Epitaph

“ Eventually, too, the inscription becomes effaced, and perhaps ere the bones of the deceased have mouldered away and mingled with their kindred dust, the epitaph that recorded for the admiration of posterity his many virtues and his vigorous talents, has faded from the stone—often, alas! only too fit an emblem of how speedily the memory of the dead may fade away out of the land of the living. ”

“ Thy living epitaph shall be,
Though lost in them, yet found in me;
Dear, in thy bed of roses then,
Till this world shall dissolve as men,
Sleep while we hide thee from the light,
Drawing thy curtains round: Good-night. ”

“ 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 excellencies be superadded. ”

“ The elegantly turned classic epitaph—with its elegiac hexameters breathing the stern and cold philosophy of the Stoa, or an utter blankness of despair concerning the future, or, perchance, a querulous and passionate complaining against the gods—shows how the races without the knowledge of the true God met the awful mystery of death. ”

“ Wordsworth regarded epitaphs as holy memorials, and censured the epigramatic efforts of Pope, and other writers of this species of composition. A bad man, he says, should have no epitaph; and that which the poet wrote over his own child, in the churchyard of Grasmere, may be instanced as illustrating his own idea of what epitaphs should be. ”

“ An epitaph, as the word itself implies, is an inscription on a tomb, and, in its most extensive import, may admit, indiscriminately, satire or praise. But as malice has seldom produced monuments of defamation, and the tombs, hitherto raised, have been the work of friendship and benevolence, custom has contracted the original latitude of the word, so that it signifies, in the general acceptation, an inscription engraven on a tomb in honour of the person deceased. ”

“ A few epitaphs relating to music and the drama now claim our attention. Our first example is to be found in the cathedral at Norwich:—
In Wakefield Parish Church a tablet bears an inscription as follows:—
We copy the following from a monument in Holy Trinity Church, Hull:—
From a churchyard in Wales we obtain the following curious epitaph on an organ blower: [Pg 75] —
Our next epitaph records the death of a fiddler, who appears to have been so much attached to his wife that upon the day of her death he, too, yielded to the grim tyrant. ”

“ Sham Epitaphs and Quotations (Vol. vi., p 340.) .—Your correspondent A. A. D. asks, in reference to a certain epitaph, "has it really a local habitation, and where?" This is a Query full of grave suggestions. Are there not hundreds of epitaphs in print which have no existence except as printer's paragraphs, and which serve the same purpose as the immortal calf with six legs, and the numberless gigantic gooseberries and plethoric turnips. ”

“ Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum (i. e. letters of obscure men) , a celebrated collection of Latin letters which appeared in the 16th century in Germany, attacking with merciless severity the doctrines and modes of living of the scholastics and monks, credited with hastening the Reformation.
Epitaph, an inscription placed on a tombstone in commemoration of the dead interred below. The natural feeling which prompts such inscriptions has manifested itself among all civilised peoples, and not a little of a nation's character may be read in them. ”

“ I always like that to be done: it soothes one's mind to see the place in order: and, I dare say, within the church just now that moonlight shines as softly as in my room. It will fall through the east window full on the Helstone monument. When I close my eyes I seem to see poor papa's epitaph in black letters on the white marble. There is plenty of room for other inscriptions underneath. ”

“ The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. ”

“ Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.
—Richard II, Act III, Scene ii.
Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
—Macbeth, Act III, Scene ii.
Let there be no inscription upon my tomb; let no man write my epitaph. ”

“ There was as yet no one in the church when we reached it, so we took our accustomed ramble through the graveyard surrounding it. The Story Girl had brought flowers for her mother’s grave as usual, and while she arranged them on it the rest of us read for the hundredth time the epitaph on Great-Grandfather King’s tombstone, which had been composed by Great-Grandmother King. That epitaph was quite famous among the little family traditions that entwine every household with mingled mirth and sorrow, smiles and tears. It had a perennial fascination for us and we read it over every Sunday. ”

“ One can hardly look through a collection of English epitaphs without being struck with the fact that these represent a greater variety of intellectual and emotional states than those of any other nation, ranging through every style of thought from the sublime to the commonplace, every mood of feeling from the most delicate and touching to the coarse and even brutal. ”

“ Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph. ”

“ And yet lived not one?’” “The three centre lines of his epitaph, indeed, bear a curious likeness to some of the inscriptions on the sarcophagus; perhaps the wise man who composed the epitaph may have seen your old monk’s book, or heard its moralities in many an old pulpit exhortation in his early days,” said Thompson.
“Coincidences are oftentimes just as remarkable as plagiarisms,” said Herbert. “But come, Sir Tale-teller, What entertainment have you for us this evening?” ”

“ INTRODUCTION. This collection of epitaphs was started in a very modest fashion about thirty-five years ago, when the compiler found great pleasure in searching all the graveyards near her Vermont home for quaint inscriptions upon old tombstones. It was neither a morbid curiosity nor a spirit of melancholy that attracted her to the weather-beaten slabs of marble and slate, but rather a fondness for studying human eccentricity as revealed in whimsical epitaphs. ”

“ Whilst on this subject we might say a word about the epitaph on the mule of P. Crassus; or about that written by Papin on the ass, which, poor fellow, was eaten whilst in the flower of his age, during the siege of Paris, in 1590; or about Joachim du Bellay, who composed an epitaph on his cat; or about Justus Lipsius, who erected mausoleums for his three cats—Mopsus, Saphisus, and Mopsulus: but we are not writing on epitaphs or grave-stones.
We proceed to give a few instances of animals which have received legacies. ”

