e
departed Mortal is introduced telling you himself that his pains are
gone; that a state of rest is come; and he conjures you to weep for him
no longer. He admonishes with the voice of one experienced in the vanity
of those affections which are confined to earthly objects, and gives a
verdict like a superior Being, performing the office of a judge, who has
no temptations to mislead him, and whose decision cannot but be
dispassionate. Thus is death disarmed of its sting, and affliction
unsubstantialised. By this tender fiction, the survivors bind themselves
to a sedater sorrow, and employ the intervention of the imagination in
order that the reason may speak her own language earlier than she would
otherwise have been enabled to do. This shadowy interposition also
harmoniously unites the two worlds of the living and the dead by their
appropriate affections. And it may be observed, that here we have an
additional proof of the propriety with which sepulchral inscriptions
were referred to the consciousness of immortality as their primal
source.

I do not speak with a wish to recommend that an epitaph should be cast
in this mould preferably to the still more common one, in which what is
said comes from the survivors directly; but rather to point out how
natural those feelings are which have induced men, in all states and
ranks of society, so frequently to adopt this mode. And this I have done
chiefly in order that the laws, which ought to govern the composition of
the other, may be better understood. This latter mode, namely, that in
which the survivors speak in their own persons, seems to me upon the
whole greatly preferable: as it admits a wider range of notices; and,
above all, because, excluding the fiction which is the ground-work of
the other, it rests upon a more solid basis.

Enough has been a said to convey our notion of a perfect epitaph; but it
must be borne in mind that one is meant which will best answer the
_general_ ends of that species of composition. According to the course
pointed out, the worth of private life, through all varieties of
situation and character, will be most honourably and profitably
preserved in memory. Nor would the model recommended less suit public
men, in all instances save of those persons who by the greatness of
their services in the employments of peace or war, or by the surpassing
excellence of their works in art, literature, or science, have made
themselves not only universally k