Headstones

The monument

Hic conditur quod reliquum est
HENRICI THRALE,
Qui res seu civiles, seu domesticas, ita egit,
Ut vitam illi longiorem multi optarent;
Ita sacras,
Ut quam brevem esset habiturus praescire videretur.
Simplex, apertus, sibique semper similis,
Nihil ostentavit aut arte fictum aut cura
Elaboratum.
In senatu, regi patriaeque
Fideliter studuit;
Vulgi obstrepentis contemptor animosus,
Domi inter mille mercaturae negotia
Literarum elegantiam minime neglexit.
Amicis quocunque modo laborantibus,
Conciliis, auctoritate, muneribus adfuit.
Inter familiares, comites, convivas, hospites,
Tam facilis, tam jucundus, ut omnium animos
Ad se alliceret;
Apud impares etiam, et sibi vinculo nullo
Conjunctos, ita acceptus, ut nemini gravis.
Natus 1724. Obiit 1781.
Consortes tumuli habet Rodolphum patrem, strenuum
fortemque virum, et Henricum filium unicum,
quem spei parentum mors inopina decennem praeripuit.
Ita
Domus felix et opulenta, quam erexit
Avus, auxitque pater, cum nepote decidit.
Abi viator!
Et vicibus rerum humanarum perspectis,
Aeternitatem cogita!

Translation

Here lies what remains
of HENRY THRALE,
Who managed public and private affairs
in such a way,
That many wished his life
to be longer;
And sacred matters
as if he foresaw
how short his life would be.
Simple, open, and always the same,
He showed nothing either feigned
or elaborately contrived.
In the senate, he served
his king and country faithfully;
Brave despiser of the clamorous crowd,
At home, amidst a thousand commercial concerns,
He did not neglect the elegance of literature.
To friends in whatever distress,
He was present with advice, authority, and gifts.
Among family, companions, guests, and hosts,
So easy, so pleasant,
that he attracted the hearts of all;
Even among those unequal to him,
and bound to him by no tie,
He was so acceptable
that he was a burden to none.
Born 1724. Died 1781.
He shares this tomb with his father Rodolph,
a vigorous and brave man,
and his only son Henry,
whom unexpected death snatched away
at the age of ten.
Thus
the happy and wealthy house,
which the grandfather built
and the father augmented,
fell with the grandson.
Go, traveler!
And having observed the vicissitudes of human affairs,
Think on eternity!

Hester's thoughts

On 23 September 1784, Hester Lynch Thrale née Salusbury wrote of her husbands monument …

A Character Epitaph is I see better to be liked in Print than in a Church: I was shocked to see Contemptor animosus vulgi in a Place whence Contempt should be certainly expelled; & where no man is more vulgar than another however exalted by Human Condition was the Person who so contemn'd him. Here have I finished the Epitaph for my Husband, I mean the Transcribing it--& I now I am going to leave Stretham for three Years, where I lived--never happily indeed, but always easily: the more so perhaps from the total Absence of Love and of Ambition Else those two passions by the way Might chance to show us scurvy Play.

See also

In May 1784 an account of the Mourning Tablet was published in the Gentlemans Magazine.

Accounts of the epitaph were also published by:

• A New Review: edited by Paul Henry Maty, April 1784; and
• Hester Thrale in her book Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson in 1786.