A little further, to make thee a room* ^note















:
Thou art a monument, without a tomb;
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;
I mean, with great but disproportion'd muses:
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee surely with thy peers;
And tell—how far thou didst our Lilly† ^note outshine,
Or sporting Kyd‡ ^note, or Marlow's mighty line§ ^note.

And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek,—
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thundring Æschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles, to us,
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead;
To live again, to hear thy buskin tread
And shake a stage: or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone; for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughty Rome,
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! thou hast one to show,
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time;
And all the muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines;
Which were so richly spun, and woven so sit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit:
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature's family.
Yet must I not give nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part:—
For, though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion: and that he,
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike a second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil; turn the same,
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame;
Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn,—
For a good poet's made, as well as born:

And such wert thou: Look, how the father's face
Lives in his issue; even so the race
Of Shakespeare's mind, and manners, brightly shines
In his well-torned and true-filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were,
To see thee in our waters yet appear;
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay; I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanc'd, and made a constellation there:—
Shine forth, thou star of poets; and with rage,
Or influence, chide, or cheer, the drooping stage;
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night,
And despairs day, but by thy volume's light! Ben Jonson* ^note

So lovely were the wounds, that men would say
They could endure the bleeding a whole day.
Shakespear, thou hadst as smooth a comic vein,
Fitting the sock, and in thy natural brain
As strong conception, and as clear a rage
As any one that traffick'd with the stage.
Shakespeare, that nimble Mercury thy braine
  Lulls many hundred Argus-eyes asleepe,
So sit for all thou fashionest thy vaine,
  At th' horse-foot fountaine thou hast drunk full deepe.
Vertue's or vice's theme to thee all one is;
  Who loves chaste life, there's Lucrece for a teacher:
Who list read lust, there's Venus and Adonis,
  The modell of a most lascivious leacher.
Besides, in plaies thy wit winds like Meander,
  When needy new composers borrow more
Than Terence doth from Plautus or Menander:
  But to praise thee aright, I want thy store.
Then let thine owne works thine owne worth upraise,
And help t'adorne thee with deserved baies. Epigram 92, in an ancient collection, entitled Run and a great Cast, 4to. by Tho. Freeman, 1614.
What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones;
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a live-long monument:

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalu'd book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulcher'd, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die. John Milton.
See, my lov'd Britons, see your Shakespeare rise,
An awful ghost, confess'd to human eyes!
Unnam'd, methinks, distinguish'd I had been
From other shades, by this eternal green,
About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive,
And with a touch their wither'd bays revive.
Untaught, unpractis'd, in a barbarous age,
I found not, but created first the stage:
And if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store,
'Twas, that my own abundance gave me more:
On foreign trade I needed not rely,
Like fruitful Britain rich without supply. Dryden's Prologue to his alteration of Troilus and Cressida.
Shakespeare, who (taught by none) did first impart
To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art:
He, monarch-like, gave those his subjects law,
And is that nature which they paint and draw.
Fletcher reach'd that which on his heights did grow,
Whilst Jonson crept and gather'd all below.
This did his love, and this his mirth digest:
One imitates him most, the other best.
If they have since out-writ all other men,
'Tis with the drops that fell from Shakespeare's pen. Dryden's Prologue to his Alteration of the Tempest.
Our Shakespeare wrote too in an age as blest,
The happiest poet of his time, and best;
A gracious prince's favour chear'd his muse,
A constant favour he ne'er fear'd to lose:

Therefore he wrote with fancy unconfin'd,
And thoughts that were immortal as his mind. Otway's Prologue to Caius Marius.
Shakespeare, whose genius to itself a law,
Could men in every height of nature draw. Rowe's Prologue to the Ambitious Stepmother.
Shakespeare (whom you and every play-house bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving slight,
And grew immortal in his own despight. Pope's Imitation of Horace's Epistle to Augustus.
Shakespeare, the genius of our isle, whose mind
(The universal mirror of mankind)
Express'd all images, enrich'd the stage,
But sometimes stoop'd to please a barb'rous age.
When his immortal bays began to grow,
Rude was the language, and the humour low.
He, like the god of day, was always bright;
But rolling in its course, his orb of light
Was sully'd and obscur'd, tho' soaring high,
With spots contracted from the nether sky.
But whither is th' advent'rous muse betray'd?
Forgive her rashness, venerable shade!
May spring with purple flow'rs perfume thy urn,
And Avon with his greens thy grave adorn:
Be all thy faults, whatever faults there be,
Imputed to the times, and not to thee! Fenton's Epistle to Southerne, 1711.
O youths and virgins: O declining eld:
O pale misfortune's slaves: O ye who dwell
Unknown with humble quiet; ye who wait
In courts, or fill the golden seat of kings:

