“Observe the height of the Abbey--one hundred and three feet to the base of the roof--I measured it myself the other day. Notice the base of this column--old, very old--hundreds and hundreds of years; and how well they knew how to build in those old days. Notice it--every stone is laid horizontally--that is to say, just as nature laid it originally in the quarry--not set up edgewise; in our day some people set them on edge, and then wonder why they split and flake. Architects cannot teach nature anything. Let me remove this matting--it is put there to preserve the pavement; now, there is a bit of pavement that is seven hundred years old; you can see by these scattering clusters of colored mosaics how beautiful it was before time and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now there, in the border, was an inscription once; see, follow the circle--you can trace it by the ornaments that have been pulled out--here is an A, and there is an O, and yonder another A--all beautiful old English capitals--there is no telling what the inscription was--no record left, now. Now move along in this direction, if you please. Yonder is where old King Sebert the Saxon, lies--his monument is the oldest one in the Abbey; Sebert died in 616, and that’s as much as twelve hundred and fifty years ago--think of it!--twelve hundred and fifty years. Now yonder is the last one--Charles Dickens--there on the floor with the brass letters on the slab--and to this day the people come and put flowers on it. Why, along at first they almost had to cart the flowers out, there were so many. Could not leave them there, you know, because it’s where everybody walks--and a body wouldn’t want them trampled on, anyway. All this place about here, now, is the Poet’s Corner. There is Garrick’s monument, and Addison’s, and Thackeray’s bust--and Macaulay lies there. And here, close to Dickens and Garrick, lie Sheridan and Doctor Johnson--and here is old Parr--Thomas Parr--you can read the inscription:
“Tho: Par of Y Covnty of Sallop Borne A :1483. He Lived in Y Reignes of Ten Princes, viz: K. Edw. 4 K. Ed. 5. K. Rich 3. K. Hen. 7. K. Hen. 8. Edw. 6. QVV. Ma. Q. Eliz. K. IA. and K. Charles, Aged 152 Yeares, And Was Buryed Here Novemb. 15. 1635.
“Very old man indeed, and saw a deal of life. (Come off the grave, Kitty, poor thing; she keeps the rats away from the office, and there’s no harm in her--her and her mother.) And here--this is Shakespeare’s statue--leaning on his elbow and pointing with his finger at the lines on the scroll:
“The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wrack behind.
“That stone there covers Campbell the poet. Here are names you know pretty well--Milton, and Gray who wrote the ‘Elegy,’ and Butler who wrote ‘Hudibras,’ and Edmund Spencer, and Ben Jonson--there are three tablets to him scattered about the Abbey, and all got ‘O Rare Ben Jonson’ cut on them--you were standing on one of them just now--he is buried standing up. There used to be a tradition here that explains it. The story goes that he did not dare ask to be buried in the Abbey, so he asked King James if he would make him a present of eighteen inches of English ground, and the king said yes, and asked him where he would have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey. Well, the king wouldn’t go back on his word, and so there he is sure enough--stood up on end. Years ago, in Dean Buckland’s time--before my day--they were digging a grave close to Jonson and they uncovered him and his head fell off. Toward night the clerk of the works hid the head to keep it from being stolen, as the ground was to remain open till next day. Presently the dean’s son came along and he found a head, and hid it away for Jonson’s. And by and by along comes a stranger, and he found a head, too, and walked off with it under his cloak, and a month or so afterward he was heard to boast that he had Ben Jonson’s head. Then there was a deal of correspondence about it, in the Times, and everybody distressed. But Mr. Frank Buckland came out and comforted everybody by telling how he saved the true head, and so the stranger must have got one that wasn’t of any consequence. And then up speaks the clerk of the works and tells how he saved the right head, and so Dean Buckland must have got a wrong one. Well, it was all settled satisfactorily at last, because the clerk of the works proved his head. And then I believe they got that head from the stranger--so now we have three. But it shows you what regiments of people you are walking over--been collecting here for twelve hundred years--in some places, no doubt, the bones are fairly matted together.
“And here are some unfortunates. Under this place lies Anne, queen of Richard III, and daughter of the Kingmaker, the great Earl of Warwick--murdered she was--poisoned by her husband. And here is a slab which you see has once had the figure of a man in armor on it, in brass or copper, let into the stone. You can see the shape of it--but it is all worn away now by people’s feet; the man has been dead five hundred years that lies under it. He was a knight in Richard II’s time. His enemies pressed him close and he fled and took sanctuary here in the Abbey. Generally a man was safe when he took sanctuary in those days, but this man was not. The captain of the Tower and a band of men pursued him and his friends and they had a bloody fight here on this floor; but this poor fellow did not stand much of a chance, and they butchered him right before the altar.”