All allusions to the heathen mythology are, therefore, absurd, and all regard for the senseless remains of a dead man impertinent and superstitious.  One of the first distinctions of the primitive Christians, was their neglect of bestowing garlands on the dead, in which they are very rationally defended by their apologist in Manutius Felix.  “We lavish no flowers nor odours on the dead,” says he, “because they have no sense of fragrance or of beauty.”  We profess to reverence the dead, not for their sake, but for our own.  It is, therefore, always with indignation or contempt that I read the epitaph on Cowley, a man whose learning and poetry were his lowest merits.

  Aurea dum late volitant tua scripta per orbem,
  Et fama eternum vivis, divine poeta,
  Hic placida jaceas requie, custodiat urnam
  Cana fides, vigilenique perenni lampade muse! 
  Sit sacer ille locus, nec quis temerarius ausit
  Sacrilega turbare manu venerabile bustum. 
  Intacti maneant, maneant per saecula dulces
  COWLEII cineres, serventque immobile saxum.

To pray that the ashes of a friend may lie undisturbed, and that the divinities that favoured him in his life may watch for ever round him, to preserve his tomb from violation, and drive sacrilege away, is only rational in him who believes the soul interested in the repose of the body, and the powers which he invokes for its protection able to preserve it.  To censure such expressions, as contrary to religion, or as remains of heathen superstition, would be too great a degree of severity.  I condemn them only as uninstructive and unaffecting, as too ludicrous for reverence or grief, for Christianity and a temple.

That the designs and decorations of monuments ought, likewise, to be formed with the same regard to the solemnity of the place, cannot be denied; it is an established principle, that all ornaments owe their beauty to their propriety.  The same glitter of dress, that adds graces to gaiety and youth, would make age and dignity contemptible.  Charon with his boat is far from heightening the awful grandeur of the universal judgment, though drawn by Angelo himself; nor is it easy to imagine a greater absurdity than that of gracing the walls of a Christian temple, with the figure of Mars leading a hero to battle, or Cupids sporting round a virgin.  The pope who defaced the statues of the deities at the tomb of Sannazarius is, in my opinion, more easily to be defended, than he that erected them.

It is, for the same reason, improper to address the epitaph to the passenger, a custom which an injudicious veneration for antiquity introduced again at the revival of letters, and which, among many others, Passeratius suffered to mislead him in his epitaph upon the heart of Henry, king of France, who was stabbed by Clement the monk, which yet deserves to be inserted, for the sake of showing how beautiful even improprieties may become in the hands of a good writer.