EPITAPJI, literally an inscription on a tomb. As has been well observed, in scriptions in honor of the dead are per haps as old as tombs themselves ; though they were by no means bestowed in such profusion in ancient as in tnodern times. Among the Greeks, for instance. this honor was paid only to the tombs of heroes, as in the case of Leonidas and his gallant comrades. The Romans were the first to deviate from this course. Every Roman family who consecrated a tomb to their relations hail the privilege of in scribing an epitaph thereon ; and as their tombs were usually situated on the high way, the attention of passers-by was sought to he arrested by the words "eta viator"—the formula with which all their epitaphs were prefaced. But how much soever the epitaphs of the ancient Greeks an l Romans differed in point of number, there were three qualities which they possessed in common—brevity, simpli city, and familiarity ; qualities which a modern critic, Boileau, has pronouncol to be indispensable in this species of writing. At what period sepulchral inscriptions came into use in England has not been precisely ascertained ; though there can be little doubt that this practice was in troduced by the Romans at the period of their invasion of Britain. During the
first twelve centuries of the Christian era, monumental inscriptions were all written in Latin. About the 13th century, the French language was adopted and con tinued to be used for this purpose till the middle of the 14th century ; at which time monumental inscriptions in the ver nacular tongue because common, though the clergy and learned of that time, as might have been expected, still preferred the Latin, as their more familiar idiom. The modern English. French, and Ger man epitaphs, of which several collections have been made, are infinitely more nu merous than those of any time or nation, and exhibit every variety of style and sentiment ; from the most chaste and majestic gravity, impressive tenderness, and laconic terseness, to the most puerile epigrammatic conceits, pointed satire, and heraldic prolixity.