We have this on the authority of a solid Englishman, who says:  “The virtues essential and peculiar to the exalted station of British Worthy debar the unfortunate possessor from entering Paradise.  There is not a Lord Chancellor, or Lord Mayor, or Lord of the Chamber, or Master of the Hounds, or Beefeater in Ordinary, or any sort of British bigwig, out of the whole of British Beadledom, upon which the sun never sets, in Elysium.  This is the only dignity beyond their reach.”

The writer quoted is an honorable man, and I am sure he would not make this assertion if he did not have proof of the fact.  So, for the present, I will allow him to go on his own recognizance, believing that he will adduce his documents at the proper time.

But still, should not England have a fitting monument to Shakespeare?  He is her one universal citizen.  His name is honored in every school or college of earth where books are prized.  There is no scholar in any clime who is not his debtor.

He was born in England; he never was out of England; his ashes rest in England.  But England’s Budget has never been ballasted with a single pound to help preserve inviolate the memory of her one son to whom the world uncovers.

Victor Hugo has said something on this subject which runs about like this: 

Why a monument to Shakespeare?

He is his own monument and England is its pedestal.  Shakespeare has no need of a pyramid; he has his work.

What can bronze or marble do for him?  Malachite and alabaster are of no avail; jasper, serpentine, basalt, porphyry, granite:  stones from Paros and marble from Carrara—­they are all a waste of pains:  genius can do without them.

What is as indestructible as these:  “The Tempest,” “The Winter’s Tale,” “Julius Caesar,” “Coriolanus”?  What monument sublimer than “Lear,” sterner than “The Merchant of Venice,” more dazzling than “Romeo and Juliet,” more amazing than “Richard III”?

What moon could shed about the pile a light more mystic than that of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”?  What capital, were it even in London, could rumble around it as tumultuously as Macbeth’s perturbed soul?  What framework of cedar or oak will last as long as “Othello”?  What bronze can equal the bronze of “Hamlet”?

No construction of lime, or rock, of iron and of cement is worth the deep breath of genius, which is the respiration of God through man.  What edifice can equal thought?  Babel is less lofty than Isaiah; Cheops is smaller than Homer; the Colosseum is inferior to Juvenal; the Giralda of Seville is dwarfish by the side of Cervantes; Saint Peter’s of Rome does not reach to the ankle of Dante.

What architect has the skill to build a tower so high as the name of Shakespeare?  Add anything if you can to mind!  Then why a monument to Shakespeare?

I answer, not for the glory of Shakespeare, but for the honor of England!

THOMAS A. EDISON