A good leading thread of literary research might be profitably followed by the student who should trace the footsteps of all the poets, dead and gone, that have held, in England, the office of laureate.  John Kay was laureate in the reign of King Edward the Fourth; Andrew Bernard in that of King Henry the Seventh; John Skelton in that of King Henry the Eighth, and Edmund Spenser in that of Queen Elizabeth.  Since then the succession has included the names of Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir William Devenant, John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence Eusden, Colley Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson.  Most of those bards were intimately associated with London, and several of them are buried in the Abbey.  It is, indeed, because so many storied names are written upon gravestones that the explorer of the old churches of London finds in them so rich a harvest of instructive association and elevating thought.  Few persons visit them, and you are likely to find yourself comparatively alone, in rambles of this kind.  I went one morning into St. Martin’s,—­once “in-the-fields,” now at the busy center of the city,—­and found there only a pew-opener, preparing for the service, and an organist, practising music.  It is a beautiful structure, with graceful spire and with columns of weather-beaten, gray stone, curiously stained with streaks of black, and it is almost as famous for theatrical names as St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, or St. George’s, Bloomsbury, or St. Clement Danes.  There, in a vault beneath the church, was buried the bewitching, generous Nell Gwynn; there is the grave of James Smith, joint author with his brother Horace,—­who was buried at Tunbridge Wells,—­of “The Rejected Addresses”; there rests Richard Yates, the original “Sir Oliver Surface”; and there were laid the ashes of the romantic Mrs. Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom neither youth, genius, patient labor, nor sterling achievement could save from a life of misfortune and an untimely, piteous death.  A cheerier association of this church is with the poet Thomas Moore, who was there married.  At St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields are the graves of George Chapman, who translated Homer; Andrew Marvel, who wrote such lovely lyrics; Rich, the manager, who brought out “The Beggar’s Opera,” and James Shirley, the fine dramatist and poet, whose immortal couplet has often been murmured in such solemn haunts as these: 

Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

Shirley was one of the most fertile, accomplished, admirable, and admired of writers, during the greater part of his life (1596-1666), and the study of his writing amply rewards the diligence of the student.  His plays, about forty in number, of which “The Traitor” is deemed the best tragedy and “The Lady of Pleasure” the best comedy, comprehend a wide variety of subject and exhibit refinement, deep feeling, and sustained fluency of graceful expression.  His name is associated with St. Albans, where he dwelt as a school-teacher, and, in London, with Gray’s Inn, where at one time he resided.