It is uncouth, but it is warranted to grip.
Frequently, too, have I noticed how constantly the attention is arrested by Pope's well-known lines from his magnificent 'Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,' which are often to be found on tombstones:
'So peaceful rests without a stone and name
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How loved, how honoured once avails thee not,
To whom related or by whom begot.
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be.'
I wish our modern poetasters who deny Pope's claim to be a poet no worse fate than to lie under stones which have engraved upon them the lines just quoted, for they will then secure in death what in life was denied them—the ear of the public.
Next to the grim epitaph, I should be disposed to rank those which remind the passer-by of his transitory estate. In different parts of the country—in Cumberland and Cornwall, in Croyland Abbey, in Llangollen Churchyard, in Melton Mowbray—are to be found lines more or less resembling the following:
'Man's life is like unto a winter's day,
Some break their fast and so depart away,
Others stay dinner then depart full fed,
The longest age but sups and goes to bed.
O reader, there behold and see
As we are now, so thou must be.'
The complimentary epitaph seldom pleases. To lie like a tombstone has become a proverb. Pope's famous epitaph on Newton:
'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.'
is hyperbolical and out of character with the great man it seeks to honour. It was intended for Westminster Abbey. I rejoice at the preference given to prose Latinity.
The tender and emotional epitaphs have a tendency to become either insipid or silly. But Herrick has shown us how to rival Martial: