The best subject for epitaphs is private virtue; virtue exerted in the same circumstances in which the bulk of mankind are placed, and which, therefore, may admit of many imitators.  He that has delivered his country from oppression, or freed the world from ignorance and errour, can excite the emulation of a very small number; but he that has repelled the temptations of poverty, and disdained to free himself from distress, at the expense of his virtue, may animate multitudes, by his example, to the same firmness of heart and steadiness of resolution.

Of this kind I cannot forbear the mention of two Greek inscriptions; one upon a man whose writings are well known, the other upon a person whose memory is preserved only in her epitaph, who both lived in slavery, the most calamitous estate in human life: 

  [Greek:  Zosimae ae prin eousa mono to somati doulae
  Kai to somati nun euren eleutheriaen.]

  “Zosima, quae solo fuit olim corpore serva,
    Corpore nunc etiam libera facta fuit.”

  “Zosima, who, in her life, could only have her body enslaved, now
  finds her body, likewise, set at liberty.”

It is impossible to read this epitaph without being animated to bear the evils of life with constancy, and to support the dignity of human nature under the most pressing afflictions, both, by the example of the heroine, whose grave we behold, and the prospect of that state in which, to use the language of the inspired writers, “The poor cease from their labours, and the weary be at rest.”—­

The other is upon Epictetus, the Stoick philosopher: 

  [Greek:  Doulos Epiktaetos genomaen, kai som anapaeros,
  Kai peniaen Iros, kai philos Athanatois.]

  “Servus Epictetus, mutilatus corpore, vixi
    Pauperieque Irus, curaque prima deum.”

  “Epictetus, who lies here, was a slave and a cripple, poor as the
  beggar in the proverb, and the favourite of heaven.”

In this distich is comprised the noblest panegyrick, and the most important instruction.  We may learn from it, that virtue is impracticable in no condition, since Epictetus could recommend himself to the regard of heaven, amidst the temptations of poverty and slavery; slavery, which has always been found so destructive to virtue, that in many languages a slave and a thief are expressed by the same word.  And we may be, likewise, admonished by it, not to lay any stress on a man’s outward circumstances, in making an estimate of his real value, since Epictetus the beggar, the cripple, and the slave, was the favourite of heaven.

PREFACE TO AN ESSAY[1]
ON MILTON’S USE AND IMITATION OF THE MODERNS
IN HIS PARADISE LOST.

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1750.