'It all rings false--statue, inscription, everything,' said Frank.
'These insufferable allegorical groups sprawling round a dead hero
are of the same class as the pompous and turgid prose of Doctor
Johnson. The greatest effects are the simplest effects, and so it
always was and so it always will be. But that little bit of Latin is
effective, I confess.'

It was a very much defaced inscription underneath a battered
Elizabethan effigy, whose feet had been knocked off, and whose
features were blurred into nothing. Two words of the inscription had
caught Frank's eye.

'Moestissima uxor! It was his "most sad wife" who erected it! Look
at it now! The poor battered monument of a woman's love. Now,
Maude, come with me, and we shall visit the famous Poets' Corner.'

What an assembly it would be if at some supreme day each man might
stand forth from the portals of his tomb. Tennyson, the last and
almost the greatest of that illustrious line, lay under the white
slab upon the floor. Maude and Frank stood reverently beside it.


'"Sunset and evening Star
And one clear call for me."'


Frank quoted. 'What lines for a very old man to write! I should put
him second only to Shakespeare had I the marshalling of them.'