Again, the great musicians and the great painters live in their work
in a singularly vivid sense. Music and painting are more direct in
popular appeal than great poetry. Yet none can ridicule the sentiment
which is embodied in the statue of Beethoven at Bonn, or in that of
Paolo Veronese at Verona. To accept literally the youthful judgment of
Milton and his imitators is to condemn sentiments and practices which
are in universal vogue among civilised peoples. It is to deny to the
Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey a rational title to existence.
To commemorate a great man by a statue in a public place in the
central sphere of his influence is, indeed, a custom inseparable from
civilised life. The theoretic moralist's reminder that monuments of
human greatness sooner or later come to dust is a doctrine too
discouraging of all human effort to exert much practical effect.
Monuments are, in the eyes of the intelligent, tributes for services
rendered to posterity by great men. But incidentally they have an
educational value. They help to fix the attention of the thoughtless
on facts which may, in the absence of outward symbols, escape notice.
They may act as incentives to thought.
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