Shakespeare's England . the Con-fessor must number thousands; but only about sixhundred are named in the guide-books. In the southtransept, which is Poets Corner, rest Chaucer, Spenser,Drayton, Cowley, Dryden, Beaumont, Davenant, Prior,Gay, Congreve, Rowe, Dr. Johnson, Campbell, Macau-lay, and Dickens. Memorials to many other poets andwriters have been ranged on the adjacent walls andpillars; but these are among the authors that wereactually buried in this place. Ben Jonson is not here,but — in an upright posture, it is said — under thenorth aisle of the Abbey; Addison is in the chapel ofHenry
Shakespeare's England . the Con-fessor must number thousands; but only about sixhundred are named in the guide-books. In the southtransept, which is Poets Corner, rest Chaucer, Spenser,Drayton, Cowley, Dryden, Beaumont, Davenant, Prior,Gay, Congreve, Rowe, Dr. Johnson, Campbell, Macau-lay, and Dickens. Memorials to many other poets andwriters have been ranged on the adjacent walls andpillars; but these are among the authors that wereactually buried in this place. Ben Jonson is not here,but — in an upright posture, it is said — under thenorth aisle of the Abbey; Addison is in the chapel ofHenry the Seventh, at the foot of the monument ofCharles Montague, the great Earl of Halifax; andBulwer is in the chapel of St. Edmund. Garrick,Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Handel, Parr, SirArchibald Campbell, and the once so mighty Duk§ gf 110 SHAKESPEARES ENGLAND Argyle are almost side by side ; while in St. Edwardschapel sleep Anne of Cleves, the divorced wife ofHenry the Eighth, and Anne Neville, queen of Rich-. Chapel of Ed-ward the Confessor. ard the Third. Betterton and Spranger Barry are inthe cloisters — where may be read, in four little words,the most touching epitaph in the Abbey : Jane Lister— dear child. There are no monuments to eitherByron, Shelley, Swift, Pope, Bolingbroke, Keats, Cow- XI WESTMINSTER ABBEY 111 per, Moore, or Young; but Mason and Shadwell arecommemorated; and Barton Booth is splendidly in-umed; while hard by, in the cloisters, a place wasfound for Mrs. Gibber, Tom Brown, Anne Bracegirdle,Anne Oldfield, and Aphra Behn. The destinies havenot always been stringently fastidious as to the admis-sion of lodgers to this sacred ground. The pilgrim isstartled by some of the names that he finds in West-minster Abbey, and pained by reflection on the absenceof some that he will seek in vain. Yet he will not failto moralise, as he strolls in Poets Corner, upon theinexorable justice with which time repudiates fictitiousreputations and twines the laurel
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectshakespearewilliam15
