Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-04-30
CONCERNING EPITAPHS
THEIR PRIMARY PURPOSE AND
HOW IT'S CARRIED OUT.

FROM the Edinburgh Scotsman.
The taste for epitaphs went >out with
sentiment and many worse things, and the
results are not entirely satisfactory. DR..
johnson, 1t will be remembered, was highly
displeased at the bare idea of an epitaph in
any other tongue than Latin. and one of
his Idlers is an emphatic version of his
opinions on subject which congenial
to him beyond the common. We are more
liberal in our views nowadays. A late dis
tinguished ecclesiastic has been recently
commemorated in ungrammatical English
in his own cathedral, and Aristotle, 1t is
whispered, has been most grotesquely mis-
quoted a similarly solemn occasion in
celebrated chapel belonging to an ancient
English university. 1t matters, indeed very
little, for inscriptions, a form of litera-
| ture, have no great reading public. and no
serious person now deciphers the letters
on sepulcher except in quest of a stray
fact or perhaps with view to naming
the personages in his next novel.
In our own town, in that curious cemetery
'by some strange chance mmured within
the bulwarks of prison." you stand at the
confluence of many streams of association.
| David Hume lies there under his stone
cylinder which the piety of descendant
has decorated with incongruous cross.
The mausoleums of Playfair and Dugald
Stewart rise gracefully on the opposite
slope. 1t was here that Stevenson came to
L
! Campo Santo" OF Scottish genius and
| philosophy. Yet, If you visit the place in
the modern spirit, you leave it with cold
misgivings about the artistic success of the
Lincoln memorial, and with n vivid memory
of slab designed for one who was a "su-
perintendent of mail coaches 100 years
ago, and whose eulogy is expressed in the
preposterous couplet:
The bright example of a generous mind,
Whose Godlike impulse to mankind.
Greyfriars. doubt, always successfully
cows the fippancy of an irreverent genera
ton. There you come suddenly face to face
with the grimness of the seventeenth CEN
fury and with all that done and suf-'
fered in that evil time. Before that solemn
wall, lined with the testimonies of the
Covenant, every imagination takes a SOM
Der turn. If more wanted, there is
Bloody Mackenzie in the background, whose
presence always suited i'll with smiles.
On the other hand, if you go to the Canon
gate to view the grave in which the tragedy
of Robert Ferguson took it's close, in spite
of the gloomy atmosphere of that murky
buryfng place you will find yourself stray
ing most wilfully from the proper mood
In the first place. there is the distressing
inanity of what Burns thought fit to write
as an elegy on his elder brother in the
muse. Then when you turn away from that
you find no consolation. Adam Smith, you
discover. is presented to posterity as a
historian. The Wealth of Nations is al
luded to in a sort of footnote And every
proper sentiment loses its balance irrecov-
a good Ednburg matron of the last age,
the exact position of whose head and feet
are recorded with reference to the surface
of the world and the adjacent edifice in
accurate inches upon her monument
Thus, even for those who are growing
older and for whom the burying grounds
begin to contain more acquaintance than
the streets, it is often hard to engage in
profitable meditation of death. Yet, every
now and then the persistent sentimentalist
will chance upon the true plangent note
which arises the funeral inscription to the
dignity of a literary kind. The chronicle
of great experience, the expression of a
memorable personality, may be rendered by
true hand in very few lines of chiseled
stone. In the church of Cumnor, near
oxford. so rich in historical and romantic
objects and round which all the pageantry
of kenilworth groups itself in brilliant
memories, there is a tablet on the wall
with associations quite Irrelevant 1t tells
of one who was native of the neighbor
ing country, who went for a sailor, sailed
round the world with Arson, and was
buried in the great South sea" Not in
Latin itself, the very language of funeral
commemoration, is anywhere found any
thing more terse and dignifed
For, on the whole we must agree with
DR.. Johnson as to the general superiority
of the older language for this purpose He
indeed, has given us one of the most beau
tiful epitaphs that we have in English. But
1t should be remembered that this example
of his skill was by way of rectification of
several unpleasant vernacular attempts on
the memory of an unfortunate person
whose actual tombstone informs US that
his absolute contempt of riches and in
imitable performances on the violin made
him the admiration of all that knew him."
Latin when used according to it's genius
is always noble and, at its best, most sim
pie and direct. 1t may be pompous, but it
is rarely trivial. Mr.. Newbolt in the most
celebrated of his poems has shown us its
true power and value the expression of
pious memory and heroic grief. You may.
see actual stones any day in England which
are engraved with equal strength and ten
derness. There is a series of tablets on the
cloister wall of Christ Church in Oxford
Nearly al of them are placed there to the
memory of young men, members of the
house, who died before their time, ante ora
parentum. 'Febris vioIentia, medicinam
omnem superante." one of them tells
most pitifully. All observe the due reti-
cence and reach the proper dignity of a
public inscription. There hints here and
there of the mother, and, in one of two
cases, Of the friends of the dead. But
the expression of great sorrow, though
1t is always real and fully personal, is never
obtrusive. 1t has merely taken pains to
record itself in a hallowed place.