with a tucker and double ruffles of the same lace; a pair of new kid Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke ! One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead- Hence the Under the organ-screen-Monuments to Sir Isaac Newton, designed by Kent, and executed by Rysbrack-cost £500; and to Earl Stanhope. Monument to Dr. Mead, the famous physician (d. 1754). Three monuments, by Roubiliac, in three successive windows; to Field-Marshal Wade, whose part in putting down the Rebellion of 1745 is matter of history; to Major-General Fleming; and Lieutenant. General Hargrave. The absurd monument, by Nicholas Read, to Rear-Admiral Tyrrell (d. 1766); its common name is "The Pancake Monument." Heaven is represented with clouds and cherubs, the depths of the sea with rocks of coral and madrepore; the admiral is seen ascending into heaven, while Hibernia sits in the sea with her attendants, and points to the spot where the admiral's body was committed to the deep. The upper part of this monument has now been taken away. Monument of Major-General Stringer Lawrence, erected by the East India Company, "in testimony of their gratitude for his eminent. services in the command of their forces on the coast of Coromandel, from 1746 to 1756." Monument, by Flaxman, to Captain Montagu, who fell in Lord Howe's victory of June 1. Monumental group of Lord Clyde, Sir James Outram, and Sir Henry Havelock. Bust of Sir James Outram. Monument to Major André, executed by the Americans as a spy in the year 1780. The monument was erected at the expense of George III., and the figure of Washington on the bas-relief has been renewed with a head, on three different occasions, "the wanton mischief of some schoolboy," says Charles Lamb, "fired, perhaps, with raw notions of transatlantic freedom. The mischief was done," he adds,— he is addressing Southey,-" about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic?" This sly allusion to the early political principles of the poet caused a temporary cessation of his friendship with the essayist. Sir R. Westmacott's monument to Spencer Perceval, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, shot by Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812, cost £5250. Monuments to William Pitt, cost £6300; and C. J. Fox (there is no inscription); both by Sir Richard Westmacott. Monument, by E. H. Baily, R.A., to the third Lord Holland. In South Aisle of Choir, recumbent figure of William Thynn, Receiver of the Marches in the reign of Henry VIII. Good bust, by Le Sœur, of Sir Thomas Richardson, Lord Chief Justice in the reign of Charles I. Monument to Thomas Thynn, of Longleat, who was shot in his coach on Sunday, February 12, 1682. [See Haymarket.] The bas-relief contains a representation of the event. A Welshman bragging of his family, said his father's effigy was set up in Westminster Abbey; being asked whereabouts, he said, "In the same monument with Squire Thynn, for he was his coachman."-Joe Miller's Jests. Monument to Dr. South, the great preacher (d. 1716); he was a prebendary of this church. Monument, by F. Bird, to Sir Cloudesley Shovel (d. 1707). Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence. Instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument; for, instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honour.-Addison. Bird bestowed busts and bas-reliefs on those he decorated, but Sir Cloudesley Shovel's, and other monuments by him, made men of taste dread such honours.Horace Walpole. Monuments to Dr. Busby, master of Westminster School (d. 1695); to Sir Godfrey Kneller, with epitaph in verse by Pope; and by T. Banks, R.A., to Dr. Isaac Watts, who is buried in Bunhill Fields. Bust, by Flaxman, of Pasquale de Paoli, the Corsican chief (d. 1807). Monument to Charles Burney, D.D., the Greek scholar (d. 1817); the inscription by Dr. Parr. Poets' Corner is the name given to the eastern angle of the South Transept, from the tombs and honorary monuments of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and several of our greatest poets. [See Poet's Corner.] Tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry (d. 1400); erected in 1555, by Nicholas Brigham, a scholar of Oxford, and himself a poet; Chaucer was originally buried in this spot, Brigham removing his bones to a more honourable tomb. A portrait of Chaucer originally ornamented the back of the tomb. Its loss was in part supplied in the painted glass window above the tomb, erected in 1868, in which are medallions of Chaucer and Gower and scenes from Chaucer's poems. Monument (at south end) to Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene; executed by Nich. Stone at the expense of "Anne Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery" (the cost was £40), and renewed in 1778 at the