"For he (the Poet) doth not only show the way, but giveth so
sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter
into it. Nay he doth, as if your journey should lye through a
fayre Vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of Grapes: that
full of that taste, you may long to passe further. He beginneth
not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with
interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulnesse: but he
cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either
accompanied with or prepared for the well inchanting skill of
Musicke: and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you: with a tale
which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney
corner."
"Is not this a glorious way to talk?" demanded the Rev. T.E. Brown of
this last passage, when he talked about Sidney, the other day, in Mr.
Henley's _New Review_. "No one can fail," said Mr. Brown, amiably
assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind--"no
one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the
outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous
delicacy of pausation, the rhythm all ripple and suspended fall, the
dainty _but_, the daintier _and forsooth_, as though the
pouting of a proud reserve curved the fine lip of him, and had to be
atoned for by the homeliness of _the chimney-corner_."