Westminster Abbey

First a shipbuilder, then an architecture student, Axel Herman Haig developed a special interest in English Gothic monuments. He worked primarily as an illustrator, never quite completing his intended book on Scottish medieval architecture. Though Haig’s architectural interests are better documented than his literary ones, he did etch a number of views of "Poets’ Corner" in Westminster Abbey. In this one, a couple stands transfixed before the bust of the seventeenth-century poet John Dryden (1631–1700), which crowns his tomb. Dryden famously and immodestly said, "genius must be born; and never can be taught."