ue which set the table on a roar
And charmed the public ear is heard no more.
Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,
Which spake before the tongue what Shakespeare writ.
Cold is that hand which living was stretched forth
At friendship's call to succor modest worth.
Here lies James Quin, deign readers to be taught
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In Nature's happiest mood however cast,
To this complexion thou must come at last.

Quin's monument strikes one as the greatest there because of Garrick's
living words, but there is another very much more beautiful.

I first noticed this memorial on the wall at a distance of about three
yards, too far to read anything in the inscription except the name of
Sibthorpe, which was strange to me, but instead of going nearer to read
it I remained standing to admire it at that distance. The tablet was of
white marble, and on it was sculptured the figure of a young man with
curly head and classic profile. He was wearing sandals and a loose
mantle held to his breast with one hand, while in the other hand
he carried a bunch of leaves and flowers. He appeared in the act of
stepping ashore from a boat of antique shape, and the artist had been
singularly successful in producing the idea of free and vigorous motion
in the figure as well as of some absorbing object in his mind. The
figure was undoubtedly symbolical, and I began to amuse myself by trying
to guess its meaning. Then a curious thing happened. A person who had
been moving slowly along near me, apparently looking with no great
interest at the memorials, came past me and glanced first at the tablet
I was looking at, then at me. As our eyes met I remarked that I was
admiring the best memorial I had found in the abbey, and then added,
"I've been trying to make out its meaning. You see the man is a
traveller and is stepping ashore with a flowering spray in his hand. It
strikes me that it may have been erected to the memory of a person who
introduced some valuable plant into England."

"Yes, perhaps," he said. "But who was he?"

"I don't know yet," I returned. "I can only see that his name was
Sibthorpe."

"Sibthorpe!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Why, this is the very memorial
I've been looking for all over the abbey and had pretty well given up
all hopes of finding it." With that he went to it and began studying
the inscription, which was in Latin. John Sibthorpe, I found, was a
dist