The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 332, September 20, 1828

I think it is more than probable, that the heat of the sun causes the marine glow-worm to lay its eggs; at all events it is certain, that terrestrial insects of this species shine only in the heat of summer, and that their peculiar resplendency is produced during the period of their copulation.

    G. W. N.

EPITAPHS

(For the Mirror

The origin of epitaphs, and the precise period when they were first introduced, is involved in obscurity; but that they were in use several centuries prior to the Christian era is indisputable. The invention of them, however, has been attributed to the scholars of Linus, who, according to Diogenes, was the son of Mercury and Urania; he was born at Thebes, and instructed Hercules in the art of music; who, in a fit of anger at the ridicule of Linus, on his awkwardness in holding the lyre, struck him on the head with his instrument, and killed him. The scholars of Linus lamented the death of their master, in a mournful kind of poem, called from him Aelinum. These poems were afterwards designated Epitaphia, from the two words [Greek: epi], upon, and [Greek: taphios], sepulchre, being engraved on tombs, in honour or memory of the deceased, and generally containing some eloge of his virtues or good qualities.

Among the Lacedaemonians, epitaphs were only allowed to men who died bravely in battle; and to women, who were remarkable for their chastity. The Romans often erected monuments to illustrious persons whilst living, which were preserved with great veneration after their decease. In this country, according to Sir Henry Chauncy, "Any person may erect a tomb, sepulchre, or monument for the deceased in any church, chancel, chapel, or churchyard, so that it is not to the hindrance of the celebration of divine service; that the defacing of them is punishable at common law, the party that built it being entitled to the action during his life, and the heir of the deceased after his death."

Boxhornius has made a well chosen collection of Latin epitaphs, and F. Labbe has also made a similar one in the French language, entitled, "Tresor des Epitaphes." In our own language the collection of Toldewy is the best; there are also several to be found among the writings of Camden and Weaver, and in most of the county histories.

In epitaphs, the deceased person is sometimes introduced by way of prosopopaeia, speaking to the living, of which the following is an instance, wherein the defunct wife thus addresses her surviving husband:—

"Immatura peri; sed tu, felicior, annos
Vive tuos, conjux optime, vive meos."

The following epitaphs, out of several others, are worth preserving. That of Alexander:—

"Sufficit huic tumulus, cui non sufficeret orbis."

That of Tasso:—

"Les os du Tasse."

Similar to which is that of Dryden:—

"Dryden."

The following is that of General Foy, in Pere la Chaise:—

"Honneur au GENERAL FOY.
Il se repose de ses travaux,
Et ses oeuvres le suivent.
Hier quand de ses jours la source fut tarie,
La France, en le voyant sur sa couche entendu,
Implorait un accent de cette voix cherie.
Helas! au cri plaintif jeté par la nature,
C'est la premiere fois qu'il ne pas repondu"

The following is said to have been written by "rare Ben Jonson," and has been much admired:—

"Underneath this stone doth lie
As much virtue as could die;
Which, when alive, did vigour give
To as much beauty as could live."

To these could be added several others, but at present we shall content ourselves with quoting the two following, as specimens of the satirical or ludicrous:—

Prior, on himself, ridiculing the folly of those who value themselves on their pedigree.

"Nobles and heralds, by your leave, Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior, The son of Adam and Eve, Let Bourbon or Nassau go higher."

"Here, fast asleep, full six feet deep,
And seventy summers ripe,
George Thomas lies in hopes to rise,
And smoke another pipe."

    B. T. S.
The following inscription, in a churchyard in Germany, long puzzled alike the learned and the unlearned:—

O quid tua te
be bis bia abit
ra ra ra
es
et in
ram ram ram
i i
Mox eris quod ego nunc.

By accident the meaning was discovered, and the solution is equally remarkable for its ingenuity and for the morality it inculcates:—"O superbe quid superbis? tua superbia te superabit. Terra es, et in terram ibis. Mox eris quod ego nunc."—"O vain man! why shouldst thou be proud? thy pride will be thy ruin. Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return. Soon shalt thou be what I am now."

    W. G. C.

THE COSMOPOLITE

WET WEATHER

(For the Mirror.)

"John's temper depended very much upon the air; his spirits rose and fell with the weather-glass."—ARBUTHNOT.

No one can deny that the above is a floating topic; and we challenge all the philosophy of ancients or moderns to prove it is not. After the memorable July 15, (St. Swithin,) people talk of the result with as much certainty as a merchant calculates on trade winds; and in like manner, hackney-coachmen and umbrella-makers have their trade rains. Indeed, there are, as Shakespeare's contented Duke says, "books in the running brooks, and good in every thing;"[2 - Only the other evening we heard two sons of the whip on a hackney-coach stand thus invoke the showery deity: "God send us a good heavy shower;" then the fellows looked upwards, chuckled, and rubbed their hands.] and so far from neglecting to turn the ill-wind to our account, we are disposed to venture a few seasonable truisms for the gratification of our readers, although a wag may say our subject is a dry one.

