other transept, hastening
to the company of the poets and men of letters.

The south transept has only been called Poets' Corner since the burial
of Spenser, who was the darling of his generation. But the grave of
Chaucer, "the father of English poetry," had consecrated the aisle to
poetry long before. Chaucer was not given honourable sepulture here
because he was a poet, but only from the accidental fact that he
happened to be Clerk of the Works at Westminster Palace, and lived near
the old Lady Chapel. For 250 years the great poet's only memorial was a
leaden plate hanging on a column close by, but in 1551 a devoted
admirer, himself a versifier, Nicholas Brigham, placed an ancient tomb
here in memory of the master, with a fancy painting of Chaucer at the
back. Before this monument are the graves of the two most famous poets
of our generation, the Laureate Tennyson and Robert Browning, side by
side. Above them is the beautiful bust of another Poet Laureate, Dryden,
and the less artistic portrait bust of the American poet Longfellow.

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