EPITAPHS OF EMINENT MEN.
Christopher Columbus died at Valladolid, May 20, 1506, æt. 70. In 1513 his body was taken to Seville, on the Guadalquivir, and there deposited in the family vault of the Dukes of Alcala, in the Cathedral. Upon a tablet was inscribed, in Castilian, this meagre couplet, which is still legible:—
A Castilla y Arragon
Otro mondo dio Colon.[[23]]
[To Castile and Aragon
Columbus gave another world.]
In 1536, the remains of the great navigator were conveyed to St. Domingo and deposited in the Cathedral, where they continued until a recent period, when they were finally disinterred, and removed to Havana. The inscription on the tablet in the Cathedral of St. Domingo, now obliterated, was as follows:—
Hic locus abscondit præclari membra Columbi
Cujus nomen ad astra volat.
Non satis unus erat sibi mundus notus, at orbem
Ignotum priscis omnibus ipse dedit;
Divitias summas terras dispersit in omnes,
Atque animas cœlo tradidit innumeras;
Invenit campos divinis legibus aptos,
Regibus et nostris prospera regna dedit.[[24]]
William Shakspeare died April 23, 1616, æt. 52, and was buried in the chancel of the church of Stratford. The monument erected to his memory represents the poet with a thoughtful countenance, resting on a cushion and in the act of writing. Immediately below the cushion is the following distich:—
Judicio Pylium; genio Socratem; arte Maronem:
Terra tegit; populis mœrot; Olympus habet.[[25]]
On a tablet underneath are inscribed these lines:—
Stay, passenger: why dost thou go so fast?
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath placed
Within this monument,—Shakspeare; with whom
Quick Nature died; whose name doth deck the tomb
Far more than cost; since all that he hath writ
Leaves living Art but page to serve his wit:
and on the flat stone covering the grave is inscribed, in very irregular characters, the following quaint supplication, blessing, and menace:—
Good Friend, for Jesvs sake forbeare
To digg T-E dvst EncloAsed HERE;
Blest be T-E Man T
Y spares T-hs stones,
And evrst be He T
Y moves my bones.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON, OB. 1727, ÆT. 85.
Here lies interred Isaac Newton, knight, who, with an energy of mind almost divine, guided by the light of mathematics purely his own, first demonstrated the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the causes of the tides; who discovered, what before his time no one had ever suspected, that the rays of light are differently refrangible, and that this is the cause of colors; and who was a diligent, penetrating, and faithful interpreter of nature, antiquity, and the sacred writings. In his philosophy, he maintained the majesty of the Supreme Being; in his manners, he expressed the simplicity of the Gospel. Let mortals congratulate themselves that the world has seen so great and excellent a man, the glory of human nature.
Pope’s inscription is as follows:—
Isaacus Newtonus:
Quem Immortalem
Testantur Tempus, Natura, Cœlum:
Mortalem
Hoc marmor fatetur.
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
JOHNSON’S EPITAPH ON GOLDSMITH.[[26]]
Thou seest the tomb of Oliver; retire,
Unholy feet, nor o’er his ashes tread.
Ye whom the deeds of old, verse, nature, fire,
Mourn nature’s priest, the bard, historian, dead.
COWPER’S EPITAPH ON DR. JOHNSON.
Here Johnson lies,—a sage by all allowed,
Whom to have bred may well make England proud;
Whose prose was eloquence, by wisdom taught,
The graceful vehicle of virtuous thought;
Whose verse may claim—grave, masculine and strong—
Superior praise to the mere poet’s song;
Who many a noble gift from heaven possessed,
And faith at last, alone worth all the rest.
O man immortal by a double prize,
By fame on earth,—by glory in the skies!
GEORGE WASHINGTON, ob. Dec. 14, 1799, æt. 67.
When, in 1838, the remains of Washington were removed from the old vault into the new, at Mount Vernon, the coffin was placed in a beautiful sarcophagus of white marble, from a quarry in Chester county, Pennsylvania, and prepared in Philadelphia by the gentleman who presented it. The lid is wrought with the arms of the country and the inscription here appended. Independently of other considerations, it is desirable, for the honor of the nation so largely indebted to Washington, that his grave should be something more than an advertising medium for a marble-mason. But the faithful chronicler must take things as he finds them, not always as they should be:—
WASHINGTON.
