And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o’er-dusted.’
Troilus and Cressida.
[5]. ‘To begin then with Shakspeare: 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 every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, and 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 Viburna Cupressi.’
[6]. Written in the Fleet Prison.
[7]. Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post which stood in the court-yard before the house where he was brought up.
[8]. Burns.—These lines are taken from the introduction to Mr. Wordsworth’s poem of the Leech-gatherer.
[9]. Sonnet on Sherwood Forest, by J. H. Reynolds, Esq.
[10]. There is the same idea in Blair’s Grave.