Chapter 19

O rare Ben Jonson! _Epitaph_. SIR J. YOUNG.

What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life: then when there hath been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past; wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies (Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise. _Letter to Ben Jonson_. F. BEAUMONT.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Renownèd Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learnèd Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. _On Shakespeare_. W. BASSE.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

Old mother-wit and nature gave Shakespeare and Fletcher all they have; In Spenser and in Jonson art Of slower nature got the start; But both in him so equal are, None knows which bears the happiest share; To him no author was unknown, Yet what he wrote was all his own. _Elegy on Cowley_. SIR J. DENHAM.

EARL OF MARLBOROUGH.

[Lord President of the Council to King James I. Parliament was dissolved March 10, and he died March 14, 1628.]

Till the sad breaking of that Parliament Broke him.... Killed with report that old man eloquent. _To the Lady Margaret Ley_. MILTON.

JOHN WICKLIFFE.

As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main ocean they, this deed accursed An emblem yields to friends and enemies, How the bold Teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed. _Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Part II. xvii. To Wickliffe_. W. WORDSWORTH.

[Bartlett quotes, in this connection, the following:]

"Some prophet of that day said: 'The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea; And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad, Wide as the waters be.'" _From Address before the "Sons of New Hampshire" (1849)_. D. WEBSTER.

JOHN MILTON.

Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy, The secrets of the abyss to spy. He passed the flaming bounds of place and time, The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night. _Progress of Poesy_. T. GRAY.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone; For he was great, ere fortune made him so: And wars, like mists that rise against the sun, Made him but greater seem, not greater grow. _Oliver Cromwell_. J. DRYDEN.

Or, ravished with the whistling of a name, See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame! _Essay on Man, Epistle IV_. A. POPE.

KING CHARLES II.

Here lies our sovereign lord the king, Whose word no man relies on; He never says a foolish thing, Nor ever does a wise one. _Written on the Bedchamber Door of Charles II_. EARL OF ROCHESTER.

MARTIN LUTHER.

The solitary monk who shook the world From pagan slumber, when the gospel trump Thundered its challenge from his dauntless lips In peals of truth. _Luther_. R. MONTGOMERY.

THOMAS CHATTERTON.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride. _Resolution and Independence_. W. WORDSWORTH.

JAMES THOMSON.

A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems, Who, void of envy, guile, and lust of gain, On virtue still, and Nature's pleasing themes, Poured forth his unpremeditated strain:

The world forsaking with a calm disdain, Here laughed he careless in his easy seat; Here quaffed, encircled with the joyous train, Oft moralizing sage: his ditty sweet He lothèd much to write, he carèd to repeat. _Stanza introduced into Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," Canto I_. LORD LYTTELTON.

In yonder grave a Druid lies. Where slowly winds the stealing wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise To deck its poet's sylvan grave. _Ode on the Death of Thomson_. W. COLLINS.

WILLIAM HOGARTH.

The hand of him here torpid lies That drew the essential form of grace; Here closed in death the attentive eyes That saw the manners in the face. _Epitaph_. DR. S. JOHNSON.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light. _Epitaph_. A. POPE.

DAVID GARRICK.

Here lies David Garrick--describe me, who can. An abridgement of all that was pleasant in man. As an actor, confessed without rival to shine; As a wit, if not first, in the very first line. _Retaliation_. O. GOLDSMITH.

EDMUND BURKE.

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it, or blame it, too much; Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind. And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat, To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote: Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining; Though equal to all things, for all things unfit, Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit; For a patriot too cool; for a drudge disobedient; And too fond of the _right_ to pursue the _expedient_. In short, 'twas his fate, unemployed, or in place, sir, To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor. _Retaliation_. O. GOLDSMITH.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.

Whose humor, as gay as the firefly's light, Played round every subject, and shone as it played;-- Whose wit, in the combat, as gentle as bright, Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade;-- Whose eloquence--brightening whatever it tried, Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave-- Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide, As ever bore freedom aloft on its wave! _Lines on the Death of Sheridan_. T. MOORE.