By the permission of
Lawrence Lewis,
The surviving executor of
George Washington,
this sarcophagus
was presented by
John Struthers,
of Philadelphia, Marble Mason,
A.D. 1837.
The stone and the inscription over the grave of Franklin and his wife, at the corner of Fifth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia, and recently opened to public view by substituting for the old brick wall a neat iron railing, are according to his own direction in his will. The exceeding plainness of both are strikingly characteristic of the man. The stone is a simple marble slab, six feet by four, lying horizontally, and raised about a foot above the ground. It bears the following:—
| Benjamin | } |
| AND | } Franklin. |
| Deborah | } |
| 1790. | |
The following is a copy of the epitaph written by Franklin upon himself, at the age of twenty-three, while a journeyman printer:—
The Body
of
Benjamin Franklin, Printer,
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
And stript of its lettering and gilding,)
Lies food for worms:
Yet the work itself shall not be lost,
For it will [as he believed] appear once more,
In a new
And more beautiful edition,
Corrected and amended
by
The Author.
That this well-known typographical inscription was plagiarized from Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, is evident from Franklin’s own admission of his familiarity with the works of “the great Cotton.” To the perusal in early life of Mather’s excellent volume, Essays to do Good, published in 1710, Franklin ascribed all his “usefulness in the world.” The lines alluded to in the famous Ecclesiastical History are by Benjamin Woodbridge, a member of the first graduating class of Harvard University, 1642:—
A living, breathing Bible; tables where
Both Covenants at large engraven were.
Gospel and law, in ’s heart, had each its column;
His head an index to the sacred volume;
His very name a title-page; and, next,
His life a commentary on the text.
O what a monument of glorious worth,
When, in a new edition, he comes forth!
Without errata may we think he’ll be,
In leaves and covers of eternity!
Old Joseph Capen, minister of Topsfield, had also, in 1681, given John Foster, who set up the first printing-press in Boston, the benefit of the idea, in memoriam:—
Thy body, which no activeness did lack,
Now’s laid aside like an old almanac,
But for the present only’s out of date;
’Twill have at length a far more active state.
Yea, though with dust thy body soiléd be,
Yet at the resurrection we shall see
A fair edition, and of matchless worth,
Free from errata, new in Heaven set forth;
’Tis but a word from God, the great Creator—
It shall be done when he saith Imprimatur.
Davis, in his Travels in America, finds another source in a Latin epitaph on the London bookseller Jacob Tonson, published with an English translation in the Gentleman’s Magazine for Feb., 1736. This is its conclusion:—
When Heaven reviewed th’ original text,
’Twas with erratas few perplexed:
Pleased with the copy ’t was collated,
And to a better life translated.
But let to life this supplement
Be printed on thy monument,
Lest the first page of death should be,
Great editor, a blank to thee;
And thou who many titles gave
Should want one title for this grave.
Stay, passenger, and drop a tear;
Here lies a noted Bookseller;
This marble index here is placed
To tell, that when he found defaced
His book of life, he died with grief:
Yet he, by true and genuine belief,
A new edition may expect,
Far more enlarged and more correct.
AT MONTICELLO, VA.
Here lies buried
Thomas Jefferson,
Author of the Declaration of American Independence,
Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom,
And Father of the University of Virginia.
WILLIAM HOGARTH.
Garrick’s epitaph on Hogarth at Chiswick is well known. That written by Dr. Johnson is shorter and superior:—
The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew the essential form of grace;
Here closed in death the attentive eyes
That saw the manners in the face.
LORD BROUGHAM’S EPITAPH ON WATT, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Not to perpetuate a name
Which must endure while the peaceful arts flourish,
But to show
That mankind have learned to honor those
Who best deserve their gratitude,
The King, his Ministers, and many of the Nobles
And Commoners of the Realm
Raised this Monument to
James Watt,
Who, directing the force of an original genius,
Early exercised in philosophic research,
To the improvement of
The Steam Engine,
Enlarged the resources of his Country,
Increased the power of man,
And rose to an eminent place
Among the most illustrious followers of Science
And the real benefactors of the World.