Dead language

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN

'Hic depositum est quod mortale full, Isaac Newton.' Here lie the bodily remains of Isaac Newton,' the guide conscientiously translated to a posse of resentful Americans. And they had good cause, I thought, for their resentment: they were being cheated. For the guide's English, while correct and wholesome, did not give the same value for money as the Latin, a fact of which the tourists, looking down at the massive lettering in the plain stone, seemed well aware. They had, after all, listened as the Latin was read out to them; and however incapable they were of parsing the words, they must have heard in them the dirge of the passing bell, the rumbling Of the cart. 'Here lie the bodily remains . . .'; no, it was not the same thing at all.

A further disappointment was in store for the party when it moved on to Newton's monu- ment against the screen.

The inscription,' said the guide, 'was com- posed by Richard Bentley, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.'

Sibi gratulentur Mortales Tale tantumque exstitisse

HUMANI GENERIS DECUS.

'Let mortals rejoice,' intoned the guide, 'that there came forth amongst them such and so great a credit to the human race.'

There was a murmur of dissatisfaction from the sightseers. They had ears, and had they not heard? Here, from the sound of it, was a passage of formal yet triumphant acclamation: then what was this twittering clichd about a credit to the human race?

Myself, I sympathised with the guide. For the truth is that Bentley's Latin conceals, behind its undoubted magnificence, the merest banalities. The whole thing is a verbal con- fidence trick, well worthy of that master among hustlers, to be sure, but still a confidence trick. Deprived of the plangent Latin syllables, put into a familiar tongue, Bentley's celebration of Newton becomes windy and commonplace. And yet, the Latin does have a value. It in- troduces an extra dimension into its own trivial meaning: it gives it persistence, durability— more than that, it gives it splendour. And there you have it: for the problem of epigraphy, as I told myself that afternoon in Westminster Abbey, is to endow the commonplace with durable splendour. In the old days they did it with Latin, for the excellent reason that Latin is a language which has its own massed drums, as it were, built into its organisation, suitable alike to the imperial march and the funeral. procession, and unforgettable when the two occasions are combined. But Latin,. in an age of comprehensive schools and state-subsidised cretinism, is no longer admissible. How is one to achieve the same effects in the vernacular?

Well, one can of course take all the longest and most pompous English words and string them together in a kind of surrogate Latin: Fidelity, Virtue, Magnanimity, And Perennial Devotion to His Duties Whether Public or Domestic, etc etc.

Occasional successes have been scored in this way, but they tend to be accidentaL There is,

for example, in Canterbury Cathedral a memorial stone, to a colonel of cavalry killed in India, which proclaims his military virtues with polysyllabic piety and for many lines on end; suddenly, however, the tone changes: 'But it is the Private Loss Which his Fellow Officers chiefly deplore.'

The Private Loss . . .' This I can never read without a catch in the throat; but the effect in no way depends on the pseudo-Latinate phrases which clutter up most of the tablet, only on the simple affection which has sud- denly broken in.

So is that perhaps the answer? Simplicity and affection? These have their own splendour, as is so often shown by those most modest yet most moving of panegyrists, the ancient Greeks. Take Xenophon on Socrates: To me he seemed all that a truly good and happy man must be.' But this, though admirable in Greek, obviously falls rather flat in English. The trouble is that the apparent simplicity of the original is really extremely complex, depending for its effect on the semantic subtleties which lend the Greek words for 'good' and 'happy' about six different meanings each. One con- cludes that the Greek method, with its deceptive limpidity, is not to be emulated in what is frankly a less cunning and less sensitive tongue.

A salutary conclusion, surely. English has its own genius, which need not depend on parroting the idioms of Rome or Athens. But how to apply this genius to the business of lapidary inscription—there was the problem on which I was meditating in the Abbey. And there, suddenly, was an answer :

EDMUND SPENSER, THE PRINCE OF POETS IN HIS TYME.