Long shall we seek his likeness,--long in vain. And turn to all of him which may remain, Sighing that Nature formed but one such man. And broke the die--in moulding Sheridan! _Monody on the Death of Sheridan_. LORD BYRON.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er Shall sink while there's an echo left to air. _Age of Bronze_. LORD BYRON.

DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

O good gray head which all men knew, O voice from which their omens all men drew, O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fallen at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew! Such was he whom we deplore. The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er. The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more. _On the Death of the Duke of Wellington_. A. TENNYSON.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on 't. As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; So his best things are done in the flash of the moment. _A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

There in seclusion and remote from men The wizard hand lies cold, Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, And left the tale half told.

Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower Unfinished must remain! _Hawthorne, May 23, 1864_ H.W. LONGFELLOW.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange; He seems, to my thinking (although I'm afraid The comparison must, long ere this, have been made). A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist. _A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.

CARLYLE AND EMERSON.

C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,-- E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; The one's two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek; C.'s generals require to be seen in the mass,-- E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues. And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,-- E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense. _A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge, Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters. In a way to make people of common sense damn metres, Who has written some things quite the best of their kind, But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind. _A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing;

* * * * *

Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor. _A Fable for Critics_. J.R. LOWELL.

PHILOSOPHY.

The intellectual power, through words and things, Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way!

_The Excursion, Bk. III_. W. WORDSWORTH.

How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns. _Comus_. MILTON.

In discourse more sweet, (For eloquence the soul song charms the sense,) Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute; And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost. Of good and evil much they argued then, Of happiness and final misery, Passion and apathy, and glory and shame; Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy. _Paradise Lost, Bk. II_. MILTON.

Sublime Philosophy! Thou art the patriarch's ladder, reaching heaven, And bright with beckoning angels;--but alas! We see thee, like the patriarch, but in dreams. By the first step,--dull slumbering on the earth. _Richelieu, Act_ iii. _Sc_. 1. E. BULWER-LYTTON.

Not so the son; he marked this oversight. And then mistook reverse of wrong for right; (For What to shun, will no great knowledge need, But What to follow, is a task indeed!) _Moral Essays, Epistle III_. A. POPE.

He knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly. _Hudibras, Pt. I_. DR. S. BUTLER.

His cogitative faculties immersed In cogibundity of cogitation. _Chronon, Act_ i. _Sc_. 1. H. CAREY.

When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter," And proved it--'t was no matter what he said. _Don Juan, Canto XI_. LORD BYRON.

Thinking is but an idle waste of thought. And naught is everything and everything is naught. _Rejected Addresses: Cui Bono_? H. AND J. SMITH.

HORATIO.--O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! HAMLET.--And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. _Hamlet, Act_ i. _Sc_. 5. SHAKESPEARE.

PITY.

Pity's akin to love; and every thought Of that soft kind is welcome to my soul. _Oroonoko, Act_ ii. _Sc_. 2. T. SOUTHERNE.

My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks; O, if thine eye be not a flatterer, Come thou on my side, and entreat for me, As you would beg, were you in my distress: A begging prince what beggar pities not? _King Richard IV., Act_ i. _Sc_. 4. SHAKESPEARE.

My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds, My mildness hath allayed their swelling griefs. _King Henry VI., Pt. III. Act_ iv. _Sc_. 8. SHAKESPEARE.

Pity is the virtue of the law, And none but tyrants use it cruelly. _Timon of Athens, Act_ iii. _Sc_. 5. SHAKESPEARE.

Soft pity never leaves the gentle breast Where love has been received a welcome guest. _The Duenna, Act_ ii. _Sc_. 3. R.B. SHERIDAN.

PLEASURE.

Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem; There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground But holds some joy of silence or of sound, Some sprite begotten of a summer dream. _Hidden Joys_. L. BLANCHARD.

Pleasure admitted in undue degree Enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free. _Progress of Error_. W. COWPER.

Sure as night follows day, Death treads in Pleasure's footsteps round the world, When Pleasure treads the paths which Reason shuns. _Night Thoughts, Night V_. DR. E. YOUNG.

To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain. _Night Thoughts, Night VIII_. DR. E. YOUNG. A man of pleasure is a man of pains. _Night Thoughts, Night V_. DR. E. YOUNG.

