A man is not supposed to have lost
his faculties because he has lost his friend ;
and he may express his admiration and regret
with such force or beauty as nature has
endowed him with. Jeremy Taylor is no whit
less pious or touching, because he preaches
with the charm of the loves, the graces, and
the muses. Take, for instance, two famous
epitaphs of old Ben Jonson's :the one, on
the Countess Dowager of Pembroke,

     " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,"

of whom he says:—

       "Death, 'ere thou hast slain another,
        Fair, and good, and learned as she,
       Time shall throw a dart at thee."

The other, the well known

      "Underneath this stone doth lie
       As much beauty as could die,
       Which in life did harbour give
       To more virtue than doth live."

It would be harsh to object to these an
ingenuity well deserved, suited to the age of
their production, and quite compatible with
loyal affection and admiration. At the same
time, I don't blame Cowley for saying of Sir
Henry Wotton:—

      "Who had so many languages in store,
       That only fame shall speak of him in more."

It was natural in Cowley to say this, and
Wotton's memory deserved wit, and wit was
not out of place in an epitaph on Wotton.
But I should look with much contempt on
anything that looked like imitation of these,
in an epitaph by one ordinary person upon
another.

It is quite true, however, that Point has too
much reigned in the composition of the
epitaph. This has been probably caused, in
part, by the use of the Latin language, which
is extremely well suited to pointed expression.
Many of the best modern epitaphs
have been written in Latin; for the practice
began when it was the common language of
the literati of Europe, and was continued by
the influence of tradition, and the prejudices
of scholars. Pope's epitaph on Sir Isaac
Newton is partly in Latin; and the English
portion:—

      "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
       God said, 'Let Newton be,' and all was light,"

is as bad as any very clever thing can be.
Surely, the becoming is the first consideration
in every composition ; and what can be
more out of place in an epitaph, than a
reminder that the author of it was a very clever
fellow? This is the painful effect of such
epitaphs as the above ; in which you see
a wit's face looking out from the tombstone.

In truth, this kind of objection can be made
with justice to Pope's epitaphs generally,
where the aim is to surprise. The epitaph
should not surprise, and set you tingling, like
an epigram. Who wants to be reminded of
Martial in a parish church? This reflection
spoils one's pleasure in even such an excellent
composition as Pope's epitaph on Harcourt,
the son of the Lord Chancellor. It begins
with a simple statement of the death of a
certain youth,—

     "Who ne'er knew joy, but friendship might divide,
       Or gave his father grief, but when he died."

This last hacknied line owes its origin to a
Roman epitaph in Gratian's Inscriptiones,
where the thought is to be found. But
note how strategically the next effect is
produced :—

    " How vain is reason, eloquence how weak !
       If Pope must tell what Harcourt cannot speak."

One result of a "hit " like this is, that the
person to be commemorated is completely
sunk into the position of an object of the
writer's ingenuity. You lose sight of him
altogether, in the blaze of the writer's wit.
In looking at his monument, you think only
of the statuary. Apropos of this class of
ingenious epitaphs, I must quote the perfect
one of Doctor Johnson, on Philipps, the
musician. It was actually an impromptu,
composed by the great old Doctor when at
tea in company with Garrick. Garrick speaks
of the musician, and of some common-place
lines that have been written on him. The
Doctor relapses into a few minutes silence,
playing absently with his spoon, and then
looks up, the light of intellect shining on
that rough, seamed face, and repeats:—

     " Philipps, whose touch harmonious could remove
       The pangs of guilty power or hapless love,
       Rest here, disturbed by poverty no more,
       Here find the calm thou gav'st so oft before.
       Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine,
       Till angels wake thee, with a note like thine !

Few men have left such graceful compliments
on record as the noble old writer,
whom ignorance loves to call "a bear!"

Undoubtedly, however, the simple epitaph
(but with no affectation in the simplicity)
is the most perfect. An epitaph should
be touching, before anything, as in the
following:—

                   MARTINO LUIGI
                   IMPLORA PACE :—

which falls on one as with the coldness of
death, and startles the humanity in you, in
your very heart's core. And, again, in the
Latin epitaph which Swift wrote for himself,
in which he represents himself as lying "where
bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his
heart," we feel all the painfulness of Swift's
life gathered into bitter brevity. We learn
from such as these, that the one thing to be
avoided is conventionalism and the mere
mimicry of literary epitaphs. Of the