en one recalls the
true significance and influence of great sculptured monuments through
the history of the civilised world, Milton's poetic argument can only
be accepted in what Sir Thomas Browne called "a soft and flexible
sense"; it cannot "be called unto the rigid test of reason." To treat
Milton's eulogy as the final word in the discussion of the subject
whether or no Shakespeare should have a national monument, is to come
into conflict with Sir Walter Scott, Tennyson, Ruskin, Dickens, and
all the greatest men of letters of the nineteenth century, who
answered the question in the affirmative. It is to discredit crowds of
admirers of great writers in classical and modern ages, who have
commemorated the labours of poets and dramatists in outward and
visible monuments.

The genius of the great Greek dramatists was not underrated by their
countrymen. Their literary efforts were adjudged to be true memorials
of their fame, and no doubt of their immortality was entertained. None
the less, the city of Athens, on the proposition of the Attic orator,
Lycurgus, erected in honour of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
statues which ranked with the most beautiful adornments of the Greek
capital. Calderon and Goethe, Camoens and Schiller, Sir Walter Scott
and Burns enjoy reputations which are smaller, it is true, than
Shakespeare's, but are, at the same time, like his, of both national
and universal significance. In memory of them all, monuments have been
erected as tokens of their fellow-countrymen's veneration and
gratitude for the influence which their poetry wields.

The fame of these men's writings never stood in any "need" of
monumental corroboration. The sculptured memorial testified to the
sense of gratitude which their writings generated in the hearts and
minds of their readers.

Again, the great musicians and the great painters live in their work
in a singularly vivid sense. Music and painting are more direct in
popular appeal than great poetry. Yet none can ridicule the sentiment
which is embodied in the statue of Beethoven at Bonn, or in that of
Paolo Veronese at Verona. To accept literally the youthful judgment of
Milton and his imitators is to condemn sentiments and practices which
are in universal vogue among civilised peoples. It is to deny to the
Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey a rational title to existence.

To commemorate a great man by a statue in a public place in the
central sphere of his influence