O sons of sport and pleasure: O thou wretch
That weep'st for jealous love, or the sore wounds
Of conscious guilt, or death's rapacious hand
Which left thee void of hope: O ye who roam
In exile; ye who through the embattled field
Seek bright renown; or who for nobler palms
Contend, the leaders of a public cause;
Approach: behold this marble. Know ye not
The features? Hath not oft his faithful tongue
Told you the fashion of your own estate,
The secrets of your bosom? Here then, round
His monument with reverence while you stand,
Say to each other: “This was Shakespeare's form;
“Who walk'd in every path of human life,
“Felt every passion; and to all mankind
“Doth now, will ever that experience yield
“Which his own genius only could acquire.” Akinside.
&lblank; when lightening fires
The arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground,
When furious whirlwinds rend the howling air,
And ocean, groaning from his lowest bed,
Heaves his tempestuous billows to the sky;
Amid the general uproar, while below
The nations tremble, Shakespeare looks abroad
From some high cliff, superior, and enjoys
The elemental war.—
&lblank; For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakespeare thine and nature's boast? Thomson's Summer.
  When learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:

Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting time toil'd after him in vain:
His pow'rful strokes presiding truth impress'd,
And unresisted passion storm'd the breast. Prologue at the opening of Drury-Lane Theatre in 1747. By Dr. Samuel Johnson.
What are the lays of artful Addison,
Coldly correct, to Shakespeare's warblings wild?
Whom on the winding Avon's willow'd banks
Fair Fancy found, and bore the smiling babe
To a close cavern: (still the shepherds shew
The sacred place, whence with religious awe
They hear, returning from the field at eve,
Strange whisp'ring of sweet musick thro' the air)
Here, as with honey gathered from the rock,
She fed the little prattler, and with songs
Oft sooth'd his wond'ring ears, with deep delight
On her soft lap he sat, and caught the sounds. The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature, a Poem, by the Rev. Joseph Warton.
Here, boldly mark'd with every living hue,
Nature's unbounded portrait Shakespeare drew:
But chief, the dreadful groupe of human woes
The daring artist's tragic pencil chose;
Explor'd the pangs that rend the royal breast,
Those wounds that lurk beneath the tissued vest. Monody, written near Stratford upon Avon.
Avon, thy rural views, thy pastures wild,
The willows that o'erhang thy twilight edge,
Their boughs entangling with th' embattled sedge;
Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fring'd,
Thy surface with reflected verdure ting'd;
Sooth me with many a pensive pleasure mild.

But while I muse, that here the Bard Divine
Whose sacred dust yon high-arch'd isles inclose,
Where the tall windows rise in stately rows,
Above th' embowering shade,
Here first, at Fancy's fairy-circled shrine,
Of daisies pied his infant offering made;
Here playful yet, in stripling years unripe,
Fram'd of thy reeds a shrill and artless pipe:
Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of some magic wand;
An holy trance my charmed spirit wings,
And aweful shapes of leaders and of kings,
People the busy mead,
Like spectres swarming to the wisard's hall;
And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-cover'd by the purple pall.
Before me Pity seems to stand
A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore,
To see Misfortune rend in frantic mood
His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er.
Pale Terror leads the visionary band,
And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood. By the same.
  Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: The dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil'd.
This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:
Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;
Of horror that, and thrilling fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears. Gray's Ode on the Progress of Poesy.
Next Shakespeare sat, irregularly great,
And in his hand a magick rod did hold,
Which visionary beings did create,
And turn the foulest dross to purest gold:

Whatever spirits rove in earth or air,
Or bad, or good, obey his dread command;
To his behests these willingly repair,
Those aw'd by terrors of his magic wand,
The which not all their powers united might withstand. Lloyd's Progress of Envy, 1751.
  Oh, where's the bard, who at one view
Could look the whole creation through,
Who travers'd all the human heart,
Without recourse to Grecian art?
He scorn'd the rules of imitation,
Of altering, pilfering, and translation,
Nor painted horror, grief, or rage,
From models of a former age;
The bright original he took,
And tore the leaf from nature's book.
'Tis Shakespeare— Lloyd's Shakespeare, a Poem.
In the first seat, in robe of various dyes,
A noble wildness flashing from his eyes,
Sat Shakespeare.—In one hand a wand he bore,
For mighty wonders fam'd in days of yore;
The other held a globe, which to his will
Obedient turn'd, and own'd a master's skill:
Things of the noblest kind his genius drew,
And look'd through nature at a single view:
A loose he gave to his unbounded soul,
And taught new lands to rise, new seas to roll;
Call'd into being scenes unknown before,
And, passing nature's bounds, was something more. Churchill's Rosciad.

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