It is a Latin epitaph on the daughter (an only child) of
Lord and Lady Brougham. She died, and (as was generally known at the time)
of an organic affection disturbing the action of the heart, at the early
age of eighteen. And the peculiar interest of the case lies in the
suppression by this pious daughter (so far as it was possible) of her own
bodily anguish, in order to beguile the mental anguish of her parents. The
Latin epitaph is this:
'Blanda anima, e cunis heu! longo exercita morbo,
Inter maternas heu lachrymasque patris,
Quas risu lenire tuo jucunda solebas,
Et levis, et proprii vix memor ipsa mali;
I, pete calestes, ubi nulla est cura, recessus:
Et tibi sit nullo mista dolore quies!'
The English version is this:
'Doom'd to long suffering from earliest years,
Amidst your parents' grief and pain alone
Cheerful and gay, you smiled to soothe their tears;
And in _their_ agonies forgot your own.
Go, gentle spirit; and among the blest
From grief and pain eternal be thy rest!'
In the Latin, the phrase _e cunis_ does not express _from your cradle
upwards_. The second line is faulty in the opposition of _maternas_ to
_patris_. And in the fourth line _levis_ conveys a false meaning: _levis_
must mean either _physically light_, _i.e._ not heavy, which is not the
sense, or else _tainted with levity_, which is still less the sense.
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