Identifier: oldnewlondonnarr03thor (find matches)
Title: Old and new London : a narrative of its history, its people, and its places
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Thornbury, Walter, 1828-1876
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Cassell, Petter, & Galpin
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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HAMJl.I, b MOXUMKM. This great dramatist and contemporary ofShakespeare was buried in the north aisle, and ona plain stone over his grave are to be seen thewords O: rare Ben Jonson —an epitaph perhapsthe more forcible for its quaint brevity. The wordsare said to have been cut by a mason for eighteen-pence, jjaid him by a passer-by, Jack Young.Mr. R. Bell, in his • Life of Ben Jonson, writes,TIk- smallness r.f ^he surface occupied bv the Allen, in his History of London and West-minster, says that the epitaph on Jonsons gra\e-stone was engraved by direction of Sir WilliamDavenant, who has on his own tombstone, in thepavement on the west side of Poets Corner, O Irare Sir William Davenant. Sir William Davenantwas the sou of a vintner, and was born at Oxfordin 1605 ; his uiotlicr. who was a woman of admir-able wit aud sprightly c:onvcrsation. drew to !>eV Westminster Abbey.) MONUMENTS IN POETS CORNER. 427
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l^•TERIOR OF KING HENRY VII.S CHAPEL 428 OLD AND NEW LONDON. (Westminster Abbey. house the poUtest men of that age, and amongtlieni Shakespeare is said to have been a frequentvisitor. Upon Ben Jonsons death, Davenant suc-ceeded him as Poet Laureate to Charles L, buthaving, as it is stated, lost his nose by an acci-dent, he was cruelly bantered by the wits of thesucceeding reign. He died in 1668. Shakespeare himself does not lie here, as every-body knows ; there is, nevertheless, a monumentto him in Poets Corner. Pericles has told usmany centuries ago, that the whole earth is amonument of men of genius ; and in a like spiritsings Ben Jonson :— My Shakespear, rise ; I will not lodge thee byChaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont hieA little further off to make thee room :Thou art a monument without a tomb. The monument to John Dryden was erected bySheffield, Duke of Buckingham, who had refusedto aid the poet in his lifetime, thereby giving pointto the satiric assertion of Pope, that—

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