will find under that veil a substance of individual truth.  Yet upon all men, and upon such a mind in particular, an Epitaph must strike with a gleam of pleasure, when the expression is of that kind which carries conviction to the heart at once that the author was a sincere mourner, and that the inhabitant of the grave deserved to be so lamented.  This may be done sometimes by a naked ejaculation; as in an instance which a friend of mine met with in a church-yard in Germany, thus literally translated:  ’Ah! they have laid in the grave a brave man:  he was to me more than many!’

    Ach! sie haben
    Einen Braven
    Mann begraben
    Mir war er mehr als viele.

An effect as pleasing is often produced by the recital of an affliction endured with fortitude, or of a privation submitted to with contentment; or by a grateful display of the temporal blessings with which Providence had favoured the deceased, and the happy course of life through which he had passed.  And where these individualities are untouched upon, it may still happen that the estate of man in his helplessness, in his dependence upon his Maker, or some other inherent of his nature shall be movingly and profitably expressed.  Every Reader will be able to supply from his own observation instances of all these kinds, and it will be more pleasing for him to refer to his memory than to have the page crowded with unnecessary quotations.  I will however give one or two from an old book cited before.  The following of general application, was a great favourite with our forefathers: 

    Farwel my Frendys, the tyd abidyth no man,
      I am departed hens, and so sal ye,
    But in this passage the best song I can
      Is Requiem Eternam, now Jesu grant it me. 
    When I have ended all myn adversity
    Grant me in Paradys to have a mansion
    That shedst Thy bloud for my redemption.

This epitaph might seem to be of the age of Chaucer, for it has the very tone and manner of the Prioress’s Tale.

The next opens with a thought somewhat interrupting that complacency and gracious repose which the language and imagery of a church-yard tend to diffuse, but the truth is weighty and will not be less acceptable for the rudeness of the expression.

When the bells be mearely roung
And the Masse devoutly soung
And the meate merrely eaten
Then sall Robert Trappis his Wyffs and his Chyldren be
forgotten. 
Wherfor Iesu that of Mary sproung
Set their soulys Thy Saynts among,
Though it be undeservyd on their syde
Yet good Lord let them evermor Thy mercy abyde!

It is well known how fond our ancestors were of a play upon the name of the deceased when it admitted of a double sense.  The following is an instance of this propensity not idly indulged.  It brings home a general truth to the individual by the medium of a pun, which will be readily pardoned for the sake of the image suggested by it, for the happy mood of mind in which the epitaph is composed, for the beauty of the language, and for the sweetness of the versification, which indeed, the date considered, is not a little curious.  It is upon a man whose name was Palmer.  I have modernized the spelling in order that its uncouthness may not interrupt the Reader’s gratification.