Chapter VI: Part I: “these Three Hundred Years” (2)

Fair thy renown
In awful sages and in noble bards;
Soon as the light of dawning Science spread
Her orient ray, and waked the Muses’ song.

. . . . . .

For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakespeare thine and Nature’s boast?

_The Seasons: Summer._ 1727, ll. 1442-6,
1479-83, 1531-4, and 1563-6.

LEWIS THEOBALD, 1733

(1688-1744)

In how many points of light must we be obliged to gaze at this great poet! In how many branches of excellence to consider and admire him! Whether we view him on the side of art or nature, he ought equally to engage our attention; whether we respect the force and greatness of his genius, the extent of his knowledge and reading, the power and address with which he throws out and applies either nature or learning, there is ample scope both for our wonder and pleasure. If his diction and the clothing of his thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charmed with the richness and variety of his images and ideas! If his images and ideas steal into our souls, and strike upon our fancy, how much are they improved in price when we come to reflect with what propriety and justness they are applied to character. If we look into his characters, and how they are furnished and proportioned to the employment he cuts out for them, how are we taken up with the mastery of his portraits! What draughts of Nature! What variety of originals, and how differing each from the other! How are they dressed from the stores of his own luxurious imagination; without being the apes of mode, or borrowing from any foreign wardrobe! each of them are the standard of fashion for themselves: like gentlemen that are above the direction of their tailors, and can adorn themselves without the aid of imitation.

Preface to _The Works of Shakespeare, collated with
the Oldest Copies and corrected; with Notes,
Explanatory and Critical_. By Mr. Theobald.
1733, vol. i. pp. ii-iii.

JOSEPH WARTON, 1740

(1722-1800)

What are the lays of artful Addison,
Coldly correct, to Shakespeare’s warblings wild?
Whom on the winding Avon’s willow’d banks
Fair Fancy found, and bore the smiling babe
To a close cavern (still the shepherds show
The sacred place, whence with religious awe
They hear, returning from the field at eve,
Strange whisp’rings of sweet music through the air):
Here, as with honey gather’d from the rock
She fed the little prattler, and with songs
Oft sooth’d his wond’ring ears with deep delight.
On her soft lap he sat, and caught the sounds.

_The Enthusiast: or the Lover of Nature_, ll. 168-79.

WILLIAM COLLINS, 1743

(1721-1759)

Too nicely Jonson knew the critic’s part;
Nature in him was almost lost in art.
Of softer mould the gentle Fletcher came,
The next in order, as the next in name:
With pleas’d attention ’midst his scenes we find
Each glowing thought that warms the female mind;
Each melting sigh and every tender tear,
The lover’s wishes, and the virgin’s fear.
His every strain the smiles and graces own,
But stronger Shakespeare felt for man alone:
Drawn by his pen, our ruder passions stand
Th’ unrival’d picture of his early hand.

_Verses humbly address’d to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his
Edition of Shakespeare’s Works._ 1743, p. 7.

Hanmer’s edition of Shakespeare appeared in 1744. See p. 93.

SIR THOMAS HANMER, 1744

(1677-1746)

If that rich vein of sense which runs through the works of this author can be retrieved in every part and brought to appear in its true light, and if it may be hoped without presumption that this is here effected; they who love and admire him will receive a new pleasure, and all probably will be more ready to join in doing him justice, who does great honour to his country as a rare and perhaps singular genius: one who hath attained an high degree of perfection in those two great branches of poetry, tragedy and comedy, different as they are in their natures from each other; and who may be said without partiality to have equalled, if not excelled, in both kinds, the best writers of any age or century who have thought it glory enough to distinguish themselves in either.

Preface to _The Works of Shakespear. Carefully Revised
and Corrected by the former Editions, and Adorned
with Sculptures designed and executed by the best
hands._ Oxford, 1744, vol. i. pp. v-vi.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1747

(1709-1784)

When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes
First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;
Each change of many-coloured life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil’d after him in vain:
His powerful strokes presiding truth impress’d,
And unresisted passion storm’d the breast.

Prologue spoken by Mr. Garrick at the opening of
the Theatre in Drury Lane, 1747.

“Drinking tea one day at Garrick’s with Mr. Langton, he [Dr.
Johnson] was questioned if he was not somewhat of a heretic as
to Shakespeare; said Garrick, ‘I doubt he is a little of an
infidel.’—‘Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘I will stand by the lines I
have written on Shakespeare in my Prologue at the opening of
your Theatre.’ Mr. Langton suggested, that in the line

“‘And panting Time toil’d after him in vain,’

Johnson might have had in his eye the passage in the _Tempest_,
where Prospero says of Miranda:

“‘. . . She will outstrip all praise,
And make it halt behind her.’

Johnson said nothing. Garrick then ventured to observe, ‘I do
not think that the happiest line in the praise of Shakespeare.’
Johnson exclaimed (smiling), ‘Prosaical rogues! next time I
write, I’ll make both time and space pant.’”—Notes by Langton
in Boswell’s _Life of Dr. Johnson_.

BISHOP WILLIAM WARBURTON, 1747.

