Volume 14, Number 7 · April 9, 1970
Scarred Monuments
By A.J.P. Taylor
The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim
by John Ehrman
Dutton, 710 pp., $14.95
The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798
by Thomas Pakenham
Prentice-Hall, 448 pp., $11.95
The eighteenth century was the great age of funeral monuments. When Westminster Abbey was packed two-deep with them, they invaded St. Paul's Cathedral. Other cathedrals are fully stocked, and nearly every parish church has a monument or two to members of the local family. Most of them follow a common pattern. There is usually a statue with the departed great man in a Roman toga or posed dramatically to confront the approach of death. There is a long recital of the deceased's virtues, perhaps accompanied by a list of his progeny. He is surrounded by cherubs proclaiming his achievements, as historians have sometimes done later. The purpose was no doubt to commemorate him. The result usually is to turn him literally into stone. His humanity has departed. He will never come back to life. Very occasionally a monument achieves the opposite. A man or a historical event stands before us still vital. We share the experience and come away knowing more instead of being glad that we have finished with the subject for ever.
Review, 2110 words
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