I thought so once, but now I know it.
That of Nicholas Rowe, the dramatist (also by Pope), has been admired for the pathos of the concluding lines, the beauty of which, however, it is a matter of notoriety, was considerably marred by a prosaic circumstance, which proves the danger of assuming facts even in poetical compositions. The monument is commemorative of the poet and of his only daughter, the wife of Henry Fane. His widow survived him, and her inconsolable affliction was beautifully depicted:-
To these so mourned in death, so loved in life,
The childless parent and the widowed wife,
With tears inscribes this monumental stone,
That holds their ashes, and expects her own.
Almost, however, before "the monumental stone" was finished, the disconsolate widow dried her eyes, and married a gallant colonel of dragoons, without considering that she was spoiling the beauty of her husband's epitaph.
Among the most flagrant instances of false taste, we must specify that on the tomb of David Garrick. The tomb itself has been described as "a theatrical conceit, of which the design exhibits neither taste nor invention." The epitaph was the production of Pratt, author of Harvest Home and other lucubrations which have long since been consigned to the tomb of the Capulets; and both epitaph and monument are thus spoken of by Charles Lamb in the Essays of Elia. Alluding principally to the eccentric attitude of the actor's effigy, he observes, "Though I would not go so far, with some good Catholics abroad, as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this burlesque figure a farrago of false thought and nonsense." The farrago in question is in verse, and represents Shakspeare and Garrick as "twin stars," who as long as time shall last are to "irradiate earth with a beam divine."
There are but few epitaphs in St. Paul's Cathedral—the other great resting-place of illustrious dead—worthy of remark or reproduction. The best in the whole edifice, and one of the most perfect compositions of its kind, is the well-known inscription commemorative of its renowned architect, Sir Christopher Wren:
Subditus conditur hujus Ecelesiæ at Urbis