Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  journeying. Hence a parish church, in the stillness of the

  country, is a visible centre of a community of the living and the

  dead; a point to which are habitually referred the nearest

  concerns of both.

  As, then, both in cities and in villages, the dead are deposited

  in close connection with our places of worship, with us the

  composition of an epitaph naturally turns, still more than among

  the nations of antiquity, upon the most serious and solemn

  affections of the human mind; upon departed worth—upon personal

  or social sorrow and admiration—upon religion, individual and

  social—upon time, and upon eternity. Accordingly, it suffices, in

  ordinary cases, to secure a composition of this kind from censure,

  that it contain nothing that shall shock or be inconsistent with

  this spirit. But, to entitle an epitaph to praise, more than this

  is necessary. It ought to contain some thought or feeling

  belonging to the mortal or immortal part of our nature touchingly

  expressed; and if that be done, however general or even trite the

  sentiment may be, every man of pure mind will read the words with

  pleasure and gratitude. A husband bewails a wife; a parent

  breathes a sigh of disappointed hope over a lost child; a son

  utters a sentiment of filial reverence for a departed father or

  mother; a friend perhaps inscribes an encomium recording the

  companionable qualities, or the solid virtues, of the tenant of

  the grave, whose departure has left a sadness upon his memory.

  This and a pious admonition to the living, and a humble expression

  of Christian confidence in immortality, is the language of a

  thousand churchyards; and it does not often happen that anything,

  in a greater degree discriminate or appropriate to the dead or to

  the living, is to be found in them. This want of discrimination

  has been ascribed by Dr. Johnson, in his Essay upon the epitaphs

  of Pope, to two causes: first, the scantiness of the objects of

  human praise; and, secondly, the want of variety in the characters

  of men; or, to use his own words, “to the fact, that the greater

  part of mankind have no character at all.” Such language may be

  holden without blame among the generalities of common

  conversation; but does not become a critic and a moralist speaking

  seriously upon a serious subject. The objects of admiration in

  human nature are not scanty, but abundant: and every man has a

  character of his own to the eye that has skill to perceive it. The

  real cause of the acknowledged want of discrimination in

  sepulchral memorials is this: That to analyse the characters of

  others, especially of those whom we love, is not a common or

  natural employment of men at any time. We are not anxious

  unerringly to understand the constitution of the minds of those

  who have soothed, who have cheered, who have supported us; with

  whom we have been long and daily pleased or delighted. The

  affections are their own justification. The light of love in our

  hearts is a satisfactory evidence that there is a body of worth in

  the minds of our friends or kindred, whence that light has

  proceeded. We shrink from the thought of placing their merits and

  defects to be weighed against each other in the nice balance of

  pure intellect; nor do we find much temptation to detect the

  shades by which a good quality or virtue is discriminated in them

  from an excellence known by the same general name as it exists in

  the mind of another; and least of all do we incline to these

  refinements when under the pressure of sorrow, admiration, or

  regret, or when actuated by any of those feelings which incite men

  to prolong the memory of their friends and kindred by records

  placed in the bosom of the all-uniting and equalising receptacle

  of the dead.

  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

  excellences be superadded. Passing through all intermediate steps,

  we will attempt to determine at once what these excellences are,

  and wherein consists the perfection of this species of

  composition.—It will be found to lie in a due proportion of the

  common or universal feeling of humanity to sensations excited by a

  distinct and clear conception, conveyed to the reader’s mind, of

  the individual whose death is deplored and whose memory is to be

  preserved; at least of his character as, after death, it appeared

  to those who loved him and lament his loss. The general sympathy

  ought to be quickened, provoked, and diversified, by particular

  thoughts, actions, images,—circumstances of age, occupation,

  manner of life, prosperity which the deceased had known, or

  adversity to which he had been subject; and these ought to be

  bound together and solemnised into one harmony by the general

  sympathy. The two powers should temper, restrain, and exalt each

  other. The reader ought to know who and what the man was whom he

  is called upon to think of with interest. A distinct conception

  should be given (implicitly where it can, rather than explicitly)