Who mixed reason with pleasure and wisdom with mirth. _Retaliation_. O. GOLDSMITH.

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. _Resolution and Independence_. W. WORDSWORTH.

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words--health, peace, and competence. _Essay on Man, Epistle IV_. A. POPE.

POET, THE.

We call those poets who are first to mark Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,-- Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone. _Shakespeare_. O.W. HOLMES.

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song. _Epistle to G.F. Mathews_. J. KEATS.

Most joyful let the poet be; It is through him that all men see. _The Poet of the Old and New Times_. W.E. CHANNING.

God's prophets of the beautiful. _Vision of Poets_. E.B. BROWNING.

For that fine madness still he did retain, Which rightly should possess a poet's brain. _Of Poets and Poesy: (Christopher Marlowe)_. M. DRAYTON.

But he, the bard of every age and clime, Of genius fruitful, and of soul sublime, Who, from the glowing mint of fancy, pours No spurious metal, fused from common ores, But gold, to matchless purity refin'd, And stamp'd with all the godhead in his mind. _Juvenal_. W. GIFFORD.

Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song. _Julian and Maddalo_. P.B. SHELLEY. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide:

There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. _The Garden (Translated)_. A. MARVELL.

In his own verse the poet still we find. In his own page his memory lives enshrined. As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,-- As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees. _Bryant's Seventieth Birthday_. O.W. HOLMES.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know. _The Timepiece: The Task, Bk. II_. W. COWPER.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep. _The Dunciad_. A. POPE.

Deem not the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day. But gather all thy powers, And wreak them on the verse that thou wouldst weave. _The Poet_. W.C. BRYANT.

From his chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught lyre None but the noblest passions to inspire, Not one immoral, one corrupted thought. One line which, dying, he could wish to blot. _Prologue to Thomson's Coriolanus_. LORD LYTTELTON.

I can no more believe old Homer blind, Than those who say the sun hath never shined; The age wherein he lived was dark, but he Could not want sight who taught the world to see. _Progress of Learning_. SIR J. DENHAM.

Read Homer once, and you can read no more, For all books else appear so mean, so poor; Verse may seem prose; but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need. _Essay on Poetry_. SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

The poet in a golden clime was born, With golden stars above; Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love. _The Poet_. A. TENNYSON.

Happy who in his verse can gently steer From grave to light, from pleasant to severe. _The Art of Poetry_. J. DRYDEN.

But those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for the other's sake; For one for sense, and one for rhyme, I think 's sufficient at one time. _Hudibras, Pt. II_. DR. S. BUTLER.

For rhyme the rudder is of verses. With which, like ships, they steer their courses. _Hudibras, Pt. I_. DR. S. BUTLER.

And he whose fustian 's so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad. _Prologue to Satires_. A. POPE.

I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew, Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers; I had rather hear a brazen can stick turned, Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree; And that would set my teeth nothing on edge, Nothing so much as mincing poetry: 'T is like the forced gait of a shuffling nag. _King Henry IV., Pt. I. Act_ iii. _Sc_. 1. SHAKESPEARE.

Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed. _Essay on Criticism, Pt. II_. A. POPE.

Unjustly poets we asperse; Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true. _To Stella_. J. SWIFT.

Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares,-- The Poets! who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays! _Personal Talk_. W. WORDSWORTH.

POETRY.

Wisdom married to immortal verse. _The Excursion, Bk. VII_. w. WORDSWORTH.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well; No writing lifts exalted man so high As sacred and soul-moving poesy. _Essay on Poetry_. SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

Poetry is itself a thing of God; He made his prophets poets; and the more We feel of poesie do we become Like God in love and power.--under-makers. _Festus: Proem_. P.J. BAILEY.

Go boldly forth, my simple lay, Whose accents flow with artless ease, Like orient pearls at random strung. _A Persian Song of Hafiz_. SIR W. JONES.

One simile that solitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines. _Imitations of Horace. Epistle I. Bk. II_. A. POPE.

Read, meditate, reflect, grow wise--in vain; Try every help, force fire from every spark; Yet shall you ne'er the poet's power attain, If heaven ne'er stamped you with the muses' mark. _The Poet_. A. HILL.

