Note 12 — X.

September 30, 1855. Poets' Corner has never seemed like a strange place to me; it has been familiar from the very first; at all events, I cannot now recollect the previous conception, of which the reality has taken the place. I seem always to have known that somewhat dim corner, with the bare brown stone-work of the old edifice aloft, and a window shedding down its light on the marble busts and tablets, yellow with time, that cover the three walls of the nook up to a height of about twenty feet. Prior's is the largest and richest monument. It is observable that the bust and monument of Congreve are in a distant part of the Abbey. His duchess probably thought it a degradation to bring a gentleman among the beggarly poets.—II. 153.

November 12, 1857. We found our way to Poets' Corner, however, and entered those holy precincts, which looked very dusky and grim in the smoky light.... I was strongly impressed with the perception that very commonplace people compose the great bulk of society in the home of the illustrious dead. It is wonderful how few names there are that one cares anything about a hundred years after their departure; but perhaps each generation acts in good faith in canonizing its own men.... But the fame of the buried person does not make the marble live,—the marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.—II. 565.