(1698-1779)

Of all the literary exercitations of speculative men, whether designed for the use or entertainment of the world, there are none of so much importance, or what are more our immediate concern, than those which let us into the knowledge of our nature. Others may exercise the reason or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart, and form the human mind to wisdom. Now, in this science, our Shakespeare is confessed to occupy the foremost place; whether we consider the amazing sagacity with which he investigates every hidden spring and wheel of human action; or his happy manner of communicating this knowledge, in the just and living paintings which he has given us of all our passions, appetites, and pursuits. These afford a lesson which can never be too often repeated, or too constantly inculcated.

Preface to _The Works of Shakespear. The genuine Text
(collated with all the former Editions and then
corrected and emended) is here settled. Being
restored from the Blunders of the first Editors,
and the Interpolations of the two last. With a
Comment and Notes, Critical and Explanatory._
By Mr. Pope and Mr. Warburton. 1747, vol. i. p.
xxiv.

CHRISTOPHER SMART, 1751

(1722-1771)

Methinks I see with fancy’s magic eye,
The shade of Shakespeare, in yon azure sky.
On yon high cloud behold the bard advance,
Piercing all nature with a single glance:
In various attitudes around him stand
The passions, waiting for his dread command.
First kneeling Love before his feet appears,
And, musically sighing, melts in tears.
Near him fell Jealousy with fury burns,
And into storms the amorous breathings turns;
Then Hope, with heavenward look, and Joy draw near,
While palsied Terror trembles in the rear.

Prologue to _Othello_, as it was acted at the
Theatre Royal in Drury Lane on Thursday
the 7th of March 1751 by Persons of
Distinction for their Diversion. Ll.
21-32.

DAVID HUME, 1754.

(1711-1774)

If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN, born in a rude age, and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction, either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy. If represented as a POET, capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions, we regret, that many irregularities, and even absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionate scenes intermixed with them; and at the same time, we perhaps admire the more those beauties, on account of their being surrounded with such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a single character, he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions as well as descriptions abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse, than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to the irradiations of genius. A great and fertile genius he certainly possessed, and one enriched equally with a tragic and comic vein; but he ought to be cited as a proof, how dangerous it is to rely on these advantages alone for attaining an excellence in the finer arts. And there may even remain a suspicion, that we over-rate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic, on account of their being disproportioned and misshapen. He died in 1616, aged fifty-three years.

Jonson possessed all the learning which was wanting to Shakespeare, and wanted all the genius of which the other was possessed. Both of them were equally deficient in taste and elegance, in harmony and correctness. A servile copyist of the ancients, Jonson translated into bad English the beautiful passages of the Greek and Roman authors, without accommodating to the manners of his age and country. His merit has been totally eclipsed by that of Shakespeare, whose rude genius prevailed over the rude art of his contemporary. The English theatre has ever since taken a strong tincture of Shakespeare’s spirit and character; and thence it has proceeded, that the nation has undergone from all its neighbours the reproach of barbarism, from which its valuable productions in some parts of learning would otherwise have exempted it.

_Appendix to the Reign of James I. History of
England from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar
to the Revolution in 1688._ 1754.

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD, 1756

(1717-1797)

John and I are just going to Garrick’s with a grove of cypresses in our hands, like the Kentish men at the Conquest. He has built a temple to his master Shakespeare, and I am going to adorn the outside, since his modesty would not let me decorate it within, as I proposed, with these mottoes:

_Quod spiro et placeo, si placeo, tuum est._

That I spirit have and nature,
That sense breathes in ev’ry feature,
That I please, if please I do,—
Shakespeare,—all I owe to you.

Letter to George Montagu, 14 Oct. 1756.
_Letters_, ed. Peter Cunningham,
1857, vol. iii. p. 36.

JOHN ARMSTRONG, 1758

(1709-1779)

Shakespeare, who I will venture to say had the most musical ear of all the English poets, is abundantly irregular in his versification: but his wildest licences seldom hurt the ear; on the contrary, they give his verse a spirit and variety, which prevent its ever cloying. Our modern tragedy-writers, instead of using the advantages of their own languages, seem in general to imitate the monotony of the French versification: and the only licence they ever venture upon, is that poor tame one the supernumerary syllable at the end of a line; which they are apt to manage in such a manner as to give their verse a most ungraceful halt. But it is not want of ear alone which makes our common manufacturers of tragedy so insipidly solemn and so void of harmony: it is want of feeling.

“Of the Versification of English Tragedy.”
_Works_, 1770, ii. 164-5.

Shakespeare, indeed, without one perfect plan, has perhaps excelled all other dramatic poets as to detached scenes. But he was a wonder!—His deep knowledge of human nature, his prodigious variety of fancy and invention, and of characters drawn with the strongest, truest, and most exquisite strokes, oblige you to forget his most violent irregularities.

Of the Dramatic Unities, _ib._, p. 242.

WILLIAM MASON, 1759

(1724-1797)

How oft I cried, “Oh come, thou tragic queen!
March from thy Greece with firm majestic tread!
Such as when Athens saw thee fill her scene,
When Sophocles thy choral graces led:
Saw thy proud pall its purple length devolve;
Saw thee uplift the glittering dagger high;
Ponder with fixed brow thy deep resolve,
Prepar’d to strike, to triumph, and to die.
Bring then to Britain’s plain that choral throng;
Display thy buskin’d pomp, thy golden lyre;
Give her historic forms the soul of song,
And mingle Attic art with Shakespeare’s fire.”
“Ah, what, fond boy, dost thou presume to claim?”
The Muse replied, “mistaken suppliant, know,
To light in Shakespeare’s breast the dazzling flame
Exhausted all Parnassus could bestow.
True, art remains; and if from his bright page
Thy mimic power one vivid beam can seize,
Proceed; and in that best of tasks engage,
Which tends at once to profit, and to please.”

