. The roll-call of Westminster Abbey. ucer. The memorial to Spenser,for which the money granted by Elizabeth was, accordingto the gossip of the day, embezzled by one of her courtiers,was not put up till twenty-one years after his death, andthen through the liberality of a noble lady, Ann Clifford,Countess of Dorset. But the fate which had pursued thepoet all his life overtook his monument, which was by thenoted sculptor, Nicholas Stone, and it crumbled away beforethe end of the next century, but was replaced in 1778 by acopy of the first, for which the poet Mason collected thefunds. The epitap
. The roll-call of Westminster Abbey. ucer. The memorial to Spenser,for which the money granted by Elizabeth was, accordingto the gossip of the day, embezzled by one of her courtiers,was not put up till twenty-one years after his death, andthen through the liberality of a noble lady, Ann Clifford,Countess of Dorset. But the fate which had pursued thepoet all his life overtook his monument, which was by thenoted sculptor, Nicholas Stone, and it crumbled away beforethe end of the next century, but was replaced in 1778 by acopy of the first, for which the poet Mason collected thefunds. The epitaph is a sufficient comment on the dura-bility of his fame : Here lyes expecting the second com-minge of our Saviour Christ Jesus, the body of EdmondSpencer, the Prince of Poets in his tyme, whose divinespirrit needs noe other witnesse than the workes which heleft behind him. Of Spensers friends and contemporaries who died beforethe civil war, Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton were noteven commemorated in Poets Corner at the time of their. THE. WAX EFFIGY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH See p. 137 POETS AND MEN OF LETTERS 241 death, and only Drayton was buried here. Drayton (d. 1631)has a romantic love story ; it is said that for thirty years hewas hopelessly in love with a Warwickshire lady ; he wasa native of that county. The beautiful sonnet, Sincetheres no help, come let us kiss and part, written in 1619,was addressed to this obdurate beauty, and another poemwhich complains of his Ladys not coming to town,was published eight years later, and shows that he remaineda constant lover. For this unnamed mistresss sake, in fact,Drayton lived and died a bachelor. His tablet is in thecorner dedicated to Chaucer, and the same generous Coun-tess, who gave the one to the memory of the great Spenser,erected the other to the scarcely less celebrated author ofthe Polyolbion. Goldsmith makes his Citizen of theWorld protest, less than half a century after his death, thathe had never heard his name before; an
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