In England, the weather is public news. Zimmerman, however, thinks it is not a safe topic of discourse. "Your company," says he, "may be hippish." Shenstone, too, says a fine day is the only enjoyment which one man does not envy another. All this is whimsical enough; but doubtless we are more operated on by the weather than by any thing else. Perhaps this is because we are islanders; for talk to an "intellectual" man about the climate, and out comes something about our "insular situation, aqueous vapours, condensation," &c. Then take up a newspaper on any day of a wet summer, and you see a long string of paragraphs, with erudite authorities, about "the weather," average annual depth of rain, &c.; and a score of lies about tremendous rains, whose only authority, like that of most miracles, is in their antiquity or repetition. In short, water is one of the most popular subjects in this age of inquiry. What were the first treatises of the Useful Knowledge Society? Hydrostatics and Hydraulics. What is the attraction at Sadler's Wells, Bath, and Cheltenham, but water? the Brighton people, too, not content with the sea, have even found it necessary to superadd to their fashionable follies, artificial mineral waters, with whose fount the grossest duchess may in a few days recover from the repletion of a whole season; and the minister, after the jading of a session, soon resume his wonted complacency and good humour.[3 - Even the greatest hero of the age, who has won all his glory by land, has lately been drinking the Cheltenham waters. The proprietor of the well at which he drank, jocosely observed that his was "the best well-in-town."] Our aquatic taste is even carried into all our public amusements; would the festivities in celebration of the late peace have been complete without the sham fight on the Serpentine? To insure the run of a melo-drama, the New River is called in to flow over deal boards, and form a cataract; and the Vauxhall proprietors, with the aid of a hydropyric exhibition, contrive to represent a naval battle. This introduction during the past season was, however, as perfectly gratuitous as that of the rain was uncalled for. Had they contented themselves with the latter, the scene would have been more true to nature.

We carry this taste into our money-getting speculations, those freaks of the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the penchant for working mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to royalty, since our good King builds a fishing-temple, and dines on the Virginia Water; and the Duke of Clarence, as Lord High Admiral, gives a dejeuné à la fourchette between Waterloo and Westminster bridges.

Whoever takes the trouble to read a paper in a late Edinburgh Review on the Nervous System, will doubtless find that much of our predilection for hanging and drowning is to be attributed to this "insular situation." Every man and woman of us is indeed a self pluviometer, or rain-gauge; or, in plain terms, our nerves are like so many musical strings, affected by every change of the atmosphere, which, if screwed up too tight, are apt to snap off, and become useless; or, if you please, we are like so many barometers, and our animal spirits like their quicksilver; so "servile" are we to all the "skyey influences." Take, for example, the same man at three different periods of the year: on a fine morning in January, his nerves are braced to their best pitch, and, in his own words, he is fit for any thing; see him panting for cooling streams in a burning July day, when though an Englishman, he is "too hot to eat;" see him on a wet, muggy ninth of November, when the finery of the city coach and the new liveries appear tarnished, and common councilmen tramp through the mud and rain in their robes of little authority—even with the glorious prospect of the Guildhall tables, the glitter of gas and civic beauty, and the six pounds of turtle, and iron knives and forks before him—still he is a miserable creature, he drinks to desperation, and is carried home at least three hours sooner than he would be on a fine frosty night. Then, instead of fifteen pounds to the square inch, atmospheric pressure is increased to five-and-forty, not calculating the simoom of the following morning, when he is as dry as the desert of Sahara, and eyes the pumps and soda- water fountains with as much gout as the Israelites did the water from Mount Horeb.

Man, however, is the most helpless of all creatures in water, and with the exception of a few proscribed pickpockets and swindlers, he is almost as helpless on land. This infirmity, or difficulty of keeping above water, accounts for the crammed state of our prisons, fond as we are of the element. On the great rivers of China, where thousands of people find it more convenient to live in covered boats upon the water, than in houses on shore, the younger and male children have a hollow ball of some light material attached constantly to their necks, so that in their frequent falls overboard, they are not in danger. Had we not read this in a grave, philosophical work, we should have thought it a joke upon poor humanity, or at best a piece of poetical justice, and that the hollow ball, &c. represented the head—fools being oftener inheritors of good fortune than their wiser companions. As the great secret in swimming is to keep the chest as full of air as possible, perhaps the great art of living is to keep the head a vacuum, a state "adapted to the meanest capacity." But had kind Nature supplied us with an air-bladder at the neck, the heaviest of us might have floated to eternity, Leander's swimming across the Hellespont no wonder at all, and the drags of the Humane Society be converted into halters for the suspension and recovery of old offenders and small debts.

A wet day in London is what every gentleman who does not read, or does not recollect, Shakspeare, calls a bore,[4 - This expression is not the exclusive property of Oxford, Cambridge, or the Horse Guards. See Shakspeare's Henry VIII, where the Duke of Buckingham says of Wolsey, "He bores me with some trick;" like another great man, the Cardinal must have been a great bore.] and every lady decides to be a nuisance. Abroad, everything is discomfiture; at home all is fidget and uneasiness. What is called a smart shower, sweeps off a whole stand of hackney-coaches in a few seconds, and leaves a few leathern conveniences called cabriolets, so that your only alternative is that of being soaked to the skin, or pitched out, taken up, bled, and carried home in "a state of insensibility." The Spanish proverb, "it never rains but it pours" soon comes to pass, and every street is momentarily washed as clean as the most diligent housemaid could desire. Every little shelter is crowded with solitary, houseless-looking people, who seem employed in taking descriptions of each other for the Hue and Cry, or police gazette. On the pavement may probably be seen some wight who with more than political obstinacy, resolves to "weather the storm," with slouched hat, which acts upon the principle of capillary attraction, drenched coat, and boots in which the feet work like pistons in tannin: now

The reeling clouds,
Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet,
Which master to obey.