When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away among the mysterious aisles; for there is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments.  Through the open-work screen that divides the nave from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam of a marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers.  These vigilant officials (doing their duty all the more strenuously because no fees could be exacted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep.  Lingering through one of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, “O rare Ben Jonson!” and remembered the story of stout old Ben’s burial in that spot, standing upright,—­not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but because standing-room was all that could reasonably be demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities of his age.  It made me weary to think of it!—­such a prodigious length of time to keep one’s feet!—­apart from the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country-churchyard.  To this day, however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes of English society profess for their literary men.

Another day—­in truth, many other days—­I sought out Poets’ Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed finger, directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey.  The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free mode of access to this building.  It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stonework of the walls.  Great poets, too; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door, and Spenser’s tablet is next, and Butler’s on the same side of the transept, and Milton’s (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that) is close by, and a profile-medallion of Gray beneath it.  A window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the pavement.  It seemed to me that I had always been familiar with the spot.  Enjoying a humble intimacy—­and how much of my life had else been a dreary solitude!—­with