IN Westminster Abbey.

Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3036, 7 November 1878, Page 1

IN Westminster Abbey.

(fbok applbtok's iovkwii.)

The one spot of all others to which the ▼isitor is drawn and first inquires his way in Westminster Abbey is "Poet's Cor* ncr," a designation which has now extended over the whole South Transept. The glamour of poetry and romance fills the whole rebels, like a cloud of incense. Yon recall, as you enter, the famous men who have wandered about on this pavement, as well as those who lie so still beneath it; and you remember that some of those who have thus mused here, and have become renowned for the record they have left of it, have themselves gone down to join in the mysterious companionship of death the very subjects of their meditations.

But its great interest, its great signi. ficanse, when we take into contemplation the historic evolution of Westminster Abbey, oentres in one grave, the pioneer grave; of English literature, even as its occupant opened the era of that literature. Four hundred and seventy-eight years ago Chaucer was laid under the stones of this Transept, and here slept for two hundred years save one, before Spenser was laid by his side. Such was the long extension and tardy Widening of that angle which how sweeps -so broadly through our midst. Such was the slow increase of the sentiment which was destined to give that office and function to the Abbey, now universally recognised as its foremost privilege and peculiar distinction. Watch now the interments as they come. First Chaucer, in 1400; then Spenser, in 1599; then Beaumont, in 1616; then Dray ton, in 1631; then Ben Jonson, in 1637; then Cowley, in 1667; then Davenant, in 1668; then Bryden, in 1700—the son of a new epoch exactly three hundred years after Chaucer—then St Evremond, in 1703; then Howe, in 1718. Now opens the age of Addison—and we can fancy him, with " Sir Roger do Coverley," standing perhaps, where his statue how is—but he himself lies far away in the vault of Montague, in the Chapel of Henry TIL Congreve also lies far down the Nave in another vault of a " noble patron." But now Prior is brought into the Transept, then Gay, then Garriok, then Johnson, then Macpherson, then Sheridan, then Campbell and Cary, and finally the giant Maoaulay. I have not mentioned yet the scholars, antiquarians, divines and others, whose eminence in their day brought them the like honor. In this small space all these graves are gathered, and the walls are crowded besides with their tablets or busts, and, here and there, the elaborate monaments of those who sleep elsewhere, bat whose fame is claimed by the Abbey. Each of them opens one of those " invisible cloisters," as Dean Stanley calls them, which unite the Abbey with its "chapels of ease " in other cemeteries. The name of Milton takes you to St. Giles's, Cripple-gate; of Samuel Butler, to Covent Garden churchyard ; of Grey, to StokePogis; of Goldsmith, to Temple Church; of Soutbey, to Keswick ; of Thomson, to Richmond; of Thackeray, to Kensal Green; above all, of Shakespeare, to Stratford-on-Avon.

No one can enter for the first time into inch a precinct without emotion, and, as I well know, he can come many times with a keener sensibility gathering in his heart, as the first Vague sentiments float away. Viewing its interments as a rolling tide of historic meaning sweeping noiselessly in, and. sure to swell higher and higher, destined, in its overflow, to fill and to encompass the Abbey with the renown of world-wide reputations till it shall stand up like a rock in an ocean of human greatness, you feel as a prophet might bare felt fire hundred years ago, who foresaw the triumph of humau intelligence in the opening of this royal soil for Chaucer's grave. Such is the import of Poets' Corner.

After an interval of seven years, I made a new pilgrimage to the spot. The usual crowd was moving about in the recess, but at its very front I saw a group of people gathered around a large slab which had been Recently let into the aged pavement. On iMay a bunch of fresh flowers ; beneath *t lay the last fragrant offering of literary fame which the nation had made to the genius of the place. There was something in the look of the gravestone, in its ample size and severe simplicity, with its honored place among the foremost, while in the midst of this sanctuary, with the reverent group standing about it as if hesitating to tread upon it, which brought up the remembrance,of another that makes part of the pavement in the chancel front of the church at Stratford-on-Avon.

. I hud forgotten for the moment that he was T»ere. My last recollection of him was when he was fall of life, his deep-gray eyes-brilliant with joy in the fruition of a fame, and in the enthusiasm of a popular delight, inch as this age had nerer giren to another. And now all was still, tbe excitement that had centred in his person had passed away, and here he lay at my feet. For the moment the shock of the sudden contciousness arrested my stepß, and I gave to him alone all the feeling that I had in my heart for the place in which I had found him.

I had now a key which unlocked more of the sentiment that was shut down under this floor. Among these historic reputations which had been gathering upon this spot for nearly five centuries, here was a new one—one of this hour; and, like them, it had already parted from the present generation; gona into the past with them; gone " out with the tide" of the great receding era; the terrible retreat which swept back from such a grave; to be surrounded more and with that strange cloud which hangs upon the names recorded on these walls mud graven on this pavement. That active brain was stilled, that industrious hand had for ever ceased. All that the world had of him now was the

work he had done. Even the eager devotion of his friends to do him some diatinguished honour had been arrested by his parting word, and, like that of ShakeBpeare, it will for ever prevent more than this that is before me. "I conjure my friends," he said, "on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever." He rested his fame with his countrymen, he said, in his published works. He was literally obeyed; his friends did nothing. They only gave him six feet of English ground; but his monument bad been waiting for him eight hundred years. The busy multitude as it hurried along outside saw the plain hearse and its three carriages winding slowly by that early morning, and never gave a thought to him. He was so recently and suddenly dead that people had not yet expected his burial. " Jo" swept the mud from the crossing as the hearse passed over it, and " moved on;" ■ " Little Nell" threaded her modest way through yonder crooked streets—neither of them dreaming that the still heart of their best friend was so near. " Sam Weller," so alert and so keen, saw the funeral pass without a word. "Mr Micawber " wandered along looking for " something to turn up; " and close beside him his old friend, that " distinguished author, David Copperfield," was going to his grave in Westminster Abbey.

Only a grave, only a gravestone, only a name:

" Chables Dickens,

Born Feb. 7,1812. Died June 9,1870." And yefe that grave was in the soil of Chaucer and Spenser, Dryden and Johnson, Garrick and Sheridan ; in the soil of kings as of," the king of wits." But no " patron " had put him here. He came here. The poor " blacking " apprenticeboy, with head and heart and hands alike begrimed, who had stooped to brush the mire from the feet of the humble and the lowly in the every-day walks of common life, had given them such a "sbine" as made them worthy, the world thought, to walk henceforth and for ever among kings Sand nobles. Such was the man. He had inspired the English people with a new heart. He had awakened sympathies and feelings, charitable ideas and impulses, before unknown to the multitude. Abuses were remedied that seemed ingrained with the social structure, and a new humanity was released far and near.. Not a blot defiled the pure spirit of his works —in all he wrote, while seeking to give pleasure, he sought also to do good. This is why he wa9 the centre of bo much enthusiasm. This it was that gave such power to his writings. This it was that caught him to the bosom of Westminster Abbey.