UPON EPITAPHS1 IT needs scarcely be said, that an Epitaph presupposes a Monument, upon which it is to be engraven. Almost all Nations have wished that certain external signs should point out the places where their dead are interred. Among savage tribes unacquainted with letters this has mostly been done either by rude stones placed near the graves, or by mounds of earth raised over them. This custom proceeded obviously from a twofold desire; first, to guard the remains of the deceased from irreverent approach or from savage violation: and, secondly, to preserve their memory. "Never any," says Camden, "neglected burial but some savage nations; as the Bactrians, which cast their dead to the dogs; some varlet philosophers, as Diogenes, who desired to be devoured of fishes; some dissolute courtiers, as Mæcenas, who was wont to say, 'Non tumulum curo; sepelit natura relictos.' -Nature her dead will save. I'm careless of a grave :-) As soon as nations had learned the use of letters, epitaphs were inscribed upon these monuments; in order that their intention might be more surely and adequately fulfilled. I have derived monuments and epitaphs from two sources of feeling but these do in fact resolve : 1 First published in The Friend, February 22, 1810. In reference to this essay, Hartley Coleridge said to Dean Boyle, "It shews that if Wordsworth had not been a great poet, he might have been a great prose writer." See Recollections, by the Dean of Salisbury, p. 118.—ED. themselves into one. The invention of epitaphs, Weever, in his Discourse of Funeral Monuments,1 says rightly, 'proceeded from the presage or fore-feeling of immortality, implanted in all men naturally, and is referred to the scholars of Linus the Theban poet, who flourished about the year of the world two thousand seven hundred; who first bewailed this Linus their Master, when he was slain, in doleful verses, then called of him Elina, afterwards Epitaphia, for that they were first sung at burials, after engraved upon the sepulchres.'" 2 And, verily, without the consciousness of a principle of immortality in the human soul, Man could never have had awakened in him the desire to live in the remembrance of his fellows: mere love, or the yearning of kind towards kind, could not have produced it. The dog or horse perishes in the field, or in the stall, by the side of his companions, and is incapable of anticipating the sorrow with which his surrounding associates shall bemoan his death, or pine for his loss; he cannot preconceive this regret, he can form no thought of it; and therefore cannot possibly have a desire to leave such regret or remembrance behind him. Add to the principle of love which exists in the inferior animals, the 1 Ancient Funerall Monuments, etc., by John Weever (1631). -ED. 2 This and the other extracts from Camden were taken from his Remaines concerning Britaine: their Languages, Names, Surnames, Allusions, Anagrammes, Armories, Monies, Empreses, Apparell, Artillarie, Wise Speeches, Proverbs, Poesies, Epitaphes (1657).-ED. 3 With this whole paragraph compare Tennyson's In Memoriam, stanza XXXV. If Death were seen At first as Death, Love had not been, Or been in narrowest working shut, Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. ED. |