The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-03-20

uhN DISQUALIFICATION IhiutStcIs Ito OloQ
January %, 1906 in the 47th year of his
age"
On Dryden's own bust are written
only the words John Dryden" Pope
wrote good many epitaphs for others
but was certainly less happy in this
style than Dryden; he himself lies at
Twickenham. He somewhat ostenta-
tiously wrote his own epitaph, for one
who would not be buried at Westminster
Abbey" Perhaps the tersest specimen
that he gave US was for Newton:
Nature and natures laws lay hid in night
God said, LET Newton bel" and all was
light.
OF course, this is absurd hyperbole,
but that is a general fault of these
things. Even more absurd is Pope's
epitaph on Gray-the clever fabulist
who had already chosen this self-con-
demnatory inscriptions:
Life is JEST and all things show it;
| thought so once, and now know it.
Another of Popes epitaphs, that on
the dramatist Rowe. was speedily marred
by the second marriage of the widowed
wife" who is supposed to be speaking.
Such incidents will sometimes disturb
the serenity of those who pen elegiac
memorials. You must not be too hard
on Mrs. Rowe, or on others whose in
consolidate grief proves ephemeral.
Tickeil, far less poet than Pope, wrote
better poetry when he recorded the sim
cere feelings of his heart above his
friend Addison:
Meier to these chambers where the mighty
| rest,
Since their foundation, came a nobler
guest;
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss con-
veyed
A fair er spirit or more welcome shade
Oh gone forever! take this long adieu.
And sleep in peace, next thy loved Monta-
que
The last line may seem to US to verge
on pathos, but how different is the pict
ure of Addison here given from that in
which Pope portrays him as Atticus
Tennyson, himself buried here, penned
the inscription in memory Of the lost
Franklin; the lines remind one slightly
of his Crossing the Bar" that seems so
like his own fit epitaph:
Not here the white north has thy bones;
and thou
Heroic sailor-soul,
Art passing on thy happier voyage now
Toward no earthly pole.
Many of the Inscriptions are too long
to be here transcribed-too long. proba.
bly,, to be often read at all. 1t is brevity
that tells. on the grave as elsewhere.
Writers of epitaphs cannot afford to be
long winded, unless they wish to be I'M
read. Wordsworth, in an essay on the
subject. has given us his idea as to what
an epitaph should be; but even he seems
to forget that it should. above all, be
brief.
AS with the tombs of the Abbey, so
) with the epitaphs; they have come to-
gether in singularly heterogeneous
manner, and the law of selection. if there
has been any, must have been strange
ly fanciful and capricious one.
| Some of the greatest monuments are
given to the smallest persons; and names
are here which might we'll be spared
names are absent which might fifty be
welcomed. Yet perhaps. the fine old
Abbey is best as it is. 1t seems to have
grown rather than have been made, and
growth has ever it's own laws. Its great
ness can absorb all incongruities, all
absurdities; it tones down everything
to it's own dim religious light. The in.
scriptions on it's walls, inadequate, in
sincere, or overloaded as they sometimes
may be, are yet part Of itself-an ut
terance of it's past, voices of it's history.
Where they are foolish, they enshrine
the folly of their age; where grand. its
grandeur. We cannot cavil at the de-
tails, when the full effect is SO impress
sive. Those whose title to repose
in these precincts hardly seems worthy
have now earned title by becoming
a part. We are also grateful to the
minister for it's omissions grateful
that to find Shakespeares rest we must
go to Stratford. and to find Wordsworth
we must go to the Rotha. There are
enough and to spare of immortal names
at Westminster; it is we'll that other
parts of our kindgom should be so glori-
fed. There are also the neighboring
glories Of st. Paul's; old Westminster
has done better than to monopolize.