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Updated: June 22, 2025
The note of Christianity is seldom struck in epitaphs. There is a deep-rooted paganism in the English people which is for ever bubbling up and asserting itself in the oddest of ways. Coleridge's epitaph for himself is a striking exception: 'Stop, Christian passer-by! stop, child of God, And read with gentle breast, Beneath this sod A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.
"Took occasion to fall out with my wife very highly about her ribbands being ill matcht and of two colours, and to very high words, so that I did call her Beaste." So home in good time, and do find Sam'l and our she-cousin Scott very merry with capping of Epitaphs and sayings, wherein I also delighte. A very merry witty woman and harmlesse.
"In the vast cathedral leave him; God accept him, Christ receive him!" If we go now and look on these innumerable epitaphs, the pathos and the irony are strangely fled. They do not stand merely to the dead, these foolish monuments; they are pillars and legends set up to glorify the difficult but not desperate life of man. This ground is hallowed by the heroes of defeat.
At the end of the nave, near the entrance door, is the airy marble monument beneath which is guarded the casket that contains the remains of the Discoverer of America. The cathedral like the other churches is made more interesting by the ancient epitaphs on slabs in the pavement and walls, marking the burial places of persons famous in the history of the island.
This was the identical soul who should, in good old days, have been carving gargoyles and misereres; here his only field was the obscurity of Tiverton churchyard, his only monument these grotesqueries so cunningly concealed. We have epitaphs, too, all our own as yet, for the world has not discovered them.
Some of the epitaphs may give us an idea of its sound; as -theotoras artahiaihi bennarrihino- and -dasiihonas platorrihi bollihi-. The hypothesis has been put forward of an affinity between the Iapygian language and the modern Albanian; based, however, on points of linguistic comparison that are but little satisfactory in any case, and least of all where a fact of such importance is involved.
When, after a long lapse of time, other good-natured seamen chance to come upon the spot, they usually make a table of the mound, and quaff a friendly can to the poor soul's repose. As a specimen of these epitaphs, take the following, found in a bleak gorge of Chatham Isle:
It had a peculiar fascination for him, that old dome, and not once, but twice or three times a week, would he halt in his daily pilgrimage to enter beneath and stop in the side aisles for five or ten minutes, scrutinizing the names and epitaphs on the monuments.
"Buck up, you fellows," he joshed, "the worst is yet to come. I can see just where you 'false alarms' get off. Your epitaph will be that of the office boy." "What was that?" queried Martin, biting at the bait. "Monday, hired-Tuesday, tired-Wednesday, fired," retorted Morley. "Don't you worry about epitaphs," snapped Tom Henderson.
If, however, we look into the existing fragments of Naevius and Livius, and compare them with the Scipionic epitaphs, we shall find that there is no appreciable difference in the rhythm; that whatever theory grammarians might adopt to explain it, the measure of these poets is the genuine trochaic beat, so natural to a primitive people, and only so far elaborated as to have in most cases a pause after the first half of the line.
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