  of the individual lamented.—But the writer of an epitaph is not

  an anatomist, who dissects the internal frame of the mind; he is

  not even a painter, who executes a portrait at leisure and in

  entire tranquillity: his delineation, we must remember, is

  performed by the side of the grave; and, what is more, the grave

  of one whom he loves and admires. What purity and brightness is

  that virtue clothed in, the image of which must no longer bless

  our living eyes! The character of a deceased friend or beloved

  kinsman is not seen—no, nor ought to be seen—otherwise than as a

  tree through a tender haze or a luminous mist, that spiritualises

  and beautifies it; that takes away, indeed, but only to the end

  that the parts which are not abstracted may appear more dignified

  and lovely; may impress and affect the more. Shall we say, then,

  that this is not truth, not a faithful image; and that,

  accordingly, the purposes of commemoration cannot be answered?—It

  ‘is’ truth, and of the highest order; for, though doubtless things

  are not apparent which did exist; yet, the object being looked at

  through this medium, parts and proportions are brought into

  distinct view which before had been only imperfectly or

  unconsciously seen: it is truth hallowed by love—the joint

  offspring of the worth of the dead and the affections of the

  living! This may easily be brought to the test. Let one, whose

  eyes have been sharpened by personal hostility to discover what

  was amiss in the character of a good man, hear the tidings of his


  death, and what a change is wrought in a moment! Enmity melts

  away; and, as it disappears, unsightliness, disproportion, and

  deformity, vanish; and, through the influence of commiseration, a

  harmony of love and beauty succeeds. Bring such a man to the

  tombstone on which shall be inscribed an epitaph on his adversary,

  composed in the spirit which we have recommended. Would he turn

  from it as from an idle tale? No;—the thoughtful look, the sigh,

  and perhaps the involuntary tear, would testify that it had a

  sane, a generous, and good meaning; and that on the writer’s mind

  had remained an impression which was a true abstract of the

  character of the deceased; that his gifts and graces were

  remembered in the simplicity in which they ought to be remembered.

  The composition and quality of the mind of a virtuous man,

  contemplated by the side of the grave where his body is

  mouldering, ought to appear, and be felt as something midway

  between what he was on earth walking about with his living

  frailties, and what he may be presumed to be as a Spirit in

  heaven.

  It suffices, therefore, that the trunk and the main branches of

  the worth of the deceased be boldly and unaffectedly represented.

  Any further detail, minutely and scrupulously pursued, especially

  if this be done with laborious and antithetic discriminations,

  must inevitably frustrate its own purpose; forcing the passing

  Spectator to this conclusion,—either that the dead did not

  possess the merits ascribed to him, or that they who have raised a

  monument to his memory, and must therefore be supposed to have

  been closely connected with him, were incapable of perceiving

  those merits; or at least during the act of composition had lost

  sight of them; for, the understanding having been so busy in its

  petty occupation, how could the heart of the mourner be other than

  cold? and in either of these cases, whether the fault be on the

  part of the buried person or the survivors, the memorial is

  unaffecting and profitless.

  Much better is it to fall short in discrimination than to pursue

  it too far, or to labour it unfeelingly. For in no place are we so

  much disposed to dwell upon those points of nature and condition

  wherein all men resemble each other, as in the temple where the

  universal Father is worshipped, or by the side of the grave which

  gathers all human Beings to itself, and “equalises the lofty and

  the low.” We suffer and we weep with the same heart; we love and

  are anxious for one another in one spirit; our hopes look to the

  same quarter; and the virtues by which we are all to be furthered

  and supported, as patience, meekness, good-will, justice,

  temperance, and temperate desires, are in an equal degree the

  concern of us all. Let an Epitaph, then, contain at least these

  acknowledgments to our common nature; nor let the sense of their

  importance be sacrificed to a balance of opposite qualities or

  minute distinctions in individual character; which if they do not

  (as will for the most part be the case), when examined, resolve

  themselves into a trick of words, will, even when they are true

  and just, for the most part be grievously out of place; for, as it

  is probable that few only have explored these intricacies of human

  nature, so can the tracing of them be interesting only to a few.

  But an epitaph is not a proud writing shut up for the studious: it

  is exposed to all—to the wise and the most ignorant; it is

  condescending, perspicuous, and lovingly solicits regard; its

  story and admonitions are brief, that the thoughtless, the busy,

  and indolent, may not be deterred, nor the impatient tired: the

  stooping old man cons the engraven record like a second horn-

  book;—the child is proud that he can read it;—and the stranger

  is introduced through its mediation to the company of a friend: it

  is concerning all, and for all:—in the churchyard it is open to

  the day; the sun looks down upon the stone, and the rains of

  heaven beat against it.