_Caractacus_, 1759.

THOMAS GRAY, 1759

(1716-1771)

Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap [_i.e._ Albion’s] was Nature’s darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon strayed,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: The dauntless child
Stretch’d forth his little arms, and smil’d.
This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:
Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of Joy;
Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.

_The Progress of Poesy. A Pindaric Ode_, 1759,
iii. 1.

DAVID MALLET, 1759

(1705?-1765)

Pride of his own, and wonder of this age,
Who first created, and yet rules, the Stage,
Bold to design, all powerful to express,
Shakespear each passion drew in every dress:
Great above rule, and imitating none;
Rich without borrowing, nature was his own.
Yet is his sense debas’d by gross alloy:
As gold in mines lies mix’d with dirt and clay.
Now, eagle-wing’d, his heavenward flight he takes;
The big stage thunders, and the soul awakes:
Now, low on earth, a kindred reptile creeps;
Sad Hamlet quibbles, and the hearer sleeps.

_Of Verbal Criticism_, ll. 47-58.
_Works_, 1759, vol. i. p. 21.

EDWARD YOUNG, 1759

(1683-1765)

Who knows whether Shakespeare might not have thought less, if he had read more? Who knows if he might not have laboured under the load of Jonson’s learning, as Enceladus under Ætna? His mighty genius, indeed, though the most mountainous oppression, would have breathed out some of his inextinguishable fire; yet possibly he might not have risen up into that giant, that much more than common man, at which we now gaze with amazement and delight. Perhaps he was as learned as his dramatic province required; for whatever other learning he wanted, he was master of two books unknown to many of the profoundly read, though books which the last conflagration alone can destroy: the book of Nature, and that of Man.

_Conjectures on Original Composition._ 1759.

MARK AKENSIDE, _c._ 1760

(1721-1770)

“_An Inscription._”

O youths and virgins: O declining eld:
O pale misfortune’s slaves: O ye who dwell
Unknown with humble quiet; ye who wait
In courts, or fill the golden seat of kings:
O sons of sport and pleasure: O thou wretch
That weep’st for jealous love, or the sore wounds
Of conscious guilt, or death’s rapacious hand
Which left thee void of hope: O ye who roam
In exile; ye who through th’ embattl’d field
Seek bright renown; or who for nobler palms
Contend, the leaders of a public cause;
Approach: behold this marble. Know ye not
The features? Hath not oft his faithful tongue
Told you the fashion of your own estate,
The secrets of your bosom? Here then round
His monument with reverence while ye stand,
Say to each other: “This was Shakespeare’s form;
Who walk’d in every path of human life,
Felt every passion; and to all mankind
Doth now, will ever, that experience yield
Which his own genius only could acquire.”

_Poetical Works._ 1805, ii. pp. 136-7.

ROBERT LLOYD, 1760

(1733-1764)

When Shakespeare leads the mind a dance,
From France to England, hence to France,
Talk not to me of time and place;
I own I’m happy in the chase.
Whether the drama’s here or there,
’Tis nature, Shakespeare, everywhere.
The poet’s fancy can create,
Contract, enlarge, annihilate,
Bring past and present close together,
In spite of distance, seas, or weather;
And shut up in a single action
What cost whole years in its transaction.
So, ladies at a play or rout,
Can flirt the universe about,
Whose geographical account
Is drawn and pictured on the mount:
Yet when they please, contract the plan,
And shut the world up in a fan.

_Shakespeare: An Epistle to Mr. Garrick._
1760, ll. 37-54.

See also Lloyd’s _Ode to Genius_, 1760, ll. 1-14.

EDWARD CAPELL, 1760

(1713-1781)

It is said of the ostrich, that she drops her egg at random, to be disposed of as chance pleases; either brought up to maturity by the sun’s kindly warmth, or else crushed by beasts and the feet of passers-by: such, at least, is the account which naturalists have given us of this extraordinary bird; and admitting it for a truth, she is in this a fit emblem of almost every great genius: they conceive and produce with ease those noble issues of human understanding; but incubation, the dull work of putting them correctly upon paper and afterwards publishing, is a task they cannot away with. If the original state of all such authors’ writings, even from Homer downward, could be inquired into and known, they would yield proof in abundance of the justness of what is here asserted: but the author now before us shall suffice for them all; being at once the greatest instance of genius in producing noble things, and of negligence in providing for them afterwards.

Preface to _Mr. William Shakespeare, his Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies set out by himself in
quarto or by the Players his Fellows in folio,
and now faithfully republished from those
Editions in ten volumes octavo; with an
Introduction, etc._ 1760, vol. i. pp. 1-2.

Of this preface Dr. Johnson remarked: “If the man would have
come to me, I would have endeavoured to endow his purpose with
words, for as it is, he doth gabble monstrously.”—Boswell’s
_Life of Dr. Johnson_, iii. 251, 2nd ed.

