honour both to
him and to themselves.

This, indeed, is a commendation which it requires no genius to bestow,
but which can never become vulgar or contemptible, if bestowed with
judgment; because no single age produces many men of merit superiour to
panegyrick. None but the first names can stand unassisted against the
attacks of time; and if men raised to reputation by accident or caprice,
have nothing but their names engraved on their tombs, there is danger
lest, in a few years, the inscription require an interpreter. Thus have
their expectations been disappointed who honoured Picus of Mirandola
with this pompous epitaph:

Hic situs est PICUS MIRANDOLA, caetera norunt
Et Tagus et Ganges, forsan et Antipodes.

His name, then celebrated in the remotest corners of the earth, is now
almost forgotten; and his works, then studied, admired, and applauded,
are now mouldering in obscurity.

Next in dignity to the bare name is a short character simple and
unadorned, without exaggeration, superlatives, or rhetorick. Such were
the inscriptions in use among the Romans, in which the victories gained
by their emperours were commemorated by a single epithet; as Caesar
Germanicus, Caesar Dacicus, Germanicus, Illyricus. Such would be this
epitaph, ISAACUS NEWTONUS, naturae legibus investigatis, hic quiescit.

But to far the greatest part of mankind a longer encomium is necessary
for the publication of their virtues, and the preservation of their
memories; and, in the composition of these it is, that art is
principally required, and precepts, therefore, may be useful.

In writing epitaphs, one circumstance is to be considered, which affects
no other composition; the place in which they are now commonly found
restrains them to a particular air of solemnity, and debars them from
the admission of all lighter or gayer ornaments. In this, it is that,
the style of an epitaph necessarily differs from that of an elegy. The
customs of burying our dead, either in or near our churches, perhaps,
originally founded on a rational design of fitting the mind for
religious exercises, by laying before it the most affecting proofs of
the uncertainty of life, makes it proper to exclude from our epitaphs
all such allusions as are contrary to the doctrines, for the propagation
of which the churches are erected, and to the end for which those who
peruse the monuments must be supposed to come thither. Nothing is,
therefore, more ridiculous than to