“Whom at heaven’s golden threshold,
Within the halls of lofty Jove omnipotent
Phœbus doth place, and to them clearly shows
The intercourses of ethereal companies.
Both holy prophets and the care of gods
Are poets named; and those there are who think
That they possess the force of power divine.”
In vigorous prose Le Bey declares “their home of glory is the world itself, and for them honour without death abides.” Then personally to his friend Poppæus he says,—
“Onward, and things not to be feared fear not thou, who speakest nothing little or of humble measure, nothing mortal. While the pure priest of the Muses and of Phœbus with no weak nor unpractised wing through the liquid air as prophet stretches to the lofty regions of the clouds. Onward, and let father Phœbus himself bear thee to heaven.”
Now by the side of Le Bey’s laudatory sentences, may be placed the Poet’s glory as sung in the Midsummer Night’s Dream (act v. sc. 1, l. 12, vol. ii. p. 258),—