inscription at all. Of course this can only be when the monument
is that of a very great and illustrious man. The pillar erected
by Bernadotte at Frederickshall, in memory of Charles the Twelfth,
bears not a word; and I believe most people who visit the spot feel
that Bernadotte judged well. The rude mass of masonry, standing
in the solitary waste, that marks where Howard the philanthropist
sleeps, is likewise nameless. And when John Kyrle died in 1724, he
was buried in the chancel of the church of Ross in Herefordshire,
'without so much as an inscription.' But the Man of Ross had his
best monument in the lifted head and beaming eye of those he left
behind him at the mention of his name. He never knew, of course, that
the bitter little satirist of Twickenham would melt into unwonted
tenderness in telling of all he did, and apologize nobly for his
nameless grave:--

And what! no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost, unknown?
Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name:
Go, search it there, where to be born and die,
Of rich and poor make all the history:
Enough, that virtue filled the space between,
Proved, by the ends of being, to have been!

[Footnote: Pope's Moral Essays. Epistle III.]

The two fine epitaphs written by Ben Jonson are well known. One is
on the Countess of Pembroke:--

Underneath this marble hearse,