this conclusion,—either that the dead did not
possess the merits ascribed to him, or that they who have raised a
monument to his memory, and must therefore be supposed to have
been closely connected with him, were incapable of perceiving
those merits; or at least during the act of composition had lost
sight of them; for, the understanding having been so busy in its
petty occupation, how could the heart 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 discrimination than to pursue
it too far, or to labour it unfeelingly. For in no place are we so
much disposed to dwell upon those points of nature and condition
wherein all men resemble each other, as in the temple where the
universal Father is worshipped, or by the side of the grave which
gathers all human Beings to itself, and “equalises the lofty and
the low.” We suffer and we weep with the same heart; we love and
are anxious for one another in one spirit; our hopes look to the
same quarter; and the virtues by which we are all to be furthered
and supported, as patience, meekness, good-will, justice,
temperance, and temperate desires, are in an equal degree the
concern of us all. Let an Epitaph, then, contain at least these
acknowledgments to our common nature; nor let the sense of their
importance be sacrificed to a balance of opposite qualities or
minute distinctions in individual character; which if they do not
(as will for the most part be the case), when examined, resolve
themselves into a trick of words, will, even when they are true
and just, for the most part be grievously out of place; for, as it
is probable that few only have explored these intricacies of human
nature, so can the tracing of them be interesting only to a few.
But an epitaph is not a proud writing shut up for the studious: it
is exposed to all—to the wise and the most ignorant; it is
condescending, perspicuous, and lovingly solicits regard; its
story and admonitions are brief, that the thoughtless, the busy,
and indolent, may not be deterred, nor the impatient tired: the
stooping old man cons the engraven record like a second horn-
book;—the child is proud that he can read it;—and the stranger
is introduced through its mediation to the company of a friend: it
is concerning all, and for all:—in the churchyard it is open to
the day; the sun looks down upon the stone, and the rains of
heaven beat against it.
Yet, though the writer who would excite sympathy is bound in
this case, more than in any other, to give proof that he himself
has been moved, it is to be remembered that to raise a monument is
a sober and a reflective act; that the inscription which it bears
is intended to be permanent, and for universal perusal; and that,
for this reason, the thoughts and feelings expressed should be
permanent also—liberated from that weakness and anguish of sorrow
which is in nature transitory, and which with instinctive decency
retires from notice. The passions should be subdued, the emotions
controlled; strong, indeed, but nothing ungovernable or wholly
involuntary. Seemliness requires this, and truth requires it also:
for how can the narrator otherwise be trusted? Moreover, a grave
is a tranquillising object: resignation in course of time springs
up from it as naturally as the wild flowers, besprinkling the turf
with which it may be covered, or gathering round the monument by
which it is defended. The very form and substance of the monument
which has received the inscription, and the appearance of the
letters, testifying with what a slow and laborious hand they must
have been engraven, might seem to reproach the author who had
given way upon this occasion to transports of mind, or to quick
turns of conflicting passion; though the same might constitute the
life and beauty of a funeral oration or elegiac poem.
These sensations and judgments, acted upon perhaps
unconsciously, have been one of the main causes why epitaphs so
often personate the deceased, and represent him as speaking from
his own tomb-stone. The departed Mortal is introduced telling you
himself that his pains are gone; that a state of rest is come; and
he conjures you to weep for him no longer. He admonishes with the
voice of one experienced in the vanity of those affections which
are confined to earthly objects, and gives a verdict like a
superior Being, performing the office of a judge, who has no
temptations to mislead him, and whose decision cannot but be
dispassionate. Thus is death disarmed of its sting, and affliction
unsubstantialised. By this tender fiction, the survivors bind
themselves to a sedater sorrow, and employ the intervention of the
imagination in order that the reason may speak her own language
earlier than she would otherwise have been enabled to do. This
shadowy interposition also harmoniously unites the two worlds of
the living and the dead by their appropriate affections. And it
may be observed that here we have an additional proof of the
propriety with which sepulchral inscriptions were referred to the
consciousness of immortality as their primal source.
I do not speak with a wish to recommend that an epitaph should
be cast in this mould preferably to the still more common one, in
which what is said comes from the survivors directly; but rather
to point out how natural those feelings are which have induced
men, in al
l states and ranks of society, so frequently to adopt
this mode. And this I have done chiefly in order that the laws
which ought to govern the composition of the other may be better
understood. This latter mode, namely, that in which the survivors
speak in their own persons, seems to me upon the whole greatly
preferable, as it admits a wider range of notices; and, above all,
because, excluding the fiction which is the groundwork of the
other, it rests upon a more solid basis.
Enough has been said to convey our notion of a perfect epitaph;
but it must be borne in mind that one is meant which will best
answer the ‘general’ ends of that species of composition.
According to the course pointed out, the worth of private life,
through all varieties of situation and character, will be most
honourably and profitably preserved in memory. Nor would the model
recommended less suit public men in all instances, save of those
persons who by the greatness of their services in the employments
of peace or war, or by the surpassing excellence of their works in
art, literature, or science, have made themselves not only
universally known, but have filled the heart of their country with
everlasting gratitude. Yet I must here pause to correct myself. In
describing the general tenor of thought which epitaphs ought to
hold, I have omitted to say, that if it be the ‘actions’ of a man,
or even some ‘one’ conspicuous or beneficial act of local or
general utility, which have distinguished him, and excited a
desire that he should be remembered, then, of course, ought the
attention to be directed chiefly to those actions or that act: and
such sentiments dwelt upon as naturally arise out of them or it.
Having made this necessary distinction, I proceed.—The mighty
benefactors of mankind, as they are not only known by the
immediate survivors, but will continue to be known familiarly to
latest posterity, do not stand in need of biographic sketches in
such a place; nor of delineations of character to individualise
them. This is already done by their Works, in the memories of men.
Their naked names, and a grand comprehensive sentiment of civic
gratitude, patriotic love, or human admiration—or the utterance
of some elementary principle most essential in the constitution of
true virtue—or a declaration touching that pious humility and
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