CHARLES CHURCHILL, 1761

(1731-1764)

In the first seat, in robe of various dyes,
A noble wildness flashing from his eyes,
Sat Shakespeare.—In one hand a wand he bore,
For mighty wonders fam’d in days of yore;
The other held a globe, which to his will
Obedient turn’d, and own’d the master’s skill:
Things of the noblest kind his genius drew,
And look’d through Nature at a single view:
A loose he gave to his unbounded soul,
And taught new lands to rise, new seas to roll;
Call’d into being scenes unknown before,
And, passing Nature’s bounds, was something more.

_The Rosciad_, 1761, l. 259.

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD, 1762

(1715-1785)

But chief avoid the boisterous roaring sparks,
The sons of fire!—you’ll know them by their marks.
Fond to be heard, they always court a crowd,
And, though ’tis borrow’d nonsense, talk it loud.
One epithet supplies their constant chime,
Damn’d bad, damn’d good, damn’d low, or damn’d sublime.
But most in quick short repartee they shine,
Of local humour; or from plays purloin
Each quaint stale scrap which every subject hits,
Till fools almost imagine, they are wits.
Hear them on Shakespeare! there they foam, they rage!
Yet taste not half the beauties of his page,
Nor see that art, as well as nature strove,
To place him foremost in th’ Aonian grove.
For there, there only, where the sisters join,
His genius triumphs, and the work’s divine.
Or would ye sift more near these sons of fire,
’Tis Garrick, and not Shakespeare, they admire,
Without his breath, inspiring every thought,
They ne’er perhaps had known what Shakespeare wrote;
Without his eager, his becoming zeal,
To teach them, though they scarce know why, to feel,
A crude unmeaning mass had Jonson been,
And a dead letter Shakespeare’s noblest scene.

_A Charge to the Poets._ 1762, ll. 167-190.

WILLIAM THOMPSON, 1763

(1712?-1766?)

“_In Shakespeare’s Walk._”

By yon hills, with morning spread,
Lifting up the tufted head,
By those golden waves of corn,
Which the laughing fields adorn,
By the fragrant breath of flowers,
Stealing from the woodbine bowers,
By this thought-inspiring shade,
By the gleamings of the glade,
By the babblings of the brook,
Winding slow in many a crook,
By the rustling of the trees,
By the humming of the bees,
By the woodlark, by the thrush,
Wildly warbling from the bush,
By the fairy’s shadowy tread
O’er the cowslip’s dewy head,
Father, monarch of the stage,
Glory of Eliza’s age,
Shakespeare! deign to lend thy face,
This romantic nook to grace,
Where untaught nature sports alone,
Since thou and nature are but one.

_Garden Inscriptions. Poetical Calendar, 1763._
First reprinted in Anderson’s _Poets of
Great Britain_, 1794, vol. x. p. 993.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1765

(1709-1784)

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.

Preface to Shakespeare’s _Works_. 1765.

In _The Rambler_, No. 156 (14 Sept. 1751), Johnson wrote:
“Instead of vindicating tragi-comedy by the success of
Shakespeare, we ought perhaps to pay new honours to that
transcendent and unbounded genius that could preside over the
passions in sport; who, to actuate the affections, needed
not the slow gradation of common means, but could fill the
heart with instantaneous jollity or sorrow, and vary our
disposition as he changed his scenes. Perhaps the effects even
of Shakespeare’s poetry might have been greater, had he not
counteracted himself; and we might have been more interested
in the distresses of his heroes, had we not been so frequently
diverted by the jokes of his buffoons.”

GEORGE KEATE, 1768

(1729-1797)

Yes! jealous wits may still for empire strive,
Still keep the flames of critick rage alive:
Our Shakespeare yet shall all his rights maintain,
And crown the triumphs of Eliza’s reign,
Above control, above each classick rule,
His tutress Nature, and the World his school.
On daring pinions borne, to him was given
Th’ aerial range of Fancy’s brightest Heaven,
To bid rapt thought o’er noblest heights aspire,
And wake each passion with a Muse of Fire.
Revere his genius—to the dead be just,
And spare the laurels, that o’ershade the dust.
Low sleeps the bard, _in cold obstruction laid_,
Nor asks the chaplet from a rival’s head.
O’er the dear vault, Ambition’s utmost bound,
Unheard shall Fame her airy trumpet sound!
Unheard alike, nor grief nor transport raise,
Thy blast of censure, or thy note of praise!
As Raphael’s own creation grac’d his hearse,
And sham’d the pomp of ostentatious verse,
Shall Shakespeare’s honours by himself be paid,
And Nature perish ere his pictures fade.

_Ferney: An Epistle to Monsr. De Voltaire._ 1768.
_Poetical Works_, 1781, pp. 136-7.

_Raphael’s Own Creation_:—The TRANSFIGURATION, that
well-known picture of RAPHAEL, was carried before
his body to the grave, doing more real honour to his memory
than either his epitaph in the Pantheon, the famous distich
of CARDINAL BEMBO, or all the other adulatory verses
written on the same occasion.—KEATE.

DAVID GARRICK, 1769

(1717-1779)

“_Warwickshire._”

Ye _Warwickshire_ lads, and ye lasses,
See what at our Jubilee passes;
Come revel away, rejoice and be glad;
For the lad of all lads, was a _Warwickshire_ lad,
_Warwickshire_ lad,
All be glad;
For the lad of all lads, was a _Warwickshire_ lad.

