Nathan Drake

“ They blend simplicity with beauty, sentiment with passion, picture with poesy. They unite symmetry of form with consistency of ornament, truth of nature with perfection of art, and must ever furnish models for lyric composition. As a sonnet-writer Shakspeare was not superior to some of his contemporaries: he was certainly inferior to himself. In lighter numbers and in blank verse, peculiar and transcendent was his excellence. His songs never have been surpassed, his dramas never are likely to be. ”

“ But, O, how dull is the intricate path of the philosopher, how uninteresting is all the laboured ingenuity of the artist, compared with the simple and touching pleasures which are alike open to the peasant, as to the scholar, the noble, or the monarch! It is in the gift of exquisite senses, and not in the adventitious circumstances of birth and fortune, that one human being excels another! ”

“ Had not poverty and prosecution united in driving Shakspeare from his humble occupation in Warwickshire, how many matchless lessons of wisdom and morality, how many unparalleled displays of wit and imagination, of pathos and sublimity, had been buried in oblivion; pictures of emotion, of character, of passion, more profound than mere philosophy had ever conceived, more impressive than poetry had ever yet embodied ”

“ I no sooner come into the Library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is idleness, their mother Ignorance, and Melancholy herself, and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all our great ones, and rich men that know not this happiness. ”

“ Indeed from the nature of its plan, the scene being laid in hell, and Sorrow being the conductor of the hapless complainants, it often assumes a deeper tone and exhibits a more sombre hue than the muse of Spenser, and more in consonance with the severer intonations of the harp of Dante. How greatly is it to be lamented that the effusions of this divine bard are limited to the pieces which we have enumerated, and that so early in life he deserted the fountains of inspiration, to embark on a troubled sea of politics. ”

“ Puttenham's was the only Art of Poetry which had made its appearance, and, though a taste for discussion of this kind was rapidly advancing, the poet was yet left independent of the critic; at liberty to indulge every flight of imagination, and every sally of feeling; to pursue his first mode of conception, and to adopt the free diction of the moment. ”

“ It is a poem which, more than any other, inculcates those mild and passive virtues, that patience, resignation, and forbearance, which owe their influence to Christian principles. While vice and intemperance are developed in all their hideous deformity, those self-denying efforts, those benevolent and social sympathies, which soften and endear existence, are painted in the most bewitching colours: it is, in short, a work from the study of which no human being can rise without feeling fresh incitement to cherish and extend the charities of life. ”

“ The causes which chiefly contributed to produce this fertility in poetical genius may, in a great measure, be drawn from what has been already remarked under the heads of superstition, literature, and romance.
The sun of philosophy and science, which had just risen with the most captivating beauty, and which promised a meridian of uncommon splendour, had not yet fully dissipated those mists that for centuries had enveloped and darkened the human mind. ”

“ It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers, to evoke the queen of the Fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre. The Shakspeare of a more instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation. ”

“ He was a dramatic poet as well a miscellaneous writer, and was considered by his contemporaries as a man of uncommon genius. He appears to have been, not only a scholar, but a man of the world, to have possessed no small share of wit and humour, and to have uniformly wielded his pen in support of morality and good order. Of his pieces no doubt many have perished; in his professional capacity, only one remains, a Treatise on the Plague; but the productions which acquired him most celebrity were written to expose the follies and vices of the times, and of these, about half a dozen are preserved. ”

“ Here are the openings of those reflections on the imagery of nature, in which subsequent poets have so much dealt. They show us to what occasional excellence, both in turn of thought and polish of language, the literature of Queen Elizabeth had arrived; and how little the artificial and incumbered prose of mere scholars of that time exhibits a just specimen of either the sentiment or phrase of the court or people! ”

“ It is to be regretted, however, that the use of the gun has superseded, among the opulent, the pursuit of this far more elegant and picturesque recreation. As intimately connected, for many centuries, with the romantic manners and costume of our ancient nobility and gentry, it now possesses peculiar charms for the poet and the antiquary, and we look back upon the detail of this pastime, and all its magnificent establishments, with a portion of that interest which time has conferred upon the splendid pageantries of chivalry. ”

“ Though most of the productions of Greene were written to supply the wants of the passing hour, yet the poetical effusions scattered through his works betray few marks of haste or slovenliness, and many of them, indeed, may be classed among the most polished and elegant of their day. To much warmth and fertility of fancy, they add a noble strain of feeling and enthusiasm, together with many exquisite touches of the pathetic, and so many impressive lessons of morality, as, in a great measure, to atone for the licentiousness of several of his prose tracts. ”

“ Hoole would entirely supersede the labours of Fairefax. With no discriminating judge of poetry, however, will this ever be the case; there is a lameness and mediocrity in the version of Mr. Hoole, which must always place it far beneath the spirited copy of the elder bard. Had Mr. Brookes completed the Jerusalem with the same harmony and vigour which he has exhibited in the first three books, a desideratum in English literature had been supplied, and the immortal poem of Tasso had appeared clothed in diction and numbers worthy of the most polished era of our poetry. ”

“ Its exertions were now overlaid by learning, and the strange conceits of metaphysical wit took place of the creations of a pure and unsophisticated fancy. It was thus that Donne wasted in the production of unprofitable and short-lived fruit the powers of a most acute and brilliant mind. It was thus that Phineas Fletcher threw away upon an unmanageable subject the warblings of a copious and pathetic imagination. The understanding was more exercised in the ingenious distortion of artificial stores, than the faculties which mark the poet in pouring forth the visions of natural fiction. ”

