The walls of the Poets' Corner are literally covered with memorials of men of letters. Many of these are but names to us at the present day, but some are familiar; others, such as "Rare Ben Jonson," Butler, the author of "Hudibras," Thomas Gray, Spenser, and Goldsmith, are household words throughout the Empire. Beneath our feet lie Sheridan and old Dr. Johnson.
The tardy memorials to Milton and Shakespeare eclipse the fame of all the rest. Quite recently busts of the Scotch bard Robert Burns, the poet-novelist Walter Scott, and a medallion head of the artistic prose writer and critic John Ruskin, have been placed here. Music is not unrepresented, for above us is the unwieldy figure of Handel, and beneath his feet a memorial to the Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, whose perfect rendering of the master's airs will ever remain in the memory of those who were privileged to hear her. Further on is the historical side, where the chief prose writers are to be found; the venerable Camden is close to Grote and Bishop Thirlwall, historians whose bodies rest in one grave. The busts of Lord Macaulay and of Thackeray are on each side of Addison's statue, and beneath the pavement in front of them is the tombstone of the ever-popular Charles Dickens. David Garrick stands in close proximity to the grave of the dramatist Davenant, while scattered in various parts of the Abbey and cloisters will be found the names of other actors and actresses, notably Mrs. Siddons and her brother, John Kemble.
It is impossible in a few paragraphs to do more than allude to the history of the Abbey, and of the dead whose names are commemorated, or whose bodies rest within this great "Temple of Silence and Reconciliation." Let us conclude this brief sketch with the pregnant and pathetic words of the young playwriter John Beaumont, whose bones are mouldering beside those of Chaucer:
"Mortality, behold and fear! What a change of flesh is here! Think how many royal bones Sleep within these heaps of stones. Here they lie had realms and lands Who now want strength to stir their hands. ... Here are sands, ignoble things Dropt from the ruined sides of kings; Here's a world of pomp and state, Buried in dust once dead by fate."
