Forest, and greenwood tree,
Here to solicit thee cease shall we never:
Yes, thou effulgence bright,
Here must thy flame relight,
Or vanish from Nature for ever and ever!
Songs. By the Ettrick Shepherd. Now first collected. 1831, p. 304.
CHARLES LAMB, 1833
(1775-1834)
I am jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery do me with Shakespeare?—to have Opie’s Shakespeare, Northcote’s Shakespeare, light-headed Fuseli’s Shakespeare, heavy-headed Romney’s Shakespeare, wooden-headed West’s Shakespeare (though he did the best in “Lear”), deaf-headed Reynolds’s Shakespeare, instead of my, and everybody’s Shakespeare. To be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen’s portrait! To confine the illimitable!
Letter to Samuel Rogers, December 21, 1833. Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Ed. E. V. Lucas, 1903-4. Vol. vii.