To thrill, to rouse, to animate the breast?
Like Shakespeare o’er the sacred mind to sway,
And call each wayward passion to obey?
F. D. Hemans (1793-1835). “England and Spain,” 1807.
Our love of Shakespeare, therefore, is not a monomania or solitary and unaccountable infatuation; but is merely the natural love which all men bear to those forms of excellence that are accommodated to their peculiar character, temperament, and situation; and which will always return, and assert its power over their affections, long after authority has lost its reverence, fashions been antiquated, and artificial tastes passed away.
Francis Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850). Edinburgh Review, Aug. 1811, vol. xviii. p. 285.
Shakespeare had the inward clothing of a fine mind; the outward covering of solid reading, of critical observation, and the richest eloquence; and compared with these, what are the trappings of the schools?
George Dyer (1755-1841). “The Relation of Poetry to the Arts and Sciences,” in The Reflector, 1811. Reprinted in Poetics, 1812, ii. p. 19.