Friends and contemporaries
should supply only the name and date, and leave it to posterity
to write the epitaph.
Here lies an honest man,
Rear-Admiral Van.
- - - -
Faith, then ye have
Two in one grave,
For in his favor,
Here too lies the Engraver.
Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true. But
they only are the true epitaphs which Old Mortality retouches.
A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion
of nature by being buried in it. For the most part, the best
man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave, and it is
therefore much to the credit of Little John, the famous follower
of Robin Hood, and reflecting favorably on his character, that
his grave was "long celebrous for the yielding of excellent
whetstones." I confess that I have but little love for such
collections as they have at the Catacombs, Pere la Chaise, Mount
Auburn, and even this Dunstable graveyard. At any rate, nothing
but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me. I
have no friends there. It may be that I am not competent to
write the poetry of the grave. The farmer who has skimmed his
farm might perchance leave his body to Nature to be ploughed in,
and in some measure restore its fertility.
