There Shakspeare! on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world! O eyes sublimeWith tears and laughter for all time! MRS. E. B. BROWNING. The glory dies not, and the grief is past. SIR S. E. BRYDGES: Death of Sir Walter Scott. Where sense with sound and ease with weight combine In the pure silver of Pope's ringing line; When Bishop Berkeley said, "There was no matter," And proved it-'twas no matter what he said. Evergreen forest! which Boccaccio's lore BYRON. Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away. BYRON. Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And stoic Franklin's energetic shade, The starry Galileo with his woes. BYRON: Childe Harold. The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle. BYRON: Bride of Abydos. Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife, He would have written sonnets all his life? BYRON. The self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, The apostate of affection-he who threw Ecchantment over passion, and from woe Wrung overwhelming eloquence. BYRON: Childe Harold. The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung. BYRON. The Ariosto of the North. BYRON: Childe Harold. Sighing that nature form'd but one such man, And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan. BYRON. And aye that volume on her lap is thrown, Which every heart of human mould endears; With Shakspeare's self she speaks and smiles alone, And no intruding visitation fears To shame the unconscious laugh or stop her sweetest tears. CAMPBELL: Gertrude of Wyoming. And rival all but Shakspeare's name below. CAMPBELL: Pleasures of Hope. Condorcet filter'd through the dregs of Paine. CANNING: Anti-Jacobin. Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand By those deep sounds possess'd with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee COLERIDGE: Fancy in Nubibus. Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part; Nature in him was almost lost in Art. Noble Boyle, not less in nature seen Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, In easy dialogues is Fletcher's praise: When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin, The death of Richard, with an arrow slain. Three poets, in three distant ages born, Horace, with sly insinuating grace, Would raise a blush where secret vice he found, And tickle while he gently probed the wound; With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled, But made the desperate passes when he smiled. DRYDEN. That good man, who drank the pois'nous Their discords sting through Burns and Moore, draught With mind serene, and could not wish to see His vile accuser drink as deep as he. DRYDEN. Burns o'er the plough sung sweet his woodnotes wild, And richest Shakspeare was a poor man's child. O ye muses! deign your bless'd retreat, FENTON. GRANVILLE. Dryden himself, to cure a frantic age, Deem then the people's, not the writer's sin, GRANVILLE. Homer shall last, like Alexander, long; As much recorded, and as often sung. GRANVILLE. Like hedgehogs dress'd in lace. O. W. HOLMES: Music Grinders. Good Homer sometimes nods. HORACE. Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, And Swift expires a driveller and a show. Soule of the Age! The applause! delight! the wonder of our My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by Love warms our fancy with enliv'ning fires, For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaventaught lyre None but the noblest passions to inspire; What neede my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones, The labour of an Age in piled stones, Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid Dear Sonne of Memory, great Heire of Fame, Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Booke, Those Delphicke Lines with deep Impression tooke; Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving, Or sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild. MILTON. The plain good man, whose actions teach MOORE. Oh! who that has ever had rapture complete Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet; No longer now that golden age appears, POPE. Less reading than makes felon 'scape, POPE. With equal rays immortal Tully shone: РОРЕ. Begone, ye critics, and restrain your spite; POPE. POPE. Yet time ennobles or degrades each line; Earless on high stood unabash'd Defoe, Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know Be Homer's works your study; See Dionysius Homer's thoughts refine, What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line. And praise the easy vigour of a line Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join. POPE. POPE. Those oft are stratagems which errors seem; Nor is it Homer nods, but we who dream. POPE. Horace still charms with graceful negligence, POPE. There are, who to my person pay their court; Whether the darken'd room to muse invite, |