Be proud of the charms of your county,
Where Nature has lavish’d her bounty;
Where much she has giv’n, and some to be spar’d;
For the bard of all bards, was a _Warwickshire_ bard,
_Warwickshire_ bard,
Never pair’d;
For the bard of all bards, was a _Warwickshire_ bard.

Each shire has its different pleasures,
Each shire has its different treasures;
But to rare _Warwickshire_, all must submit;
For the wit of all wits, was a _Warwickshire_ wit,
_Warwickshire_ wit,
How he writ!
For the wit of all wits, was a _Warwickshire_ wit.

Old Ben, Thomas Otway, John Dryden,
And half a score more we take pride in;
Of famous Will Congreve, we boast too the skill;
But the Will of all Wills, was _Warwickshire_ Will,
_Warwickshire_ Will,
Matchless still;
For the Will of all Wills, was a _Warwickshire_ Will.

Our Shakespeare compar’d is to no man—
Nor Frenchman, nor Grecian, nor Roman;
Their swans are all geese, to the Avon’s sweet swan;
And the man of all men, was a _Warwickshire_ man,
_Warwickshire_ man,
Avon’s swan;
And the man of all men, was a _Warwickshire_ man.

As ven’son is very inviting,
To steal it our bard took delight in.
To make his friends merry he never was lag;
And the wag of all wags, was a _Warwickshire_ wag,
_Warwickshire_ wag,
Ever brag;
For the wag of all wags, was a _Warwickshire_ wag.

There never was seen such a creature,
Of all she was worth, he robbed Nature;
He took all her smiles, and he took all her grief;
And the thief of all thieves, was a _Warwickshire_ thief.
_Warwickshire_ thief,
He’s the chief;
For the thief of all thieves, was a _Warwickshire_ chief.

“Warwickshire: a Song.” _Shakespeare’s Garland.
Being a Collection of New Songs, Ballads,
Roundelays, Catches, Glees, Comic
Serenades, etc., performed at the Jubilee
at Stratford-upon-Avon._ 1769, p. 2.

ANONYMOUS, 1769

“_To the Immortal Memory of Shakespeare._”

Immortal be his name,
His memory, his fame!
Nature and her works we see,
Matchless Shakespeare, full in thee!
Join’d by everlasting ties,
Shakespeare but with Nature dies.
Immortal be his Name,
His memory, his fame!

_Shakespeare’s Garland. Being a Collection of New
Songs, Ballads, etc., performed at the
Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon._ 1769, p. 15.

WILLIAM RICHARDSON, 1774

(1743-1814)

No writer has hitherto appeared who possesses in a more eminent degree than Shakespeare, the power of imitating the passions. All of them seem familiar to him; the boisterous no less than the gentle; the benign no less than the malignant. There are several writers, as there are many players, who are successful in imitating some particular passions, but who appear stiff, awkward, and unnatural, in the expression of others. Some are capable of exhibiting very striking representations of resolute and intrepid natures, but cannot so easily bend themselves to those that are softer and more complacent. Others, again, seem full of amiable affection and tenderness, but cannot exalt themselves to the boldness of the hero, or magnanimity of the patriot. The genius of Shakespeare is unlimited. Possessing extreme sensibility, and uncommonly susceptible, he is the Proteus of the drama; he changes himself into every character, and enters easily into every condition of human nature.

* * * * *

Many dramatic writers of different ages are capable, occasionally, of breaking out, with great fervour of genius, in the natural language of strong emotion. No writer of antiquity is more distinguished for abilities of this kind than Euripides. His whole heart and soul seem torn and agitated by the force of the passion he imitates. He ceases to be Euripides; he is Medea; he is Orestes. Shakespeare, however, is most eminently distinguished, not only by these occasional sallies, but by imitating the passion in all its aspects, by pursuing it through all its windings and labyrinths, by moderating or accelerating its impetuosity according to the influence of other principles and of external events, and finally by combining it in a judicious manner with other passions and propensities, or by setting it aptly in opposition. He thus unites the two essential powers of dramatic invention, that of forming characters; and that of imitating in their natural expressions, the passions and affections of which they are composed.

_A Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of
Shakespeare’s remarkable Characters._ 1774.
Introduction, pp. 39-42.

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE, 1775

(1735-1788)

When Heaven decreed to soothe the feuds that tore
The wolf-eyed barons, whose unletter’d rage
Spurn’d the fair muse, Heaven bade on Avon’s shore
A Shakespeare rise, and soothe the barbarous age:
A Shakespeare rose; the barbarous heats assuage.
At distance due how many bards attend!
Enlarged and liberal from the narrow cage
Of blinded zeal, new manners wide extend,
And o’er the generous breast the dews of heaven descend.

Introduction to _The Lusiad, or the Discovery of
India. An Epic Poem._ Translated, 1775.

WILLIAM HAYLEY, 1777

(1745-1820)

When mighty Shakespeare to thy judging eye
Presents that magic glass whose ample round
Reflects each figure in Creation’s bound,
And pours, in floods of supernatural light,
Fancy’s bright beings on the charmed sight,
This chief enchanter of the willing breast
Will teach thee all the magic he possessed.
Placed in his circle, mark in colours true
Each brilliant being that he calls to view:
Wrapt in the gloomy storm, or robed in light,
His weird sister or his fairy sprite.
Boldly o’erleaping, in the great design,
The bounds of nature, with a guide divine.

