How welcome—after gong and cymbal’s din—
The continuity, the long slow slope
And vast curves of the gradual violin!
William Watson (b. 1858). Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature, 1884, vii.
Shakespeare illustrates every phase and variety of humour: a complete analysis of Shakespeare’s humour would make a system of psychology.
G. Moulton (b. 1849). Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 1893, p. 285.
From Shakespeare, no doubt, the world may learn, and has learnt, much; yet he professed so little to be a teacher, that he has often been represented as almost without personal opinions, as a mere undisturbed mirror, in which all Nature reflects herself. Something like a century passed before it was perceived that his works deserved to be in a serious sense studied.
J. R. Seeley (1834-1895). Goethe reviewed after Sixty Years, 1894, p. 98.