What needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones
    The labour of an age in piled stones,
    Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
    Under a star y-pointing pyramid? 
    Dear Son of Memory, great Heir of Fame,
    What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? 
    Thou in our wonder and astonishment
    Hast built thyself a livelong monument,
    And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
    That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

(b) THE COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD, AND CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF ANCIENT EPITAPHS.

From the Author’s Mss.

    Yet even these bones from insult to protect
      Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
    With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
      Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 
    Their name, their years, spelt by the unletter’d Muse,
      The place of fame and elegy supply,
    And many a holy text around she strews,
      That teach the rustic moralist to die.

When a Stranger has walked round a Country Church-yard and glanced his eye over so many brief chronicles, as the tomb-stones usually contain, of faithful wives, tender husbands, dutiful children, and good men of all classes; he will be tempted to exclaim in the language of one of the characters of a modern Tale, in a similar situation, ’Where are all the bad people buried?’ He may smile to himself an answer to this question, and may regret that it has intruded upon him so soon.  For my own part such has been my lot; and indeed a man, who is in the habit of suffering his mind to be carried passively towards truth as well as of going with conscious effort in search of it, may be forgiven, if he has sometimes insensibly yielded to the delusion of those flattering recitals, and found a pleasure in believing that the prospect of real life had been as fair as it was in that picture represented.  And such a transitory oversight will without difficulty be forgiven by those who have observed a trivial fact in daily life, namely, how apt, in a series of calm weather, we are to forget that rain and storms have been, and will return to interrupt any scheme of business or pleasure which our minds are occupied in arranging.  Amid the quiet of a church-yard thus decorated as it seemed by the hand of Memory, and shining, if I may so say, in the light of love, I have been affected by sensations akin to those which have risen in my mind while I have been standing by the side of a smooth sea, on a Summer’s day.  It is such a happiness to have, in an unkind world, one enclosure where the voice of Detraction is not heard; where the traces of evil inclinations are unknown; where contentment prevails, and there is no jarring tone in the peaceful concert of amity and gratitude.  I have been rouzed from this reverie by a consciousness suddenly flashing upon me, of the anxieties, the perturbations, and in many instances, the vices and rancorous dispositions,