_A Poetic Epistle to an Eminent Painter_ [George
Romney]. 2nd edition, 1779. Part II. ll.
472-84.

THOMAS WARTON, 1777

(1728-1790)

Avon, thy rural view, thy pastures wild,
The willows that o’erhang thy twilight edge,
Their boughs entangling with the embattled sedge;
Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fring’d,
Thy surface with reflected verdure ting’d;
Soothe me with many a pensive pleasure mild.
But while I muse, that here the bard divine,
Whose sacred dust yon high arch’d aisles enclose,
Where the tall windows rise in stately rows
Above the embowering shade,
Here first, at Fancy’s fairy-circled shrine,
Of daisies pied his infant offering made;
Here playful yet, in stripling years unripe,
Fram’d of thy reeds a shrill and artless pipe:
Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of some magic wand;
An holy trance my charmed spirit wings,
And awful shapes of warriors and of kings
People the busy mead,
Like spectres swarming to the wizard’s hall;
And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-cover’d with the purple pall.
Before me Pity seems to stand
A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore,
To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood
His robe, with regal woes embroider’d o’er.
Pale Terror leads the visionary band,
And sternly shakes his sceptre dropping blood.

“Monody written near Stratford-upon-Avon.”
_Miscellaneous Odes._ 1777.

ANNA SEWARD, BEFORE 1782

(1747-1809)

“_On Shakespeare’s Monument at Stratford-upon-Avon._”

Great Homer’s birth sev’n rival cities claim,
Too mighty such monopoly of Fame;
Yet not to birth alone did Homer owe
His wondrous worth; what Egypt could bestow,
With all the schools of Greece and Asia join’d,
Enlarg’d th’ immense expansion of his mind.
Nor yet unrival’d the Mæonian strain,
The British Eagle and the Mantuan Swan
Tow’r equal heights. But happier Stratford, thou
With incontested laurels deck thy brow:
Thy bard was thine _unschool’d_, and from thee brought
More than all Egypt, Greece, or Asia taught.
Not Homer’s self such matchless honours won;
The Greek has rivals, but thy Shakespeare none.

Dodsley’s _Collection of Poems by Several Hands_.
1782, ii. p. 315.

“The British Eagle,” _i.e._ Milton.

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES, 1794

(1762-1850)

“_On Shakespeare._”

O sovereign master, who with lovely state
Dost rule as in some isle’s enchanted land,
On whom soft airs and shadowy spirits wait,
Whilst scenes of faerie bloom at thy command!
On thy wild shores forgetful could I lie,
And list, till earth dissolved, to thy sweet minstrelsy!

Called by thy magic from the hoary deep,
Aërial forms should in bright troops ascend,
And then a wondrous masque before me sweep;
While sounds _that the earth owned not_, seem to blend
Their stealing melodies, that when the strain
Ceased, _I should weep, and would so dream again_!

The charm is wound: I see an aged form,
In white robes, on the winding sea-shore stand;
O’er the careering surge he waves his wand:
Upon the black rock bursts the bidden storm.
Now from bright opening clouds I hear a lay,
_Come to these yellow sands, fair stranger, come away_.

Saw ye pass by the weird sisters pale?
Marked ye the lowering castle on the heath?
Hark! hark! is the deed done? the deed of death!
The deed is done—hail, king of Scotland, hail!
I see no more;—to many a fearful sound
The bloody cauldron sinks, and all is dark around.

Pity! touch the trembling strings,
A maid, a beauteous maniac, wildly sings:
“They laid him in the ground so cold,
Upon his breast the earth is thrown;
High is heaped the grassy mould,
_Oh! he is dead and gone_.
The winds of the winter blow o’er his cold breast,
But pleasant shall be his rest.”

The song is ceased. Ah! who, pale shade, art thou,
Sad raving to the rude tempestuous night?
Sure thou hast had much wrong, so stern thy brow;
So piteous thou dost tear thy tresses white;
So wildly thou dost cry, “_Blow, bitter wind,
Ye elements, I call not _you_ unkind_.”

Beneath the shade of nodding branches grey,
And rude romantic woods, and glens forlorn,
The merry hunters wear the hours away;
Rings the deep forest to the joyous horn!
Joyous to all, but him who with sad look
Hangs idly musing by the brawling brook.

But mark the merry elves of fairy land!
To the high moon’s gleamy glance,
They with shadowy morris dance;
Soft music dies along the desert sand;
Soon at peep of cold-eyed day
Soon the numerous lights decay;
Merrily, now merrily,
After the dewy moon they fly.

Let rosy laughter now advance,
And wit with sparkling eye,
Where quaint powers lurking lie
Bright fancy, the queen of the revels, shall dance,
And point to the frolicsome train
And antic forms that flit unnumbered o’er the plain.

O sovereign master! at whose sole command
We start with terror, or with pity weep;
O! where is now thy all-creating wand?
Buried ten thousand fathoms in the deep.
The staff is broke, the powerful spell is fled,
And never earthly guest shall in thy circle tread.

_Sonnets, with other Poems._ 3rd edition.
1794, pp. 67-70.

This poem appears in later editions of Bowle’s sonnets in a
different form. Stanza 9 is omitted, and the remaining stanzas
are arranged thus: 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 3, 4, 5, 10:

“Come to these yellow sands.” Ferdinand. See _The Tempest_.

