the well-known actor Charles
Mathews set on foot a movement for the erection of "a national
monument to the immortal memory of Shakespeare." He pledged himself to
enlist the support of the new King, George the Fourth, of members of
the royal family, of "every man of rank and talent, every poet,
artist, and sculptor." Mathews's endeavour achieved only a specious
success. George the Fourth, readily gave his "high sanction" to a
London memorial. Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tom Moore,
and Washington Irving were among the men of letters; Sir Thomas
Lawrence, [Sir] Francis Chantrey, and John Nash, the architect, were
among the artists, who approved the general conception. For three or
four years ink was spilt and breath was spent in the advocacy of the
scheme. But nothing came of all the letters and speeches.

In 1847 the topic was again broached. A committee, which was hardly
less influential than that of 1821, revived the proposal. Again no
result followed.

Seventeen years passed away, and then, in 1864, the arrival of the
tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth seemed to many men of eminence in
public life, in letters or in art, an appropriate moment at which to
carry the design into effect. A third failure has to be recorded.

The notion, indeed, was no child of the nineteenth century which
fathered it so ineffectually. It was familiar to the eighteenth. One
eighteenth century effort was fortunate enough to yield a little
permanent fruit. To an eighteenth-century endeavour to offer
Shakespeare a national memorial in London was due the cenotaph in
Westminster Abbey.

II

The suggestion of commemorating Shakespeare by means of a monument in
London has thus something more than a "smack of age" about it,
something more than a "relish of the saltness of time"; there are
points of view from which it might appear to be already "blasted with
antiquity." On only one of the previous occasions that the question
was raised was the stage of discussion passed, and that was in the
eighteenth century when the monument was placed in the Poets' Corner
of Westminster Abbey. The issue was not felicitous. The memorial in
the Abbey failed to satisfy the commemorative aspirations of the
nation; it left it open to succeeding generations to reconsider the
question, if it did not impose on them the obligation. Most of the
poets, actors, scholars, and patrons of polite learning, who in 1741
subscribed their guineas to the fund