Everything that I saw in St. Paul’s cost me only a little more than a shilling, which I paid in pence and halfpence, according to a regulated price, fixed for every different curiosity.
Westminster Abbey.
On a very gloomy dismal day, just such a one as it ought to be, I went to see Westminster Abbey.
I entered at a small door, which brought me immediately to the poets’ corner, where the monuments and busts of the principal poets, artists, generals, and great men, are placed.
Not far from the door, immediately on my entrance, I perceived the statue of Shakespeare, as large as life; with a band, &c., in the dress usual in his time.
A passage out of one of Shakespeare’s own plays (the Tempest), in which he describes in the most solemn and affecting manner, the end, or the dissolution of all things, is here, with great propriety, put up as his epitaph; as though none but Shakespeare could do justice to Shakespeare.
Not far from this immortal bard is Rowe’s monument, which, as it is intimated in the few lines that are inscribed as his epitaph, he himself had desired to be placed there.
At no great distance I saw the bust of that amiable writer, Goldsmith: to whom, as well as to Butler, whose monument is in a distant part of the abbey, though they had scarcely necessary bread to eat during their life time, handsome monuments are now raised. Here, too you see, almost in a row, the monuments of Milton, Dryden, Gay, and Thomson. The inscription on Gay’s tombstone is, if not actually immoral, yet futile and weak; though he is said to have written it himself:
“Life is a jest, and all things shew it,
‘I thought so once but now I know it.”
Our Handel has also a monument here, where he is represented as large as life.