Which works by magick supernatural things:
But Shakespeare’s pow’r is sacred as a king’s.
Those legends from old priesthood were receiv’d,
And he then writ, as people then believed.
Prologue to the Tempest or the Enchanted Island, by Sir William D’Avenant and John Dryden. 1676.
See also Dryden’s Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, spoken by Mr. Betterton representing the Ghost of Shakespeare.
1668
To begin, then, with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,
Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cupressi.
Of Dramatic Poesie, an Essay, 1668, p. 47.