SHELLEY. To NE word is too often profaned One feeling too falsely disdained One hope is too like despair And pity from thee more dear I can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above The desire of the moth for the star, HE relations between society and a keenlysensitive and delicately-fibred man must always be peculiar. For Shelley's justification there is needed an active effort of moral sympathy, a fire of charity, a boldness of love which few of us dare to offer. His is one of those natures which require to be judged by a more lenient code than is written in the statute-book, and society cannot be blamed if it decline to recognise exceptional cases. SHIRLEY. His youth, and resemblance to Southey, particularly in his voice, raised a pleasing impression, which was not altogether destroyed by his conversation, though it was vehement, arrogant and intolerant. H. CRABB ROBINSON. Let who will denounce Shelley, I will not. I will not brand with Atheism the name of one whose life was one dream of enthusiastic, however impracticable, philanthropy. I will not say that a man who by his opposition to God, means opposition to a demon to whom the name of God is appended, is an enemy to God. F. W. ROBERTSON. Shelley was a being absolutely without selfish ness. TRELAWNEY. EDMUND SPENSER. WEET is the rose, but growes upon a brere; Sweet is the firbloome, but his braunches rough; Sweet is the cyprese, but his rynd is tough ; Sweet is the broome flowre, but yet sowre enough; And sweet is moly, but his root is ill; So, every sweet, with soure is tempred still, That maketh it be coveted the more: For easie things that may be got at will E trace in Spenser a mind constitutionally tender, delicate, and, in comparison with his three great compeers, I had almost said effeminate, and this, additionally saddened by the unjust persecution of Burleigh, and the severe calamities which overwhelmed his latter days. But nowhere in his strains do we find the least trace of irritability, and still less of quarrelsome or affected contempt of his censurers. S. T. COLERIDGE. The gentle Spenser, Fancy's pleasing son; THOMSON. His is still the third name in the poetical literature of our country, nor has it been surpassed except by Dante, in any other. HALLAM. In description he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterise the very greatest poets, but we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, or a finer flush in the colours of language than in this Rubens of English poetry. CAMPBELL. The creations of Spenser have all of them a sunshine of their own, whose flush could only have been born of a soul that was all poetry. G. G. CUNNINGHAM. ROBERT BURNS. HE gloomy night is gath'ring fast, I see it driving o'er the plain; That heart transpierced with many a wound, Farewell! my friends! Farewell my foes! |