’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
Sonnet LV.
THE FIRST PERIOD
SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
FRANCIS MERES, 1596
(1565-1647)
As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his “Venus and Adonis,” his “Lucrece,” his sugared sonnets among his private friends, etc.