“…4 However, without contact, through memorials, with 'our internal Being', no social feelings would develop, and affection for others would dissolve in a mood of futility. 5 Like Edmund Burke, then, Wordsworth holds that sociable affection depends upon links between the living and the dead, that monuments (for Wordsworth, epitaphs; for Burke, the traditions of church and monarchy) lovingly maintain 'a durable record of all our acts'. 6 Thus, although his discussion begins with the idea of immortality, it emerges that memory, affection and sociability are each predicated on death.…”