3-078-324 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, 1895. 'Tennyson and Browning's tombs...The two chief English poets of the reign of Queen Victoria, whose names will abide in literary history, may henceforth be recalled to mind by visible memorials...The tablet which has recently been placed on Robert Browning's grave is thus described by his son, Mr. R. Barrett Browning: "It is a simple slab of porphyry, set in Siena marble, with my father's name and the dates of his birth and death. At the top is the English rose and at the bottom is the giglio, or Florentine lily...". As a mere tribute of personal and filial affection this may suffice; but, compared with the stately eulogies...of the eighteenth-century and earlier poets...it shows the difference of modern taste...The very simplicity of the inscription is a reflection of the character of Robert Browning, who in all things abhorred display...There is a delightful appropriateness in the companionship of Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson..., lying side by side in the great Abbey. Differing in form and style of expression, they were one in optimism; he who could "greet the Unseen with a cheer" had a comrade in him who held it truth "that men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things".' From "Illustrated London News", 1895.