1899.] on Epitaphs. 25 



There are many volumes containing hundreds of epitaphs which seem 

 to bave been collected chiefly to prove the correctness of this remark. 

 Yet English, when the life you have to deal with is not common- 

 place, is far from being a bad language for epitaphs either in prose or 

 verse. I am indeed not at all sure tbat there is any poetical epitaph 

 in any language superior to that wonderful " amende honorable " of 

 Macaulay's, the Epitaph on a Jacobite : — 



To ray true king I offered, free from stain, 

 Courage and faith — vain faith and courage vain. 

 For him I threw lands, honours, wealth away, 

 And one clear hope that was more prized than they ; 

 For him I languished in a foreign clime, 

 Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime ; 

 Heard in Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees, 

 And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees ; 

 Beheld each night my home, in fever ed sleep, 

 Each morning started from that dream to weep, 

 Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave 

 The resting-place I asked — an early grave. 

 O thou whom chance leads to this nameless stone, 

 From that proud country which was once mine own, 

 By those white cliffs I never more must see, 

 By that dear language which I spake like thee : 

 Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear 

 O'er English dust — a broken heart lies here. 



Some of the best of English epitaphs are so well known, as not to 

 be worth quoting : such, for instance, as Shakespeare's, said to have 

 been written by himself, and much in the spirit of that of King 

 Ashmanezer, already mentioned, which assuredly he never saw ; or 

 Milton's upon his great predecessor ; or Pope's upon Sir Isaac Newton ; 

 or, far superior to all of them put together, the lines usually attributed 

 to Ben Jonson, but probably written by William Browne, lines which 

 it is impossible to avoid repeating whenever one thinks of them: — 



Underneath this marble hearse 

 Lies the subject of all verse, 

 Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother. 

 Death ! ere thou hast slain another 

 Fair and learned and good as she 

 Time shall throw a dart at thee. 



One of the finest of English epitaphs is undoubtedly the famous 

 one at Melrose, which is rarely quite correctly quoted, but of which 

 the correct version runs as follows. Correct, I say, for I copied it from 

 the stone : — 



The Earth goes on the Earth, 



Glist'ning like Gold, 

 The Earth goes to the Earth 



Sooner than it wold ; 

 The Earth builds on the Earth 



Castles and towers ; 

 The Earth says to the Earth 

 All shall be ours. 



