for placing a monument in
Westminster Abbey, resented the sculpturesque caricature to which
their subscriptions were applied. Pope, an original leader of the
movement, declined to write an inscription for this national memorial,
but scribbled some ironical verses beginning:--

Thus Britons love me and preserve my fame.

A later critic imagined Shakespeare's wraith pausing in horror by the
familiar monument in the Abbey, and lightly misquoting Shelley's
familiar lines:--

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, ...
And long to unbuild it again.

One of the most regrettable effects of the Abbey memorial, with its
mawkish and irrelevant sentimentality, has been to set a bad pattern
for statues of Shakespeare. Posterity came to invest the design with
some measure of sanctity.

The nineteenth century efforts were mere abortions. In 1821, in spite
of George the Fourth's benevolent patronage, which included an
unfulfilled promise to pay the sum of 100 guineas, the total amount
which was collected after six years' agitation was so small that it
was returned to the subscribers. The accounts are extant in the
Library of Shakespeare's Birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon. In 1847 the
subscriptions were more abundant, but all was then absorbed in the
purchase of Shakespeare's Birthplace at Stratford; no money was
available for a London memorial. In 1864 the expenses of organising
the tercentenary celebration in London by way of banquets, concerts,
and theatrical performances, seem to have left no surplus for the
purpose which the movement set out to fulfil.

III

The causes of the sweeping failure of the proposal when it came before
the public during the nineteenth century are worthy of study. There
was no lack of enthusiasm among the promoters. Nor were their high
hopes wrecked solely by public apathy. The public interest was never
altogether dormant. More efficient causes of ruin were, firstly, the
active hostility of some prominent writers and actors who declaimed
against all outward and visible commemoration of Shakespeare; and
secondly, divisions in the ranks of supporters in regard to the
precise form that the memorial ought to take. The censorious refusal
of one section of the literary public to countenance any memorial at
all, and the inability of another section, while promoting the
endeavour, to concentrate its energies on a single acceptable form of
commemoration had, as might be expected, a paralysing ef