The Recreations of a Country Parson

by Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd

It is usual, it appears, in the southern parts of France, to erect in the churchyard a lofty pillar, bearing a large lamp, which throws its light upon the cemetery during the night. The custom began in the twelfth or thirteenth century. Sometimes the lanterne des marts was a highly ornamented chapel, built in a circular form, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, in which the dead lay exposed to view in the days which preceded their interment: sometimes it was merely a hollow column, ascended by a winding stair inside, or by projections left for the purpose within. It must have been a striking sight when the traveller, through the dark night, saw far away the lonely flame that marked the spot where so many of his fellow-men had completed their journey.

One of the oddest things ever introduced into Materia Medica was the celebrated Mummy Powder. Egyptian mummies, being broken up and ground into dust, were held of great value as medicine both for external and internal application. Boyle and Bacon unite in commending its virtues: the latter, indeed, venturing to suggest that 'the mixture of balms that are glutinous' was the foundation of its power, though common belief held that the virtue was 'more in the Egyptian than in the spice.' Even in the seventeenth century mummy was an important article of commerce, and was sold at a great price. One Eastern traveller brought to the Turkey Company six hundred weight of mummy broken into pieces. Adulteration came into play in a manner which would have gratified the Lancet commission: the Jews collecting the bodies of executed criminals, filling them with common asphaltum, which cost little, and then drying them in the sun, when they became undistinguishable from the genuine article. And the maladies which mummy was held to cure are set forth in a list which we commend to the notice of Professor Holloway. It was 'to be taken in decoctions of marjoram, thyme, elder-flower, barley, roses, lentils, jujubes, cummin-seed, carraway, saffron, cassia, parsley, with oxymel, wine, milk, butter, castor, and mulberries.' Sir Thomas Browne, who was a good deal before his age, did not approve of the use of mummy. He says:

Were the efficacy thereof more clearly made out, we scarce conceive the use thereof allowable in physic: exceeding the barbarities of Cambyses, and turning old heroes into unworthy potions. Shall Egypt lend out her ancients unto chirurgeons and apothecaries, and Cheops and Psammeticus be weighed unto us for drugs? Shall we eat of Chamnes and Amasis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by cannibal mixtures? Surely such diet is miserable vampirism; and exceeds in horror the black banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled except in those Arabian feasts wherein ghouls feed horribly.

I need hardly add that the world has come round to the great physician's way of thinking, and that mummy is not included in the pharmacopoeia of modern days.

The monumental inscriptions of this country, as a general rule, furnish lamentable proof of the national bad taste. Somehow our peculiar genius seems not to lie in that direction; and very eminent men, who did most other things well, have signally failed when they tried to produce an epitaph. What with stilted extravagance and bombast on the one side, and profane and irreverent jesting on the other, our epitaphs, for the most part, would be better away. It was well said by Addison of the inscriptions in Westminster Abbey,—'Some epitaphs are so extravagant that the dead person would blush; and others so excessively modest that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek and Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelve-month.' And Fuller has hit the characteristics of a fitting epitaph when he said that 'the shortest, plainest, and truest epitaphs are the best.' In most cases the safe plan is to give no more than the name and age, and some brief text of Scripture.

Every one knows that epitaphs generally are expressed in such complimentary terms as quite explain the question of the child, who wonderingly inquired where they buried the bad people. Mrs. Stone, however, quotes a remarkably out-spoken one, from a monument in Horselydown Church, in Cumberland. It runs as follows:—

Here lie the bodies
Of Thomas Bond and Mary his wife.
She was temperate, chaste, and charitable;
But
She was proud, peevish, and passionate.
She was an affectionate wife and a tender mother;
But
Her husband and child, whom she loved,
Seldom saw her countenance without a disgusting frown;
While she received visitors whom she despised with an endearing smile.
Her behaviour was discreet towards strangers;
But
Imprudent in her family.
Abroad her conduct was influenced by good breeding;
But
At home by ill temper.

And so the epitaph runs on to considerable length, acknowledging the good qualities of the poor woman, but killing each by setting against it some peculiarly unamiable trait. I confess that my feeling is quite turned in her favour by the unmanly assault which her brother (the author of the inscription) has thus made upon the poor dead woman. If you cannot honestly say good of a human being on his grave-stone, then say nothing at all. There are some cases in which an exception may justly be made; and such a one, I think, was that of the infamous Francis Chartres, who died in 1731. He was buried in Scotland, and at his funeral the populace raised a riot, almost tore his body from the coffin, and threw dead dogs into the grave along with it. Dr. Arbuthnot wrote his epitaph, and here it is:—

Here continueth to rot
The body of Francis Chartres:
Who, with an inflexible constancy,
and
Inimitable uniformity of life,
Persisted,
In spite of age and infirmities,
In the practice of every human vice,
Excepting prodigality and hypocrisy:
His insatiable avarice exempted him
from the first,
His matchless impudence from the
second.
Nor was he more singular
In the undeviating pravity of his
manners,
Than successful
In accumulating wealth:
For without trade or profession,
Without trust of public money,
And without bribeworthy service,
He acquired, or more properly created,
A Ministerial Estate:
He was the only person of his time
Who could cheat without the mask of
honesty,
Retain his primeval meanness
When possessed of ten thousand a year:
And having daily deserved the gibbet for
what he did,
Was at last condemned for what he
could not do.
Oh! indignant reader!
Think not his life useless to mankind!
Providence connived at his execrable designs,
To give to after ages
A conspicuous proof and example
Of how small estimation is exorbitant
wealth
In the sight of God,
By his bestowing it on the most
unworthy of all
mortals.

If one does intend to make a verbal assault upon any man, it is well to do so in words which will sting and cut; and assuredly Arbuthnot has succeeded in his laudable intention. The character is justly drawn; and with the change of a very few words, it might correctly be inscribed on the monument of at least one Scotch and one English peer, who have died within the last half-century.