instigation of Mason, the poet; Spenser died in King Street, Westminster, "from lack of bread," and was buried here at the expense of Queen Elizabeth's Earl of Essex. Monument to Shakespeare in the west aisle-his bones, as all know, repose at Stratford-on-Avon; erected in the reign of George II. from the designs. of Kent. When Pope was asked for an inscription, he wrote— Thus Britons love me, and preserve my fame, Free from a Barber's or a Benson's name. We shall see the sting of this presently: Shakespeare stands like a sentimental dandy. Beaumont rests here in an unrecorded grave. Monument at the south-east end to Michael Drayton, a poet of Queen Elizabeth's reign, erected by the same Anne, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery; the epitaph in verse by Ben Jonson, and very fine. Close to it a tablet to Ben Jonson, erected in the reign of George II., a century after the poet's death: Jonson, as we have seen, was buried in the north aisle of the nave. At the south end, bust of Milton (buried at St. Giles's, Cripplegate), erected in 1737, at the expense of Auditor Benson: "In the inscription," says Dr. Johnson, "Mr. Benson has bestowed more words upon himself than upon Milton;" a circumstance that Pope has called attention to in the Dunciad— On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ. Next to Milton's is a monument to Butler, author of Hudibras (buried at St. Paul's, Covent Garden), erected in 1732 by John Barber, a printer, and Lord Mayor of London. Grave of Sir William Davenant, with the inscription, imitated from Ben Jonson's, "O rare Sir William Davenant." Monument to Cowley (north of Chaucer's), erected at the expense of the second and last Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; the epitaph by Sprat. North of Cowley's monument is a bust of Dryden, erected at the expense of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. This Sheffield raised: the sacred dust below Was Dryden once: the rest who does not know.-POPE. The bust by Scheemakers is very fine. Honorary monument to Shadwell, the antagonist of Dryden, erected by his son, Sir John Shadwell, in front of Milton's. South of Chaucer's tomb is a monument to John Philips, author of The Splendid Shilling (d. 1708). When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said to be uni Miltono secundus, was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then Dean of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was in his opinion too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the inscription,1 permitted its reception. "And such has been the change of public opinion," said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account, "that I have seen erected in the church a bust of that man whose name I once knew was considered as a pollution of its walls."-Dr. Johnson. Monument (near Shadwell's) of Matthew Prior, erected, according to his own desire, "as a last piece of human vanity," by his son. The bust, by A. Coysevox, was a present to Prior from Louis XIV., and the epitaph, written by Dr. Freind, famous for long epitaphs, for which he has been immortalised by Pope Freind, for your epitaphs I griev'd, Where still so much is said; Monument (south-east corner of the west aisle) to Nicholas Rowe, author of the tragedy of Jane Shore, erected by his widow; epitaph by Pope. Monument (next to Rowe's) to John Gay, author of The 1 Dean Stanley, on the authority of Crull the antiquary (who copied the inscription before the offending words were erased), says it was written by Dr. Smalridge. Beggar's Opera; the short and irreverent epitaph, Life is a jest, etc., is his own composition; the verses beneath it are by Pope. Statue of Addison, by Sir R. Westmacott, erected 1809. Close to the statue of Shakespeare is a monument to Thomson, author of The Seasons (buried at Richmond), erected 1762; from the proceeds of a subscription edition of his works. Tablet, by Nollekens, to Oliver Goldsmith. (buried in the Temple). The Latin inscription is by Dr. Johnson, who, in reply to a request that he would celebrate the fame of an author in the language in which he wrote, observed, that he never would consent to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription. Monument, near the bust of Milton, to Gray, author of An Elegy in a Country Churchyard, who lies in his own churchyard of Stoke-Poges. The verse by Mason, the monument by Bacon, R.A. Monument to Mason, the poet, and biographer of Gray (buried at Aston); the inscription by Bishop Hurd. Monument to Christopher Anstey, author of the New Bath Guide (buried at Bath). Inscribed gravestone over Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Bust of Robert Southey (buried at Keswick), by H. Weekes. Inscribed gravestone over Thomas Campbell, author of The Pleasures of