of his career, probably near the end, he had written a poem on "Change
and Mutabilitie." God grant that in those bitter closing days he found
the ray of hope he thus did sing of:—
"Then gin I think on that which Nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things firmly stayd,
Upon the Pillars of Eternitie,
That is contrayr to Mutabilitie.
For all that moveth does in change delight:
But thenceforth all shall rest eternally
With Him, that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O that great Sabbaoth God, grant me that Sabbaoth’s sight."
True it is that Spenser, the herald of the Elizabethan day, gives to the
Poets’ Corner the reflected glory of that period, but we can never cease
to regret that Shakespeare, its crown and its sun, lies so far away from
Westminster. Only the Abbey seems a fitting monument to that great mind,
our king of English literature.
"Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive while still thy books doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give."
So wrote Ben Jonson. With that thought, and the fact that, a hundred
and twenty years after his death, a memorial to Shakespeare was put up
in the Poets’ Corner by public subscription, we must rest content. Ben
Jonson himself was buried here, having in his imperious way demanded of
the king "eighteen inches of ground in the Abbey," and so he remained in
death "a child of Westminster." He had been educated at Westminster
School, this turbulent, strong-spirited lad, with Border blood in him,
who could never settle down to the trade of a builder, to which he had
been apprenticed, and who was heard of among actors and playwriters. He
was the friend of Shakespeare; indeed, it is said that the great man not
only warmly praised his first play, "Every Man in his Humour," but acted
in it himself at the Globe Theatre. Jonson produced a great number of
plays and a still greater number of court masques. He was a master of
plot, and everything he wrote was full of force and personality. Such a
fiery character as his could hardly fail to lead him into a series of
quarrels; but, in spite of this, he was held by his large circle of
friends to be "the prince of good fellows," and the words, "O rare Ben
Jonson," carved on his tomb by order of Sir John Young, "who, walking
here when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteenpence to cut
it," is an epitaph that came from the hearts of those who loved him and
recognised his genius. Francis Beaumont, another Elizabethan
playwriter, and the intimate friend of the whole group of dramatists,
lies here; as does Michael Drayton, who wrote more than one hundred
thousand lines of verse, and who, despite the fact that he was always
quarrelling with his booksellers, whom he described as "a company of
base knaves I scorn to kick," was known among his contemporaries as the
"all-loved Drayton." Abraham Cowley, held in his day to be a great
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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