Ever since the Eastern Han Dynasty, epigraph has been a common type of writing and the ways in which it is written or narrated have become increasingly formulaic. Ye Shi, while holding in esteem the epigraph style, inherits and carries forward the tradition of epigraph writing started by Han Yu, and manages to avoid the drawbacks of formulaic epigraphs and foreground the identity and individuality of the tomb owners by ''paying particular attention to their personality and their physical features'' so as to make unique and outstanding achievements. Ye Shi epitomizes the thought of Yongjia School which sets much store by historiography. Taking Confucius as a ''paragon,'' he integrates all things, past and present, into a continuously chronological order and starts to construct a genealogy of knowledge based upon historical and chronological sequences, which embodies an acute sense of history and enables him, while remaining reverently open to history, to actively record and preserve history and, furthermore, to ''exhaust'' the sediments of history, thus giving full play to his passion for ''devoting all his efforts'' to epigraph writing as a ''canon.'' In other words, Ye Shi proceeds from his empiricist theory of virtue and advocates epigraph writing which in his hands is unprecedentedly elevated to the status of ''men of letters' canon.'' He dedicates his efforts to the narration of various ''past words and acts'' of those tomb owners, who are his contemporaries from different backgrounds with different experiences, shedding light on what is similar, consistent and commensurate in their various types of virtue, which in turn contributes to the construction of knowledge pedigrees and enriches the intension of his empiricist theory of virtue. With his subtle and supple style, Ye Shi depicts to a nicety the looks and expressions of tomb owners from different backgrounds and with different character. Like Han Yu, he manages to shake off ''the formulaic conventions'' of epigraph writing which is thought to have originated in the Six Dynasties. Highly original, he creates new patterns and breathes into his style a sweeping imagination, hence ''winning respect from all quarters.'' Nearly half of The Collected Works of Shuixin is made up of the epigraphs written by Ye Shi, 13 volumes and 148 essays in all, such productivity being rare in all the other collected works by men of letters in the Tang and Song Dynasties. Ye Shi's style excels in flexibility, diversity, vivacity and novelty, at once innovative at his will and conformable to the principles of epigraph writing, aiming at bringing out in sharp relief the individuality of tomb owners by ''paying particular attention to their personality and their physical features.'' His writing therefore departs from the conventions not only in terms of the opening parts of his epigraph, but also in terms of specific narratives which lays great emphasis on particularities heightened in such a way as to shed light on the virtue and personality of tomb owners.  Ye Shi conscientiously deconstructs conventionalized patterns of epigraph writing, which results in extending the categories of value and function of epigraph. He succeeds in integrating into the whole prose system a ''secular type of courtesy writing'' arising from the need to ''beseech for epigraphs by celebrities from all quarters,'' thus pursuing an ''exquisite style'' as well as the norms and functions aiming at being ''instructive'' and ''edifying.'' The ''exquisite style'' pursued by Ye Shi presupposes innovation, namely the prerequisite that ''even fragments should be straight from the bottom of one's heart'' and that they be creatively transformative. A general survey of his various epigraphs reveals that his style varies from tomb owner to tomb owner, thus forever new in examples and momentum, and that his narrative keeps changing its shape so as to be faithful to the events and characters concerned. He even adopts a dual narrative mode of ''juxtaposing two tomb owners,'' which is boldly unique. His artistic style boasts ''a majestic sweep reminiscent of Sima Qian and a chanting effect redolent of Ouyang Xiu,'' an achievement which marks a fusion of various artistic styles. In a nutshell, Ye Shi's epigraph writing looms large as one more monument, after Han Yu and Ouyang Xiu, to which such tribute is paid: ''Of all the literary works in recent history, the writings by Ye Shi in Yongjia are the best|of all the existing epigraphs, his are the very best.'' His status and significance are not to be belittled in the history of the Song Dynasty literature, prose and essay writing in particular.