Jewels five-words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all time Sparkle forever. _The Princess, Canto II_. A. TENNYSON.

Choice word and measured phrase above the reach Of ordinary men. _Resolution and Independence_. W. WORDSWORTH.

The varying verse, the full resounding line. The long majestic march, and energy divine. _Imitations of Horace, Bk. II. Epistle I_. A. POPE.

Myriads of daisies have shone forth in flower Near the lark's nest, or in their natural hour Have passed away; less happy than the one That, by the unwilling ploughshare, died to prove The tender charm of poetry and love. _Poems in Summer of_ 1833, _XXXVII_. W. WORDSWORTH. Thanks untraced to lips unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond, Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, And, pausing, takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air. _Snow-Bound_. J.G. WHITTIER.

Give me that growth which some perchance deem sleep, Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems arise, Which, by the toil of gathering energies, Their upward way into clear sunshine keep Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green Into a pleasant island in the seas, Where, mid tall palms, the cane-roofed home is seen, And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear power. _Sonnet VII_. J.R. LOWELL.

A drainless shower Of light is poesy: 't is the supreme of power; 'T is might half slumbering on its own right arm. _Sleep and Poetry_. J. KEATS.

For dear to gods and men is sacred song. Self-taught I sing: by Heaven and Heaven alone, The genuine seeds of poesy are sown. _Odyssey, Bk. XXII_. HOMER. _Trans. of_ POPE.

Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few. _Paradise Lost, Bk. VII_. MILTON.

POLITICS.

The freeman casting, with unpurchased hand, The vote that shakes the turrets of the land. _Poetry_. O.W. HOLMES.

A weapon that comes down as still As snowflakes fall upon the sod; But executes a freeman's will, As lightning does the will of God: And from its force, nor doors nor locks Can shield you;--'t is the ballot-box. _A Word from a Petitioner_. J. PIERPONT.

What is a Communist? One who has yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings. _Epigram_. E. ELLIOTT.

Measures, not men, have always been my mark. _The Good-natured Man, Act ii_. O. GOLDSMITH.

Coffee, which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half shut eyes. _Rape of the Lock, Canto III_. A. POPE.

Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not. _King Lear, Act iv. Sc_. 6. SHAKESPEARE.

Here and there some stern, high patriot stood, Who could not get the place for which he sued. _Don Juan, Canto XIII_. LORD BYRON.

Get place and wealth; if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place. _Epistles of Horace, Epistle I_. A. POPE.

O, that estates, degrees, and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honor Were purchased by the merit of the wearer! _Merchant of Venice, Act ii. Sc. 9_. SHAKESPEARE.

POSSESSION.

When I behold what pleasure is pursuit, What life, what glorious eagerness it is, Then mark how full possession falls from this, How fairer seem the blossoms than the fruit,-- I am perplext, and often stricken mute, Wondering which attained the higher bliss, The wingèd insect, or the chrysalis It thrust aside with unreluctant foot. _Pursuit and Possession_. T.B. ALDRICH.

Bliss in possession will not last; Remembered joys are never past; At once the fountain, stream, and sea, They were, they are, they yet shall be. _The Little Cloud_. J. MONTGOMERY.

But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless. _Childe Harold, Canto II_. LORD BYRON.

I die,--but first I have possessed, And come what may, I _have been_ blessed. _The Giaour_. LORD BYRON.

POVERTY.

I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. _King Henry IV., Pt. II. Act_ i. _Sc_. 2. SHAKESPEARE.

Yon friendless man, at whose dejected eye Th' unfeeling proud one looks, and passes by, Condemned on penury's barren path to roam, Scorned by the world, and left without a home. _Pleasures of Hope_. T. CAMPBELL.

Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. _King Lear, Act_ iv. _Sc_. 6. SHAKESPEARE.

Take physic, Pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel. _King Lear, Act_ iii. _Sc_. 4. SHAKESPEARE.

O world! how apt the poor are to be proud! _Twelfth Night. Act_ iii. _Sc_. 1. SHAKESPEARE.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, Slow rises worth by poverty oppressed. _Vanity of Human Wishes_. DR. S. JOHNSON.