“ If this be the secret of true poetry, what is he who seeks to convey images so unnatural, that no one had ever even an imperfect glimpse of them before, and no one can sympathize with them when expressed? Can he whose thoughts find no mirror in the minds of others be a poet? ”

“ We shall close this detail of the ceremonies and festivities of Christmas with a passage from the descriptive muse of Mr. Walter Scott, in which he has collected, with his usual accuracy, and with his almost unequalled power of costume-painting, nearly all the striking circumstances which distinguished the celebration of this high festival, from an early period, to the close of the sixteenth century. They form a picture which must delight, both from the nature of its subject, and from the truth and mellowness of its colouring. ”

“ He who in sublimity and pathos has made the nearest approach to our three immortal bards, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, and who may, therefore, claim the fourth place in our poetical annals, the lamented Chatterton; and he who, in the present day, stands unrivalled for his numerous and masterly sketches of character, and for the truth, locality, and vigour of his descriptions, the poet of Marmion and of Rokeby; are both well known to have built their fame upon what may be emphatically termed the old English school of poesy. ”

“ We can ascribe, however, to the poets of Elizabeth's reign the greater merit of excelling in energy and truth of sentiment, in simplicity of diction, in that artless language of nature which irresistibly makes its way to the heart. To excite the emotions of sublimity, of terror, of pity, an appeal to the artificial graces of modern growth will not be found successful ”

“ Yet amiable and engaging as is the general cast of Spenser's genius, he has nevertheless exhibited the most marked excellence as a delineator of those passions and emotions which approach to, or constitute, the sublime. No where do we find the agitations of fear, astonishment, terror, and despair, drawn with such bold and masterly relief; they start in living energy from his pen, and bear awful witness to the grandeur and elevation of his powers. ”

“ It is as much as to say, that though the body be dead, yet the soul is ever-green and always in life: it is not like the body, and those other greens which die and revive again at their proper seasons, no autumn nor winter can make a change in it, but it is unalterably the same, perpetually in life, and never dying. ”

“ The frequent communication indeed with Italy, which took place about the middle of the sixteenth century, had not only induced an indiscriminate imitation of Italian manners, but had rendered the literature of the Italians so fashionable, that, together with their poetry, was imported into this island a multiplicity of their prose fictions and tales, a species of composition that had been cultivated in Italy with incredible ardour from the period of Sacchetti and Boccacio. ”

“ Romances, then, not only merit attention, as enabling us to enter into the feelings and sentiments of our ancestors,—a circumstance in itself curious, and even necessary to a complete knowledge of the history of past ages; they may still be successfully employed to awaken the mind—to inspire genius: and when this effect is produced, the power thus created may be easily made to bear on any point desired. ”

“ It is creditable to the present age, that in the higher poetry several of our bards have in a great degree reverted to the ancient school; that, in attempting to emulate the genius of their predecessors, they have judiciously adopted their strength and simplicity of diction, their freedom and variety of metre, preserving at the same time, and especially in the disposition of their materials, and the keeping of their style, whatever of modern refinement can aptly blend with or heighten the effect of the sublime, though often severely chaste outline, of the first masters of their art. ”

“ In the Taming of the Shrew, Christopher Sly, being treated with great ceremony and state, on waking in the bed-chamber of the nobleman, exclaims—"What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly's son of Burton-Heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest knave in Christendom. ”

“ The first and most especial whereof is, that a skilful Angler ought to be a general scholler, and seen in all the liberal sciences, as a grammarian, to know how either to write or discourse of his art in true and fitting terms, either without affectation or rudeness. He should have sweetness of speech, to persuade and intice others to delight in an exercise so much laudable. He should have strength of arguments to defend and maintain his profession, against envy or slander. ”

“ It was a dark rainy night in the month of November, that an old midwife sate musing by her cottage fire-side, when on a sudden she was startled by a loud knocking at the door. On opening it she found a horseman, who told her that her assistance was required immediately by a person of rank, and that she should be handsomely rewarded, but that there were reasons for keeping the affair a strict secret, and, therefore, she must submit to be blind-folded, and to be conducted in that condition to the bed-chamber of the lady. ”

“ It is to the court, therefore, and its attendants, to the nobility, higher gentry, and their preceptors, that we are to look for that ardent love of books and learning which so remarkably distinguished the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and which was destined, in another century, to descend into, and illuminate the larger masses of our population. ”

“ Consequently if we take a survey of the various channels through which the genius of poetry has been accustomed to diffuse itself, it will be found, that, during this half century, every province had its cultivators; that poems epic and dramatic, historic and didactic, lyric and romantic, that satires, pastorals, and sonnets, songs, madrigals, and epigrams, together with a multitude of translations, brightened and embellished its progress. ”

“ That meretricious glare of colouring, that uniform though seductive polish, and that monotony of versification, which are but too apparent in the school of Pope, and which have been carried to a disgusting excess by Darwin and his disciples, not only vitiate and dilute all developement of intense emotion, but even paralyse that power of picturesque delineation, which can only subsist under an uncontrolled freedom of execution, where, both in language and rhythm, the utmost variety and energy have their full play. ”