'To Exhibit Patterns of Virtue'

Edward Gibbon died of peritonitis in London on Jan. 16, 1794, and was buried at Fletching, Sussex. He was fifty-six. Today, his condition could likely be cured with a course of antibiotics. His patron and friend, Lord Sheffield, arranged for the undistinguished minister and schoolmaster Samuel Parr, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Ernest Borgnine, to compose Gibbon’s epitaph. The inscription as it appears on Gibbon’s memorial tablet is in Latin. Here is a portion of it in English:

“HIS CONVERSATION

DISPLAYED HIGH SERIOUSNESS PLEASANTLY SEASONED

WITH WIT

HIS LITERARY STYLE

WAS COPIOUS AND BRILLIANT

DISTINGUISHED BY ELEGANT HARMONY

AND SUPREME ARTISTRY IN ITS ROUNDED PERIODS

AND BY PROFOUND AND EXQUISITE EPIGRAMS”

No one would describe the style of Gibbon’s prose on most occasions as tight or concise by modern standards, but seldom is it flowery or purple. The portion of Parr’s epitaph just quoted is almost but not quite bombastic, though that judgment may be a matter of twenty-first- versus eighteenth-century taste. Boswell, after all, quotes Dr. Johnson as saying, “In lapidary inscription a man is not on oath.’’ But some of Parr’s verbiage turns overripe, especially when it curries favor with the guy paying his commission, Lord Sheffield, who has no business being cited on Gibbon’s vault.

I’ve only just learned that Parr turned epitaph-composition into something of a cottage industry. I haven’t confirmed details but several sources suggest that Parr had a hand in composing inscriptions for the graves of Dr. Johnson, Edmund Burke and Charles Burney, among others. If true, wouldn’t that burnish an otherwise lackluster résumé? Let’s keep in mind what Dr. Johnson set down in “An Essay on Epitaphs” (1740):   

“Though a sepulchral inscription is professedly a panegyrick, and, therefore, not confined to historical impartiality, yet it ought always to be written with regard to truth. No man ought to be commended for virtues which he never possessed, but whoever is curious to know his faults must inquire after them in other places; the monuments of the dead are not intended to perpetuate the memory of crimes, but to exhibit patterns of virtue.”