12. The monument of Matthew Prior, is adorned with great expence. On one side of the pedestal stands the figure of Thalia, one of the Muses, with a flute in her hand; and on the other History, with her book shut; between these statues is Prior’s bust upon a raised altar, and over it is a handsome pediment, on the ascending sides of which are two boys, one with an hour-glass in his hand run out; the other holding a torch reversed. On the apex of the pediment is an urn, and on the base of the monument is a long inscription in Latin, mentioning the public posts and employments with which he had been intrusted; and above we are informed, that while he was writing the history of his own times, death interposed, and broke both the thread of his discourse and of his life, on the 18th of September 1721, in the fifty-seventh year of his age.
13. The monument of St. Evremond is a very plain one, adorned with a bust. The inscription observes, that he was of a noble family in Normandy, and was employed in the army of France, in which he rose to the rank of a Marshal; but returning to Holland, was from thence invited by King Charles II. into England, where he lived in the greatest intimacy with the King and principal nobility; more particularly with the Duchess of Mazarine. He was of a very sprightly turn of humour, as well in his conversation as writings, and lived to the age of ninety, when he was carried off by a fit of the strangury, on the 9th of September 1703.
S. Wale delin. C. Grignion sc.
Monument of Shakespear
14. The monument erected to the memory of the immortal Shakespear, a print of which we have here given, is worthy of that great dramatic writer, and both the design and execution are extremely elegant. Upon a handsome pedestal stands his statue in white marble in the habit of the time in which he lived, with one elbow leaning upon some books, and his head reclined upon his hand, in a posture of meditation. The attitude, the dress, the shape, the genteel air, and fine composure observable in this figure of Shakespear, cannot be sufficiently admired, and the beautiful lines of his upon the scroll are happily chosen.
The cloud-cap’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself;
Yea, all which it inherits, shall dissolve,
And like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wreck behind.