Hope, and statue by W. C. Marshall, A.R.A. Beside him, in an unmarked grave, was laid Henry Cary, the translator of Dante. At the foot of the statue of Addison lies Lord Macaulay. Close by is the bust of William Makepeace Thackeray, the novelist, himself resting at Kensal Green; and below his bust is the grave of Charles Dickens. The wall of the South Transept has been named by Dean Stanley -following a hint of Fuller's-the Historical Aisle. Here, on the west side, is the monument of Isaac Casaubon (d. 1614), the learned editor of Persius and Polybius. On Isaac Casaubon's tablet is left the trace of another "candid and simple nature." Izaak Walton . . . forty years afterwards, wandering through the South Transept, scratched his well-known monogram on the marble, with the date 1658, earliest of those unhappy inscriptions of names of visitors, which have defaced so many a sacred space in the Abbey. O si sic omnia !"-Dean Stanley, p. 290. Next to Casaubon's is a monument to William Camden, the great English antiquary (d. 1623). The monument was defaced and the nose broken off the bust when the hearse and effigy of Essex, the Parliamentary general, were destroyed in 1646, by some of the Cavalier party, who lurked at night in the Abbey to be revenged on the dead. The monument was piously restored by the University of Oxford in 1780. "Opposite his friend Camden's monument," but outside the transept, is the grave of Sir Henry Spelman, an antiquary scarcely less famous. At the foot of Camden's monument the Parliamentary historian May was buried, but afterwards exhumed. "Close by the bust of Camden and Casaubon lie, in the same grave, Grote and Thirlwall, both scholars together at the Charter House, both historians of Greece, the philosophic statesman and the judicial theologian." 1 1 Stanley, P. 303. Under a white gravestone in the centre of the South Transept lies Thomas Parr. "Old Parr," who, if we may trust the record on his gravestone, died in 1652, at the great age of one hundred and fifty-two, having lived in the reigns of ten princes, viz. Edward IV., Edward V., Richard III., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. Gravestone over the body of Thomas Chiffinch, closet-keeper to Charles II. (d. 1666). Monument to M. St. Evremont, a French epicurean wit, who fled to England to escape a government arrest in his own country (d. 1703). Bust of Dr. Barrow, the great divine (d. 1677). Gravestone over the body of the second wife of Sir Richard Steele, the "Prue" of his correspondence. Monument, by Roubiliac, to John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich (d. 1743); the figure of Eloquence, with her supplicating hand and earnest brow is very masterly. Canova was struck with its beauty; he stood before it full ten minutes, muttered his surprise in his native language, passed on, and returning in a few minutes, said, "That is one of the noblest statues I have seen in England." Monument by Roubiliac (his last work) to George Frederick Handel, the great musician (d. 1759). Monument to Barton Booth (buried at Cowley), the original Cato in Addison's play. Monument to Mrs. Pritchard, the actress, famous in the characters of Lady Macbeth, Zara, and Mrs. Oakley (d. 1768). Inscribed gravestones over the bodies of David Garrick and Samuel Johnson. Monument to David Garrick, by H. Webber, erected at the expense of Albany Wallis, the executor of Garrick. Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck with the affected attitude of a figure which I do not remember to have seen before, and which, upon examination, proved to be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr. Garrick. Though I would not go so far with some good Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalised at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure a farrago of false thoughts and nonsense.-Charles Lamb. Inscribed gravestones over the remains of James Macpherson, the translator of Ossian; and of William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review. The painted glass in the Abbey is mostly modern. The older (but not ancient) glass in the north rose window is richer in colour. The exhibition of the wax figures was discontinued in 1830. They originated in the old custom of making a lively effigy in wax of the deceased in robes of state-a part of the torchlight funeral procession of every great person—and of leaving the effigy over the grave as a kind of temporary monument. Some of these effigies were executed at great cost and with considerable skill. That of La Belle Stuart, one of the last that was set up, was the work of a Mrs. Goldsmith. The effigy of General Monk used to stand by his monument close to Charles II.'s grave, and the showman used to hand Monk's cap round to receive the visitors' contributions. |
