SPECIAL AUTHORITIES.

Besides the ample details in Keepe, Crull, Dart, and Neale, there are for the ensuing Chapter the following authorities:

1

I. The earlier Burial Register of the Abbey, contained in one volume folio, from 1606 to 1706.2

II. The later Burial Registers, from 1706 to the present day, are contained-(1) in another folio volume, and (2) (from 1711) more fully in six volumes octavo, more properly called the 'Funeral Books,'

III. MS. Heralds' College.

The first part of this is a compilation of Philip Tynchare, the Precentor, who was buried near the door of Lord Norris's monument, May 12, 1673.'

These, as far as the year 1705, are published, with notes, in Nichols's Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. vii. 355–377, viii. 1–13, to which are added, in vol. vii. 163–174, the Marriages from 1655 to 1705, and in vol. vii. 243-248, the Baptisms from 1605 to 1655, and 1661 to 1702, from the same source. But these transcripts have been found to be so full of errors, that a new and corrected version was absolutely needed. Under these circumstances the Dean and Chapter have been fortunate in obtaining the valuable aid of a learned and laborious antiquarian-Colonel Chester, of the United States of America—who has undertaken a complete edition of the whole Register, with references and annotations wherever necessary, with a zeal which must be as gratifying to our country as it is creditable to his own.

207

CHAPTER IV.

THE MONUMENTS.

Or all the characteristics of Westminster Abbey, that which most endears it to the nation, and gives most force to its name-which has, more than anything else, made it the home of the people of England, and the most venerated fabric of the English Church-is not so much its glory as the seat of the coronations, or as the sepulchre of the kings, not so much its school, or its monastery, or its chapter, or its sanctuary, as the fact that it is the restingplace of famous Englishmen, from every rank and creed, and every form of mind and genius. It is not only Reims Cathedral and St. Denys both in one; but it is also what the Pantheon was intended to be to France-what the Valhalla is to Germany -what Santa Croce is to Italy. It is this aspect which, more than any other, won for it the delightful visits of Addison in the 'Spectator,' of Steele in the 'Tatler,' of Goldsmith in 'The Citizen of the World,' of Charles Lamb in 'Elia,' of Washington Irving in 'The Sketch Book.' It is this which inspired the saying of Nelson, 'Victory or • Westminster Abbey!'' and which has intertwined it with so many eloquent passages of Macaulay. It is this which gives point to the allusions of recent Nonconforming statesmen least inclined to draw illustrations from ecclesiastical buildings. It is this which gives most promise of vitality to the whole

1 See Note at end of this Chapter.

Pecu

the Tombs liarity of at West

minster.

institution. Kings are no longer buried within its walls; even the splendour of pageants has ceased to attract; but the desire to be interred in Westminster Abbey is still as strong as ever.

And yet it is this which has exposed the Abbey to the severest criticism. 'To clear away the monuments' has become the ardent wish of not a few of its most ardent admirers. The incongruity of their construction, the caprice of their erection, the false taste or false feeling of their inscriptions and their sculptures, has provoked the attacks of each succeeding generation. It will be the object of this Chapter to unravel this conflict of sentiments, to find the clue through this labyrinth of monumental stumblingblocks and stones of offence. Although this branch of the Abbey be a parasitical growth, it has struck its fibres so deep that, if rudely torn out, both perchance will come down together. If sooner or later it must be pruned, we must first well consider the relation of the engrafted mistletoe to the parent tree.

This peculiarity of Westminster Abbey is of comparatively recent origin. No theory of the kind existed when the Confessor procured its first privileges, nor yet when Henry III. planned the burial place of the Plantagenets. No cemetery in the world had as yet been based on this principle. The great men of Rome were indeed buried along the side of the Appian Way, but they had no exclusive right to it; it was by virtue rather of their family connexions than of their individual merit. The appropriation of the Church of Ste. Geneviève at Paris, under the name of the Pantheon, to the ashes of celebrated Frenchmen, was almost confined to the times of the Revolution and to the tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. The adaptation of the Pantheon at Rome to the reception of the busts of famous Italians dates from the same epoch, and it ceased to be so employed after the restoration of Pius VII. The nearest

son to

Croce at

Florence.

approach to Westminster Abbey in this aspect is the Church Compariof Santa Croce at Florence. There, as here, the present Santa destination of the building was no part of the original design, but was the result of various converging causes. As the church of one of the two great preaching orders, it had a nave large beyond all proportion to its choir. That order being the Franciscan, bound by vows of poverty, the simplicity of the worship preserved the whole space clear from any adventitious ornaments. The popularity of the Franciscans, especially in a convent hallowed by a visit from St. Francis himself, drew to it not only the chief civic festivals, but also the numerous families who gave alms to the friars, and whose connexion with their church was, for this reason, in turn encouraged by them. In those graves, piled with the standards and achievements of the noble families of Florence, were successively interred-not because of their eminence, but as members or friends of those families -some of the most illustrious personages of the fifteenth century. Thus it came to pass, as if by accident, that in the vault of the Buonarotti was laid Michael Angelo; in the vault of the Viviani the preceptor of one of their house, Galileo. From those two burials the church gradually became the recognised shrine of Italian genius.1

The growth of our English Santa Croce, though different, was analogous. It sprang, in the first instance, as a natural offshoot from the coronations and interments of the Kings. Had they been buried far away, in some conventual or secluded spot, or had the English nation stood aloof from the English monarchy, it might have been otherwise. The sepulchral chapels built by Henry III. and Henry VII. might have stood alone in their glory: no meaner dust need ever have

1 I owe this account of Santa Croce to the kindness of Signor Bonaini, Keeper of the Archives at Florence.

P

See also Trollope's novel of Malatesta,
vol. iii.

Result of

the Royal

Tombs.

mingled with the dust of the Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, and Guelphs. The Kings of France rest almost alone at St. Denys. The Kings of Spain, the Emperors of Austria, the Czars of Russia, rest absolutely alone in the vaults of the Escurial, of Vienna, of Moscow, and St. Petersburg. But it has been the peculiar privilege of the Kings of England, that neither in life nor in death have they been parted from their people. As the Council of the nation and the Courts. of Law have pressed into the Palace of Westminster, and engirdled the very Throne itself, so the ashes of the great citizens of England have pressed into the sepulchre of the Kings, and surrounded them, as with a guard of honour, after their death. On the tomb designed for Maximilian at Innspruck, the Emperor's effigy lies encircled by the mailed figures of ancient chivalry-of Arthur and Clovis, of Rudolph and Cunegunda, of Ferdinand and Isabella. A like thought, but yet nobler, is that which is realised in fact by the structure of Westminster Abbey, as it is by the structure of the English Constitution. We are sometimes inclined bitterly to contrast the placid dignity of our recumbent Kings, with Chatham gesticulating from the Northern Transept, or Pitt from the western door, or Shakspeare leaning on his column in Poets' Corner, or Wolfe expiring by the Chapel of St. John. But, in fact, they are, in their different ways, keeping guard over the shrine of our monarchy and our laws and their very incongruity and variety become symbols of the harmonious diversity in unity which pervades our whole commonwealth.

Had the Abbey of St. Denys admitted within its walls the poets and warriors and statesmen of France, the Kings might yet have remained inviolate in their graves. Had the monarchy of France connected itself with the surrounding institutions of Church and State, assuredly it would not have fallen as it did in its imperial isolation. Let us accept the