EPITAPHS WRITTEN BY POETS ON THEMSELVES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
Si,—In his "Letter to a Friend" Sir Thomas Browne takes occasion incidentally to disparage the epitaphs which have been composed by great poets on themselves, and mentions
particularly the examples of Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, though without quoting the epitaphs to which he refers: "considering how unhappy great Poets have been in versify- ing their own epitaphs ; wherein Petrarcha, Dante and Ariosto have so unhappily failed, that if their Tombs should out-last their works, Posterity would find so little of Apollo on them, as to mistake them for Ciceronian Poets." This is possibly true of the epitaphs attributed to Dante and Petrarch, but that which was composed upon himself by Ariosto, and which I hope still appears upon his tomb, is both graceful and characteristic. It does not state any facts about the author, but no account of his life and writings could have displayed so effectively the essential spirit of his genius:— Ludovici Ariosti humantur ossa Sub hoc marmore, mu sub hac hump, sen Sub quicquid voluit benignus heares, Sive luerede benignior comes, sea Opportunius incidens viator.
Nam scire hand potnit futura; sed neo Taati erat vacuam sibi cadaver tit urnam cuperet parare vivens; Vivens ista tamen sibi paravit,
Ql103 scribi voluit suo sepulchro,
Ohm si quod haberet is sepulchrum: No cum spiritus, hoc brevi peracto Priescripto spatio, misellus artus, Quos ogre ante reliquerat, repescet, Rae et has cinerem hums et hunc revellens, Dum noscat proprium, din vagetur."
Perhaps I may venture to add a translation, which at least has the merit of being fairly close, though the sixteen hendeca- syllables of the original are rendered into twenty lines of the somewhat shorter English metre:— "Messer Ludovic,o's bones Rest beneath these marble stones, Or else this earth, or whatsoe'er Seemed good unto his kindly heir, Or kindlier friend,—or passer by, Who saw his limbs unburied lie.
The future he could not foretell, But valued not his corpse so well, As living to provide an urn, To which his ashes might return: Yet living he composed this stave, To be inscribed upon his grave, If grave he ever should attain; Lest, when his spirit sought again, After brief lapse of fated years, Poor thing, the limbs that with such fears She parted from a while ago, She long should wander to and fro Unearthing ashes, ere she found Her own beneath the covering ground."
Mankind, as the author of the " Hydriotaphia " had himself remarked, are unwilling "so desperately to place their relicks as to lie beyond discovery."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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