Shakespeare “glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.” All Nature ministers to him, as gladly as a mother to her child. Whether he wishes her to tune her myriad-voiced organ to Romeo’s love, or to Miranda’s innocence, or to Perdita’s simplicity, or to Rosalind’s playfulness, or to the sports of the Fairies, or to Timon’s misanthropy, or to Macbeth’s desolating ambition, or to Lear’s heart-broken frenzy—he has only to ask, and she puts on every feeling and every passion with which he desires to invest her.
No poet comes near Shakespeare in the number of bosom lines,—of lines that we may cherish in our bosoms, and that seem almost as if they had grown there,—of lines that, like bosom friends, are ever at hand to comfort, counsel, and gladden us, under all the vicissitudes of life,—of lines that, according to Bacon’s expression, “come home to our business and bosoms,” and open the door for us to look in, and see what is nestling and brooding there.
Guesses at Truth. 1827.
JAMES HOGG, 1831
(1770-1835)
“To the Genius of Shakespeare.”
Spirit all limitless,
Where is thy dwelling-place?
Spirit of him whose high name we revere,