Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  Epitaph on Miss Drummond in the Church of Broadsworth, Yorkshire.

  MASON.

  Here sleeps what once was beauty, once was grace; Grace, that with tenderness and sense combin’d To form that harmony of soul and face, Where beauty shines, the mirror of the mind. Such was the maid, that in the morn of youth, In virgin innocence, in Nature’s pride, Blest with each art, that owes its charm to truth, Sunk in her Father’s fond embrace, and died. He weeps: O venerate the holy tear! Faith lends her aid to ease Affliction’s load; The parent mourns his child upon the bier, The Christian yields an angel to his God.

  The following is a translation from the Latin, communicated to a Lady in her childhood and by her preserved in memory. I regret that I have not seen the original.

  She is gone — my beloved daughter Eliza is gone, Fair, cheerful, benign, my child is gone. Thee long to be regretted a Father mourns, Regretted — but thanks to the most perfect God! not lost. For a happier age approaches When again, my child, I shall behold And live with thee for ever.

  Matthew Dobson to his dear, engaging, happy Eliza Who in the 18th year of her age Passed peaceably into heaven.

  The former of these epitaphs is very far from being the worst of its kind, and on that account I have placed the two in contrast. Unquestionably, as the Father in the latter speaks in his own person, the situation is much more pathetic; but, making due allowance for this advantage, who does not here feel a superior truth and sanctity, which is not dependent upon this circumstance but merely the result of the expression and the connection of the thoughts? I am not so fortunate as to have any knowledge of the Author of this affecting composition, but I much fear if he had called in the assistance of English verse the better to convey his thoughts, such sacrifices would, from various influences, have been made even by him, that, though he might have excited admiration in thousands, he would have truly moved no one. The latter part of the following by Gray is almost the only instance among the metrical epitaphs in our language of the last century, which I remember, of affecting thoughts rising naturally and keeping themselves pure from vicious diction; and therefore retaining their appropriate power over the mind.

  Epitaph on Mrs. Clark. Lo! where the silent marble weeps, A friend, a wife, a mother, sleeps; A heart, within whose sacred cell The peaceful virtues lov’d to dwell. Affection warm, and love sincere, And soft humanity were there. In agony, in death resigned, She felt the wound she left behind. Her infant image, here below, Sits smiling on a father’s woe; Whom what awaits, while yet he strays Along the lonely vale of days? A pang to secret sorrow dear; A sigh, an unavailing tear, Till time shall every grief remove, With life, with meaning, and with love.

  I have been speaking of faults which are aggravated by temptations thrown in the way of modern Writers when they compose in metre. The first six lines of this epitaph are vague and languid, more so than I think would have been possible had it been written in prose. Yet Gray, who was so happy in the remaining part, especially the last four lines, has grievously failed in prose upon a subject which it might have been expected would have bound him indissolubly to the propriety of Nature and comprehensive reason. I allude to the conclusion of the epitaph upon his mother, where he says, ‘she was the careful tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her.’ This is a searching thought, but wholly out of place. Had it been said of an idiot, of a palsied child, or of an adult from any cause dependent upon his mother to a degree of helplessness which nothing but maternal tenderness and watchfulness could answer, that he had the misfortune to survive his mother, the thought would have been just. The same might also have been wrung from any man (thinking of himself) when his soul was smitten with compunction or remorse, through the consciousness of a misdeed from which he might have been preserved (as he hopes or believes) by his mother’s prudence, by her anxious care if longer continued, or by the reverential fear of offending or disobeying her. But even then (unless accompanied with a detail of extraordinary circumstances), if transferred to her monument, it would have been misplaced, as being too peculiar, and for reasons which have been before alleged, namely, as too transitory and poignant. But in an ordinary case, for a man permanently and conspicuously to record that this was his fixed feeling; what is it but to run counter to the course of nature, which has made it matter of expectation and congratulation that parents should die before their children? What is it, if searched to the bottom, but lurking and sickly selfishness? Does not the regret include a wish that the mother should have survived all her offspring, have witnessed that bitter desolation where the order of things is disturbed and inverted? And finally, does it not withdraw the attention of the Reader from the subject to the Author of the Memorial, as one to be commiserated for his strangely unhappy condition, or to be condemned for the morbid constitution of his feelings, or for his deficiency in judgment? A fault of the same kind, though less in degree, is found in the epitaph of Pope upon Harcourt; of whom it is said that ‘he never gave his father grief but when he died.’ I need not point out how many situations there are in which such an expression of feeling would be natural and becoming; but in a permanent inscription things only should be admitted that have an enduring place in the mind; and a nice selection is required even among these. The Duke of Ormond said of his son Ossory, ‘that he preferred his dead son to any living son in Christendom,’ — a thought which (to adopt an expression used before) has the infinitude of truth! But though in this there is no momentary illusion, nothing fugitive, it would still have been unbecoming, had it been placed in open view over the son’s grave; inasmuch as such expression of it would have had an ostentatious air, and would have implied a disparagement of others. The sublimity of the sentiment consists in its being the secret possession of the Father.