“ An epitaph cannot in the nature of things extend to the proportions that may be required in an elegy.
The desire to perpetuate the memory of the dead being natural to man, the practice of placing epitaphs upon their graves has been common among all nations and in all ages. ”

“ On the tombs of Albert, Alexandrine, Olga, and Eugenie, and of their father and mother, one single epitaph is necessary. It comprehends their life; it is the epitome of their faith; it is the conclusion, the explanation, the design of this book: "Love is stronger than death."
Original
The Church And The Sinner. ”

“ We have epitaphs, too,—all our own as yet, for the world has not discovered them. One couple lies in well-to-do respectability under a tiny monument not much taller than the conventional gravestone, but shaped on a pretentious model. ”

“ On leaving I asked the rector if he knew of any curious epitaph in the churchyard. Time, alas! has robbed us of many a one, and worse still, to my knowledge, certain men placed "in a little brief authority," not approving of such levity on sacred ground, have deliberately obliterated others. "But," said the rector, "if I cannot show you any quaint epitaph, I can tell you of a singular one I came upon some time ago in ancient St. Mary's churchyard at Eastbourne ”

“ Somehow our peculiar genius seems not to lie in that direction; and very eminent men, who did most other things well, have signally failed when they tried to produce an epitaph. What with stilted extravagance and bombast on the one side, and profane and irreverent jesting on the other, our epitaphs, for the most part, would be better away. It was well said by Addison of the inscriptions in Westminster Abbey,—'Some epitaphs are so extravagant that the dead person would blush ”

“ Perhaps it is that such a lesson comes more solemnly and forcibly in a place where everything reminds us of the end of life, and the destruction of all this world's hopes and aims. Perhaps it may be caused by the memory of the lives and deaths of those whose graves they mark, or from the affection with which they have been regarded. however this may be, it is certain that epitaphs on churchyard gravestones have been one of the means by which God is pleased to warn, and rouse, and teach His people. But how can this be done, when the epitaph only conveys all that is offensive to the mind ”

“ Many of the best-known epitaphs, both ancient and modern, are merely literary memorials, and find no place on sepulchral monuments. Sometimes the intention of the writer to have his production placed upon the grave of the person he has commemorated may have been frustrated, sometimes it may never have existed ”

“ As honours are paid to the dead, in order to incite others to the imitation of their excellencies, the principal intention of epitaphs is to perpetuate the examples of virtue, that the tomb of a good man may supply the want of his presence, and veneration for his memory produce the same effect as the observation of his life. Those epitaphs are, therefore, the most perfect, which set virtue in the strongest light, and are best adapted to exalt the readers ideas, and rouse his emulation. ”

“ In a French cemetery there are the following concise inscriptions on one tombstone. The epitaph is on husband and wife:
I am anxiously expecting you.—A. D. 1827.
Here I am!—A. D. 1867.
✠ GOVERNOR STOUGHTON.
A man to wedlock unknown,
Devout in religion,
Renowned for virtue,
Famous for erudition,
Acute in judgment.
[Pg 23]
✠
An old man:
Lively I walked life's journey through
Till I arrived at eighty-two;
Then calm descended here to rest
In hopes to be forever blest.
✠
Hackett to the author of Dr. Mead's epitaph:
Mead's not dead then, you say, only sleeping a little ”

“ One contemplates the survivor, and paints his grief at the loss of an adored object; the other, in a more resigned mood, observes the felicity which that object should experience in the land of spirits. Both are somewhat wanting in the tender simplicity which is the usual charm and characteristic of the Greek epitaph. But properly speaking, they are not epitaphs; they are addresses to the dead. We will give a few specimens of the inscription over the dead in its true form. ”

“ I would be glad to see the most valuable printed by themselves, those which ought not to be seen, burned immediately, and the others that have gone abroad, printed separately like opuscula, or rather be stifled and forgotten. I thought your epitaph was immediately to be engraved, and therefore I made less scruple to give a copy to lord Orrery, who earnestly desired it, but to nobody else; and he tells me, he gave only two which he will recal. I have a short epigram of his upon it, wherein I would correct a line, or two at most, and then I will send it you, with his permission. ”

“ Then every rustic image, erected by the peasants in honor of some sylvan deity, was sure to have some little inscription, graceful, and conceived in the happiest mood. Thus, in the Greek Anthology, there are preserved nearly eight hundred epitaphs, most of them touching from their natural and exquisite simplicity. They generally indicate deep and quiet feeling, rarely indulging in the little epigrammatic points that so mar the effect of almost all modern epitaphs. ”

“ After all, simplicity and brevity of epitaph appeal more to the heart of man than fulsome eulogy or “monumental show.”
In the chancel wall, immediately to the left of the east window, is a tall narrow niche. The rector said he did not know the original purpose of this, unless it were for ornament. The niche was too tall for a statue, and we imagined from its form that probably it was intended, of old, to receive the processional cross—the pre-Reformation churches being, I believe, provided with a recess or a locker for this purpose. ”

“ 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 themselves into one. The invention of epitaphs, Weever, in his Discourse of Funeral Monuments, says rightly, 'proceeded from the presage of 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 ”