2. “Where once the famous Elton did entrust
The Preservation of his sacred Dust,
Lyes pious Whitaker, both justly twined,
Both dead one Grave, both living had one Mind;
And by their dissolution have supply’d
The hungry Grave, and Fame and Heaven beside.
This stone protect their Bones, while Fame enrolls
Their deathless Name, and Heaven embrace their Souls.”
In the first we are told to weep because so good a man has gone, from the second we are led to believe that the gravestone protects the body of the departed, and both contain the idea that the grave or earth is anxious to receive the mortal remains, and is more comfortable for having done so. First there is the question of the weeping. It is very usual, on gravestones and monuments, to find the order given to the reader to “drop a tear.” And yet how impossible it is to carry it out. Imagine dropping a tear all along a line of graves of people of whom one has never heard, and who died 250 years ago! But happily there are quite as many injunctions to the contrary, and we are as often told not to weep:—
“Weep not for me, friends, though death us do sever,