“The weird sisters.” See _Macbeth_.

“A beauteous maniac.” Ophelia. See _Hamlet_.

“Blow, bitter wind.” See _King Lear_.

“Him, who with sad look.” Jacques. See _As You Like It_.

“Elves of fairy land.” See _Midsummer Night’s Dream_.

THE THIRD PERIOD

NINETEENTH CENTURY

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1802

(1770-1850)

It is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed “with pomp of waters unwithstood,”
Roused though it be full often to a mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands,
That this most famous stream in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of Earth’s first blood, have titles manifold.

“Sonnets dedicated to Liberty.” _Poems._ 1807.

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, 1804

(1793-1835)

“_Shakespeare._”

I love to rove o’er history’s page,
Recall the hero and the sage;
Revive the actions of the dead,
And memory of ages fled:
Yet it yields me greater pleasure
To read the poet’s pleasing measure.
Led by Shakespeare, bard inspired,
The bosom’s energies are fired;
We learn to shed the generous tear
O’er poor Ophelia’s sacred bier;
To love the merry moonlit scene,
With fairy elves in valleys green;
Or borne on fancy’s heavenly wings,
To listen while sweet Ariel sings.
How sweet the native wood notes wild
Of him, the Muse’s favourite child!
Of him whose magic lays impart
Each various feeling to the heart.

_Poems._ By Felicia Dorothea Browne, 1808, p. 48.

One of Mrs. Hemans’ earliest tastes—relates her sister in her
_Memoirs_—was a passion for Shakespeare, which she read as her
choicest recreation at six years old. The above lines were
written when she was eleven years of age.

SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1814

(1771-1832)

The English stage might be considered as equally without rule and without model when Shakespeare arose. The effect of the genius of an individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty; but that genius, in its turn, is formed according to the opinions prevalent at the period when it comes into existence. Such was the case with Shakespeare. With an education more extensive, and a taste refined by the classical models, it is probable that he also, in admiration of the ancient drama, might have mistaken the form for the essence, and subscribed to those rules which had produced such masterpieces of art. Fortunately for the full exertion of a genius as comprehensive and versatile, as intense and powerful, Shakespeare had no access to any models of which the commanding merit might have controlled and limited his own exertions. He followed the path which a nameless crowd of obscure writers had trodden before him; but he moved in it with the grace and majestic step of a being of a superior order, and vindicated for ever the British theatre from a pedantic restriction to classical rule. Nothing went before Shakespeare which in any respect was fit to fix and stamp the character of a national drama; and certainly no one will succeed him, capable of establishing by mere authority, a form more restricted than that which Shakespeare used.

Article on “Drama,” _Encyclopædia Britannica_.
4th ed. 1814. 6th ed. vol. viii. p. 157.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 1817

(1772-1834)

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare’s POEMS, the creative power, and the intellectual energy, wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length in the DRAMA they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or, like two rapid streams, that at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in tumult; but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend, and dilate, and flow on in one current and with one voice. The “Venus and Adonis” did not, perhaps, allow the display of the deeper passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand their intensest workings. And yet we find in _Shakespeare’s_ management of the tale, neither pathos, nor any other _dramatic_ quality. There is the same minute and faithful imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties; and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection; and, lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often _domination_, over the whole world of language. What then shall we say? even this: that—

Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power, which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, to one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, in the unity of his own IDEAL. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of MILTON; while SHAKESPEARE becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself. O what great men hast thou not produced, England! my country!

_Biographia Literaria._ 1817, chap. xv.

The following is from Coleridge’s _Literary Remains_, ed.
Henry Nelson Coleridge, 1867, ii. pp. 68-69:—I greatly dislike
beauties and selections in general; but as proof positive of
his unrivalled excellence, I should like to try Shakespeare
by this criterion. Make out your amplest catalogue of all the
human faculties, as reason or the moral law, the will, the
feeling of the coincidence of the two (a feeling _sui generis
et demonstratio demonstrationum_) called the conscience,
the understanding or prudence, wit, fancy, imagination,
judgment,—and then of the objects on which these are to be
employed, as the beauties, the terrors, and the seeming
caprices of nature, the realities and the capabilities, that
is, the actual and the ideal, of the human mind, conceived
as an individual or as a social being, as in innocence or in
guilt, in a play-paradise, or in a war-field of temptation;
and then compare with Shakespeare under each of these heads
all or any of the writers in prose and verse that have ever
lived! Who, that is competent to judge, doubts the result? And
ask your own hearts,—ask your own common-sense—to conceive the
possibility of this man being—I say not, the drunken savage
of that wretched sciolist, whom Frenchmen, to their shame,
have honoured before their elder and better worthies,—but
the anomalous, the wild, the irregular, genius of our daily
criticism! What! are we to have miracles in sport? Or, I speak
reverently, does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine
truths to man?

For a passage on Shakespeare as a “philosophical aristocrat”
who “never promulgates any party tenets,” see “Notes on the
_Tempest_.”

FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY, 1817

(1773-1850)

More full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists that ever existed—he [Shakespeare] is more wild, airy and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world:—and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason—nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance, and unequalled perfection—but everything so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets—but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator.