A compliment at once elegant and generous, brief and instantly emotive, dramatic yet un- questionably sincere; a spontaneous yet dis- ciplined outburst of love and praise. An end of my search—or was it? For while it had all the qualities I was looking for, it gave no clue to its own success. It was not, that is, analysable, it did not provide a formula, and this for the simple reason that it was—no other word would do—inspired. A moment later another phrase, equally striking and equally inimitable, appeared on the wall above me:

0 RARE BEN JONSON.

Just that. Where could you find an epitaph more noble? Or one more resistant of plagiary?

For (at last I must admit it) it was not just a theoretical problem of style that had brought me to the Abbey. I was looking for a working model; I was playing the wishful game of com- posing an epitaph against my own burial at Westminster.

Very well then. 0 Rare Ben Jonson. Here was an epitaph of the type I coveted; but clearly such tributes were not to be derived from technical rules or from a schoolboy gift for pastiche. How then did they get them- selves written, and by whom? As it happened, is the case of Jonson the second question was easily answered. His epitaph, it appeared, had been thrown off by a certain Jack Young. Then what sort of man was this Young, that he could improvise so happily?

'Anno Domini 1637,' as John Aubrey relates, `Sir John Suckling, William Davenant . . . and Jack Young came to the Bathe. . • . The second night they lay at Marlborough, and walking on the delicate fine downes at the back- side of the towne . . . Jack Young had espied a very pretty young girle, and had got her consent for an assignation, which was about midnight, which [his friends] happened to over- heare on the other side of the hedge, and were resolved to frustrate his design. They were wont every night to play at cards after supper a good while; but Jack Young pretended weariness, etc. and must needes goe to bed. . . . They had their landlady at supper with them; said they to her, "Observe this poor gentleman how he yawnes, now is his mad fit coming upon him. We beseech you to make fast his dores . . . for about midnight he will fall to be most outragious. . . ." Jack Young slept not, but was ready to goe out as the clock struck to the houre of appointment, and then goeing to open the dore he was disappointed, knocks, bounces, stamps, calls, "Tapstersl Chamber- layne ! Hostler!" sweares and curses dreadfully; nobody would come to him. . .

So here was my answer. If I wanted a pithy, memorable and magnanimous epitaph on my stone, I must number among my friends some lewd buffoon like Jack Young, who would doubtless hit on the appropriate mot when he was two thirds down the tenth bowl of the evening or fumbling a washer-girl. The vanity of human wishes . . . but so be it. What sort of thing would my friends be likely to put up? What was the best for which I could hope?

Insult at least was ' out; for tombs in all churchyards, as I had heard, were now cen- sored by the clerical authority, which depre- cated candour. So that would prevent anything like Qui Novit Noluit, which one of my acquaintances had unsuccessfully tried to put on his father's grave and was quite capable of foisting off (rather than waste his wit) on to mine. For the same reasons, facetious parodies of jolly Jack Young (0 Randy Raven) would also be disallowed; as•would (presum- ably) the comments of snide bridge-partners (Has Revoked for the 'Last Time, or, Death is a Lay-down Slam which even he could not Fail to Make).

But what, on the positive side, did I wish for? Just because certain areas of truth were barred, that did not mean that what was written had to be false. On the contrary, sincerity, as I knew, was the only guarantee of duration; so my epitaph must be true and it must be felt by the friends who carved it. But in what could it consist? Well, I flattered myself that I was good company; what about 'A Good Man on a Bad Day'? Unfortunately, this would be manifestly untrue, as I would be remem- bered for complaining without cessation if anyone was a second late or the least little thing went wrong with the arrangements.

What else then? What quality could I pos- sibly claim which was both creditable and apt for pithy summation, and might, just might, bring a glow to the heart of the reader? After long thought, the only plausible sentiment which has occurred to me is:

HE SHARED HIS BOTTLE.

As good an epitaph as any; I hope some friendly tosspot hits on that.