N reading Wordsworth the sensation is as the sensation of the pure water-drinker, whose palate is so refined that he can distinguish between rill and rill, river and river, as compared with the obtuser sensation of him who has destroyed the delicacy of his palate by grosser libations, and who can discover no difference between water and water, because to him all pure things are equally insipid. J. W. ROBERTSON. With all his pathos, and all his clearness of vision, there were sorrows of humanity he never touched, recesses of dark moral experience he could not pierce or irradiate. He does not move us to the depths of our being, he only affects us gently. The ink of Wordsworth is never his own blood. D. MASSON. True bard and holy! thou art e'en as one Glad wanderer free. FELICIA HEMANS. He has brightened the earth we inherit to our eyes; he has made it more musical to our ears; he has rendered it more creative to our imaginations. JOHN WILSON. CHAUCER. LY from the press, and dwell with slothfastness1; Suffice unto thy good, though it be For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness; Painé thee not each crooked to redress, That thee is sent receive in buxomness :7 HUS Chaucer, quaintly clad in antique guise, With unfamiliar mien scares modern eyes. No doubt he well invented-nobly felt- Chaucer, whose native manners-painting verse, Well moralised, shines through the golden cloud Of time and language. THOMSON. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is practised by few writers and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace. DRYDEN. He no doubt saw in religion as much as even we do now, and uttereth it in his works no lesse, and seemeth to be a right Wiclevian, or else was never any. JOHN FOXE. Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled, On fame's eternal beadroll worthie to be fyled. SPENSER. TE SCHILLER. EART be still! In the darkness of thy woe, Be thou still! Vainly all thy words are spoken, Rest thou still! 'Tis thy Father's work of grace,Wait thou yet before his face; He thy sure deliverance will Keep thou still! Lord my God! By thy grace, oh may I be All submissive, silently, To the chastenings of thy rod, Lord my God! Shepherd King! From thy fulness grant to me Still, yet fearless faith in thee, Till from night the day shall spring!— -- H Bard tremendous in sublimity, Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood eye, Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood! S. T. COLERIDGE. In the land of his birth, by those who undervalue him the most, he is ranked as the second name in German literature; everywhere else he is ranked as the first. But he was something more than a great author, he was also in an eminent sense a great man, and his works are not more worthy of being studied for their force and originality, than his moral character is for its nobility and aspiring grandeur. DE QUINCEY. I went to see Schiller, from whom as from a precipice all strangers spring back. He is full of sharp cutting power, but without love.-RICHTER. See Schiller with heroic front Noble men and noble deeds were the good which nourished his great soul. G. H. LEWIS. |