  Having been engaged so long in the ungracious office of sitting in judgment where I have found so much more to censure than to approve, though, wherever it was in my power, I have placed good by the side of evil, that the Reader might intuitively receive the truths which I wished to communicate, I now turn back with pleasure to Chiabrera; of whose productions in this department the Reader of the Friend may be enabled to form a judgment who has attentively perused the few specimens only which have been given. ‘An epitaph,’ says Weever, ‘is a superscription (either in verse or prose) or an astrict pithic diagram, writ, carved, or engraven upon the tomb, grave, or sepulchre of the defunct, briefly declaring (and that with a kind of commiseration) the name, the age, the deserts, the dignities, the state, the praises both of body and minde, the good and bad fortunes in the life, and the manner and time of the death of the person therein interred.’ This account of an epitaph, which as far as it goes is just, was no doubt taken by Weever from the monuments of our own country, and it shews that in his conception an epitaph was not to be an abstract character of the deceased but an epitomized biography blended with description by which an impression of the character was to be conveyed. Bring forward the one incidental expression, a kind of commiseration, unite with it a concern on the part of the dead for the well-being of the living made known by exhortation and admonition, and let this commiseration and concern pervade and brood over the whole, so that what was peculiar to the individual shall still be subordinate to a sense of what he had in common with the species, our notion of a perfect epitaph would then be realized; and it pleases me to say that this is the very model upon which those of Chiabrera are for the most part framed. Observe how exquisitely this is exemplified in the one beginning ‘Pause, courteous stranger! Balbi supplicates,’ given in the Friend some weeks ago. The subject of the epitaph is introduced intreating, not directly in his own person but through the mouth of the author, that according to the religious belief of his country a prayer for his soul might be preferred to the Redeemer of the world: placed in counterpoize with this right which he has in common with all the dead, his individual earthly accomplishments appear light to his funeral Biographer as they did to the person of whom he speak
s when alive, nor could Chiabrera have ventured to touch upon them but under the sanction of this person’s acknowledgment. He then goes on to say how various and profound was his learning, and how deep a hold it took upon his affections, but that he weaned himself from these things as vanities, and was devoted in later life exclusively to the divine truths of the Gospel as the only knowledge in which he could find perfect rest. Here we are thrown back upon the introductory supplication and made to feel its especial propriety in this case; his life was long, and every part of it bore appropriate fruits. Urbina his birth-place might be proud of him, and the passenger who was entreated to pray for his soul has a wish breathed for his welfare. This composition is a perfect whole, there is nothing arbitrary or mechanical, but it is an organized body, of which the members are bound together by a common life and are all justly proportioned. If I had not gone so much into detail I should have given further instances of Chiabrera’s Epitaphs, but I must content myself with saying that if he had abstained from the introduction of heathen mythology, of which he is lavish — an inexcusable fault for an inhabitant of a Christian country, yet admitting of some palliation in an Italian who treads classic soil and has before his eyes the ruins of the temples which were dedicated to those fictitious beings of objects of worship by the majestic people his ancestors — had omitted also some uncharacteristic particulars, and had not on some occasions forgotten that truth is the soul of passion, he would have left his Readers little to regret. I do not mean to say that higher and nobler thoughts may not be found in sepulchral inscriptions than his contain; but he understood his work, the principles upon which he composed are just. The Reader of the Friend has had proofs of this: one shall be given of his mixed manner, exemplifying some of the points in which he has erred.