_The Edinburgh Review_, August 1817. Art. IX.
“Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, by
William Hazlitt.” Vol. xxviii. p. 474.

WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1818

(1778-1830)

The striking peculiarity of Shakespeare’s mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds—so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had “a mind reflecting ages past,” and present:—All the people that ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons with him. His genius alone shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar: “All corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,” are hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives—as well those that they knew, as those which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding. Harmless fairies nodded to him, and did him curtesies: and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of “his so potent art.” The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and women: and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as of the other; for if the preternatural characters he describes could be supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them. He had only to think of any thing in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same objects, “subject to the same skyey influences,” the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which would occur in reality.

“On Shakespeare and Milton,” _Lectures on The
English Poets_. 1818, pp. 91-3.

For a comment on this passage by William Minto, see p. 189.

* * * * *

The following occurs in Hazlitt’s essay “On Dryden and Pope”
(_ib._, pp. 137-38):—The poet of nature is one who, from
the elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his own
breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and
impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate
appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all men; so
that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony
of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul
of nature; to be identified with and to foreknow and to record
the feelings of all men at all times and places, as they are
liable to the same impressions; and to exert the same power
over the minds of his readers, that nature does. He sees things
in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are; he feels
them in their universal interest, for he feels them as they
affect the first principles of his and our common nature. Such
was Homer, such was Shakespeare, whose works will last as long
as nature, because they are a copy of the indestructible forms
and everlasting impulses of nature, welling out from the bosom
as from a perennial spring, or stamped upon the senses by the
hand of their maker. The power of the imagination in them, is
the representative power of all nature. It has its centre in
the human soul, and makes the circuit of the universe.

See also _The Round Table_, 1817—“On Posthumous Fame—whether
Shakespeare was influenced by a love of it.”

JOHN KEATS, _c._ 1818

(1795-1821)

The genius of Shakespeare was an innate universality—wherefore he had the utmost achievement of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze. He could do easily Man’s utmost. His plans of tasks to come were not of this world—if what he purposed to do hereafter would not in his own Idea “answer the aim,” how tremendous must have been his Conception of Ultimates!

_Note on Troilus and Cressida_, I. iii. Marginalia
from the Shakespeare Folio of 1808. (_Works_,
ed. H. Buxton Forman. 1901, iii. p. 254.)

_c._ 1818

“_Sonnet on sitting down to read KING LEAR once again._”

O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute!
Fair-plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!
Leave melodising on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit:
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme!
When through the old oak Forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phœnix wings to fly at my desire.

_Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats_,
edited by Richard Monckton Milnes. Vol. i. p.
96.

JOHN WILSON, 1819

(1785-1854)

Shakespeare is of no age. He speaks a language which thrills in our blood in spite of the separation of two hundred years. His thoughts, passions, feelings, strains of fancy, all are of this day, as they were of his own—and his genius may be contemporary with the mind of every generation for a thousand years to come. He, above all poets, looked upon man, and lived for mankind. His genius, universal in intellect, could find, in no more bounded circumference, its proper sphere. It could not bear exclusion from any part of human existence. Whatever in nature and life was given to man, was given in contemplation and poetry to him also, and over the undimmed mirror of his mind passed all the shadows of our mortal world. Look through his plays and tell what form of existence, what quality of spirit, he is most skilful to delineate. Which of all the manifold beings he has drawn, lives before our thoughts, our eyes, in most unpictured reality? Is it Othello, Shylock, Falstaff, Lear, the wife of Macbeth, Imogen, Hamlet, Ariel? In none of the other great dramatists do we see anything like a perfected art. In their works, everything, it is true, exists in some shape or other, which can be required in a drama taking for its interest the absolute interest of human life and nature; but, after all, may not the very best of their works be looked on as sublime masses of chaotic confusion, through which the elements of our moral being appear? It was Shakespeare, the most unlearned of all our writers, who first exhibited on the stage perfect models, perfect images of all human characters, and all human events. We cannot conceive any skill that could from his great characters remove any defect, or add to their perfect composition. Except in him, we look in vain for the entire fulness, the self-consistency, and self-completeness of perfect art.

“A few words on Shakespeare, May 1819.” _Essays
Critical and Imaginative._ 1866, vol. iii.
pp. 420-21.

CHARLES SPRAGUE, 1824

(1791-1875)

Who now shall grace the glowing throne,
Where, all unrivall’d, all alone,
Bold Shakespeare sat, and look’d creation through,
The minstrel monarch of the worlds he drew?

That throne is cold—that lyre in death unstrung,
On whose proud note delighted Wonder hung.
Yet old Oblivion, as in wrath he sweeps,
One spot shall spare—the grave where Shakespeare sleeps.
Rulers and ruled in common gloom may lie,
But Nature’s laureate bards shall never die.
Art’s chisell’d boast and glory’s trophied shore
Must live in numbers or can live no more.
While sculptured Jove some nameless waste may claim,
Still roars the Olympic car in Pindar’s fame:
Troy’s doubtful walls, in ashes pass’d away,
Yet frown on Greece in Homer’s deathless lay;
Rome, slowly sinking in her crumbling fanes,
Stands all immortal in her Maro’s strains;
So, too, yon giant empress of the isles,
On whose broad sway the sun for ever smiles,
To Time’s unsparing rage one day must bend,
And all her triumphs in her Shakespeare end!