summer brings its fresh revival of beauty, as
it does to the garden or the forest.

In strolling through a country churchyard,
who does not stop to read the records?—and
how profoundly natural it is! Every man
has one chance of being " read; " he may
hope to have a reader for his gravestone. The
instinct of humanity draws you to his grave's
foot: the thought stirring in you, what
experience he has had different from yours,
how long he lived, even. A trivial little fact
about him will set you musing; a reflection,
there, that seems generally to embody his
sentiments or experience, will linger in your
memory like music. How far are epitaphs
liable to what we call criticism? How far
can the law be laid down regarding writings
of such a peculiar and exceptional character ?
An epitaph is strictly a publication. This,
which seems so obvious, is really the most
neglected consideration possible. An epitaph
publishes itself in open sunshine to all the
world; and, indeed, has a far better chance
of being read, than one book out of every
five hundred. It professes always to inform,
to instruct, to warn, to describe. It is one
of those things which everybody thinks
himself competent to compose; yet a good
epitaph is one of the rarest things in literature.
Hence it is that the epitaph in the
abstract passes proverbially for something
even mendacious:

" Believe a woman or an epitaph,"

says Byron. I hesitate not to profess my
sincere willingness to believe both !

But, I expect in exchange for this courtesy,
that the reader will join with me in a
somewhat strict scrutiny of our modern
epitaphs.

To begin with: what should be our ideal of
an epitaph? The name implies, in its
simplicity, an inscription on a tomb. That idea
implies the preservation of the memory of the
dead. From the builder of a funeral pyramid
to the erector of a wooden plank supported
by two posts in a country churchyard, all
such architects have the memory of the dead
person in view. But there are infinite varieties
of worth, and character, and adventure, and
importance, to be recorded; and the epitaph
soon becomes a portion of literature. The
Scandinavian chief in one age has his place of
rest indicated by a huge mound; a thousand
years later, a similar hero of the same race is
laid in a cathedral, and his memory is
preserved in writing. Intellectual culture has
become the supreme honour since his day;
so, his memory owes its celebrity to the literary
record of it. Hence, the epitaph of the
great man will be no common composition.
Hence, it has been felt that pre-eminent worth
should be recorded in language of dignity and
excellence, to express the harmony between
the eminence achieved, and the culture of the
age which records its admiration of it.

It is, therefore, natural that the epitaph
should become, in time, somewhat elaborated.
A simple, rude people see in the mound of
this great man a symbol of his greatness that
strikes at once on the imagination. The
wanderer from a distant part of the province sees
it, and feels the same. There is little
communication between distant people in these
ages. In a cultivated age, what is written of
the great man serves the mound's purpose.
It is present to the popular imagination
everywhere. Thus, a good modern epitaph
on a great man ought to be the very essence
of all that the literature of his time will say
about him; something to circulate in a
compact form, like his likeness on a medal. Let
me give examples of what I mean. Does not
Dr. Johnson beautifully hit off Goldsmith's
felicity of natural genius, when he says, that
he " touched nothing which he did not
adorn? "Or, look at the line on Franklin,
"He snatched the lightning from heaven, and
the sceptre from kings." This is the poetry
of his life's action in a line. If posterity,
again, knew nothing of Ben Jonson but that
somebody expressed the general feeling about
him, by "O rare Ben Jonson," they would
carry away a capital idea of him. These are
strict epitaphs. You cannot write a detailed
narrative of a man's exploits and character
on his tombstone. Neither, in the case of a
notable man, is it needful. But it is right
and natural that the place where his bones lie
should have an appropriate inscription. The
epitaph gathers, as it were, the very honey
out of the flowers that compose his crown,
and gives it to the world. So, to my mind,
the writer of a fine epitaph not only does a
graceful literary performance, but does a
service of importance to the world. It is
impossible to calculate the good done to a
society at large, by the circulation of brief,
terse sayings, carrying wisdom in them. And
if wisdom is in its place anywhere, surely it is
on a monument. An epitaph which preserves
a man's memory embalmed in its beauty,
should be written with the care and the
reverence becoming the spot and the object for
which it is intended. Dr. Johnson very
naturally objects to "fiction" there; meaning,
in this case, fantastic inventions, even merely
literary. "Let us," says he, "be serious over
the grave."

This remark awakens the question, how
far literary ornament is becoming in this
species of composition? Who can doubt that
the most open sincerity and nature are the
first requisites? All mere ingenuity and
fantasy I take to be offensive. You would
not think of going to a funeral with a flower
in your button-hole? All torturing of literary
ingenuity to produce anything in the way
of sentiment that looks " smart "is to be
avoided. But let us make due distinctions.
There is a natural and an unnatural style of
ornament; the essential distinction lying in
the sincerity or the want of sincerity visible.
A certain splendour is proper here, as elsewhere.