  Yet, though the writer who would excite sympathy is bound in

  this case, more than in any other, to give proof that he himself

  has been moved, it is to be remembered that to raise a monument is

  a sober and a reflective act; that the inscription which it bears

  is intended to be permanent, and for universal perusal; and that,

  for this reason, the thoughts and feelings expressed should be

  permanent also—liberated from that weakness and anguish of sorrow

  which is in nature transitory, and which with instinctive decency

  retires from notice. The passions should be subdued, the emotions

  controlled; strong, indeed, but nothing ungovernable or wholly

  involuntary. Seemliness requires this, and truth requires it also:

  for how can the narrator otherwise be trusted? Moreover, a grave

  is a tranquillising object: resignation in course of time springs

  up from it as naturally as the wild flowers, besprinkling the turf

  with which it may be covered, or gathering round the monument by

  which it is defended. The very form and substance of the monument

  which has received the inscription, and the appearance of the

  letters, testifying with what a slow and laborious hand they must

  have been engraven, might seem to reproach the author who had

  given way upon this occasion to transports of mind, or to quick

  turns of conflicting passion; though the same might constitute the

  life and beauty of a funeral oration or elegiac poem.

  These sensations and judgments, acted upon perhaps

  unconsciously, have been one of the main causes why epitaphs so

  often personate the deceased, and represent him as speaking from

  his own tomb-stone. The departed Mortal is introduced telling you

  himself that his pains are gone; that a state of rest is come; and

  he conjures you to weep for him no longer. He admonishes with the

  voice of one experienced in the vanity of those affections which

  are confined to earthly objects, and gives a verdict like a

  superior Being, performing the office of a judge, who has no

  temptations to mislead him, and whose decision cannot but be

  dispassionate. Thus is death disarmed of its sting, and affliction

  unsubstantialised. By this tender fiction, the survivors bind

  themselves to a sedater sorrow, and employ the intervention of the

  imagination in order that the reason may speak her own language

  earlier than she would otherwise have been enabled to do. This

  shadowy interposition also harmoniously unites the two worlds of

  the living and the dead by their appropriate affections. And it

  may be observed that here we have an additional proof of the

  propriety with which sepulchral inscriptions were referred to the

  consciousness of immortality as their primal source.

  I do not speak with a wish to recommend that an epitaph should

  be cast in this mould preferably to the still more common one, in

  which what is said comes from the survivors directly; but rather

  to point out how natural those feelings are which have induced

  men, in al
l states and ranks of society, so frequently to adopt

  this mode. And this I have done chiefly in order that the laws

  which ought to govern the composition of the other may be better

  understood. This latter mode, namely, that in which the survivors

  speak in their own persons, seems to me upon the whole greatly

  preferable, as it admits a wider range of notices; and, above all,

  because, excluding the fiction which is the groundwork of the

  other, it rests upon a more solid basis.

  Enough has been said to convey our notion of a perfect epitaph;

  but it must be borne in mind that one is meant which will best

  answer the ‘general’ ends of that species of composition.

  According to the course pointed out, the worth of private life,

  through all varieties of situation and character, will be most

  honourably and profitably preserved in memory. Nor would the model

  recommended less suit public men in all instances, save of those

  persons who by the greatness of their services in the employments

  of peace or war, or by the surpassing excellence of their works in

  art, literature, or science, have made themselves not only

  universally known, but have filled the heart of their country with

  everlasting gratitude. Yet I must here pause to correct myself. In

  describing the general tenor of thought which epitaphs ought to

  hold, I have omitted to say, that if it be the ‘actions’ of a man,

  or even some ‘one’ conspicuous or beneficial act of local or

  general utility, which have distinguished him, and excited a

  desire that he should be remembered, then, of course, ought the

  attention to be directed chiefly to those actions or that act: and

  such sentiments dwelt upon as naturally arise out of them or it.

  Having made this necessary distinction, I proceed.—The mighty

  benefactors of mankind, as they are not only known by the

  immediate survivors, but will continue to be known familiarly to

  latest posterity, do not stand in need of biographic sketches in

  such a place; nor of delineations of character to individualise

  them. This is already done by their Works, in the memories of men.

  Their naked names, and a grand comprehensive sentiment of civic

  gratitude, patriotic love, or human admiration—or the utterance

  of some elementary principle most essential in the constitution of

  true virtue—or a declaration touching that pious humility and