the Abbey, for who can stand amongst the kings and look upon the
"mighty conquerors, mighty lords," who made this island kingdom, without
recalling the words of his historic ode?

Nowadays, when by common consent Chaucer is regarded as the patriarch of
English poets, visitors to this transept naturally consider that he was
buried here on account of his literary reputation. But this was not the
case. At one time a favourite of kings, Chaucer was also a connection by
marriage with his powerful patron John of Gaunt, yet he seems to have
died in comparative poverty. He was Clerk of the Works at the royal
palace hard by, and a dweller beneath the shadow of the old Lady Chapel;
his burial in the adjoining church followed as a matter of course, simply
because he resided within the precincts. For nearly a hundred and fifty
years the only record of his grave was a leaden plate, with a Latin
inscription by an Italian poet, which hung upon the pillar near. At last
one Brigham, himself with a turn for verse-making, procured an ancient
marble {52} tomb, and got permission to put it up against this wall. It
has been called by Chaucer's name ever since; but whether the poet's
bones still lie in the original grave, where Dryden's coffin was
afterwards placed, or were transferred here, is still a moot-point. The
modern window above, the gift of an American admirer, contains portraits
of Chaucer and his contemporary John Gower. Quite lately another painted
glass window, dedicated to the Confessor, has been inserted beside it.
John Dryden, whose reputation equalled Spenser's in his own day, died,
like Chaucer (1400) and Spenser (1599), at the end of a century, in his
case the eighteenth, and his burial in Chaucer's grave, near the entrance
to St. Benedict's Chapel, was a mark of special honour. To reach his
beautiful bust, a copy by Scheemakers of an earlier one, we must pass
over the gravestones of two well-known modern poets, Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, and Robert Browning. On a pillar close by is Woolner's bust of
Tennyson, which represents the laureate in middle life. The name of
Abraham Cowley on a stone beside them conveys little to us now, but his
contemporary reputation was very great, and Dryden owed much to Cowley,
his immediate predecessor in the circle of poets. Before we move on
there are two busts {53} which are artistically very inferior to
Dryden's. I refer first to that of Longfellow, whose name is a household
wor