  O Lelius beauteous flower of gentleness, The fair Anglaia’s friend above all friends: O darling of the fascinating Loves By what dire envy moved did Death uproot Thy days e’er yet full blown, and what ill chance Hath robbed Savona of her noblest grace? She weeps for thee and shall for ever weep, And if the fountain of her tears should fail She would implore Sabete to supply Her need: Sabete, sympathizing stream, Who on his margin saw thee close thine eyes On the chaste bosom of thy Lady dear, Ah, what do riches, what does youth avail? Dust are our hopes, I weeping did inscribe In bitterness thy monument, and pray Of every gentle spirit bitterly To read the record with as copious tears.

  This epitaph is not without some tender thoughts, but a comparison of it with the one upon the youthful Pozzobonelli (see Friend, No....) will more clearly shew that Chiabrera has here neglected to ascertain whether the passions expressed were in kind and degree a dispensation of reason, or at least commodities issued under her licence and authority.

  The epitaphs of Chiabrera are twenty-nine in number, all of them save two probably little known at this day in their own country and scarcely at all beyond the limits of it; and the Reader is generally made acquainted with the moral and intellectual excellence which distinguished them by a brief history of the course of their lives or a selection of events and circumstances, and thus they are individualized; but in the two other instances, namely those of Tasso and Raphael, he enters into no particulars, but contents himself with four lines expressing one sentiment upon the principle laid down in the former part of this discourse, where the subject of an epitaph is a man of prime note.

  Torquato Tasso rests within this tomb: This figure weeping from her inmost heart Is Poesy: from such impassioned grief Let every one conclude what this man was.

  The epitaph which Chiabrera composed for himself has also an appropriate brevity and is distinguished for its grandeur, the sentiment being the same as that which the Reader has before seen so happily enlarged upon.

  As I am brought back to men of first rate distinction and public benefactors, I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing the metrical part of an epitaph which formerly was inscribed in the church of St. Paul’s to that Bishop of London who prevailed with William the Conqueror to secure to the inhabitants of the city all the liberties and privileges which they had enjoyed in the time of Edward the Confessor.

  These marble monuments to thee thy citizens assigne, Rewards (O Father) farre unfit to those deserts of thine: Thee unto them a faithful friend, thy London people found, And to this towne of no small weight, a stay both sure and sound. Their liberties restorde to them, by means of thee have beene, Their publicke weale by means of thee, large gifts have felt and seene: Thy riches, stocke, and beauty brave, one hour hath them supprest, Yet these thy virtues and good deeds with us for ever rest.

  Thus have I attempted to determine what a sepulchral inscription ought to be, and taken at the same time a survey of what epitaphs are good and bad, and have shewn to what deficiencies in sensibility and to what errors in taste and judgement most commonly are to be ascribed. It was my intention to have given a few specimens from those of the ancients; but I have already I fear taken up too much of the Reader’s time. I have not animadverted upon such, alas! far too numerous, as are reprehensible from the want of moral rectitude in those who have composed them or given it to be understood that they should he so composed; boastful and haughty panegyrics ludicrously contradicting the solid remembrance of those who knew the deceased; shocking the common sense of mankind by their extravagance, and affronting the very altar with their impious falsehood. Those I leave to general scorn, not however without a general recommendation that they who have offended or may be disposed to offend in this manner, would take into serious thought the heinousness of their transgression.

  Upon reviewing what has been written I think it better here to add a few favourable specimens such as are ordinarily found in our country church-yards at this day. If those primary sensations upon which I have dwelt so much be not stifled in the heart of the Reader, they will be read with pleasure, otherwise neither these nor more exalted strains can by him be truly interpreted.

  Aged 87 and 83.

  Not more with silver hairs than virtue crown’d The good old pair take up this spot of ground: Tread in their steps and you will surely find Their Rest above, below their peace of mind.