“GOOD SENTENCES”
Good sentences.
_Merchant of Venice_, I. ii. 11.
* * * * *
Brief, short, quick, snap.
_Merry Wives_, IV. v. 2.
* * * * *
In the quick forge and working-house of thought.
_Henry V._ V. prol. 23.
* * * * *
A good swift simile.
_Taming of the Shrew_, V. ii. 54.
“GOOD SENTENCES”
Shakespeare, we must be silent in thy praise,
’Cause our encomions will but blast thy bays,
Which envy could not, that thou didst so well,
Let thine own histories prove thy chronicle.
ANONYMOUS. Epig. 25. _Witts Recreations._
1640, printed 1639.
* * * * *
To-day we bring old gather’d herbs, ’tis true,
But such as in sweet Shakespeare’s garden grew.
And all his plants immortal you esteem,
Your mouths are never out of taste with him.
JOHN CROWNE (_d._ 1703?). Prologue to _Henry the
Sixth, the First Part_. Adapted from
Shakespeare’s _1 Henry VI._ 1681. Sig. A2.
* * * * *
Shakespeare (whom you and every playhouse bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, wing’d his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744). _Imitations of Horace._
Bk. II. ch. i. ll. 69-72. 1737.
* * * * *
Thrice happy! could we catch great Shakespeare’s art,
To trace the deep recesses of the heart;
His simple plain sublime, to which is given
To strike the soul with darted flame from heaven.
JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748). Prologue to _Tancred
and Sigismundâ_. 1745. Sig. A4.
* * * * *
Let others seek a monumental fame,
And leave for one short age a pompous name;
Thou dost not e’en this little tomb require,
Shakespeare can only with the world expire.
Epitaph on a Tombstone of Shakespeare. _Gentleman’s
Magazine._ June 1767, vol. xxvii. p. 324.
* * * * *
Shakespeare came out of Nature’s hand like Pallas out of Jove’s head,
at full growth and mature.
GEORGE COLMAN (1733-1794), before 1767.
George Colman, who advocated the theory that Shakespeare had
some classic learning, commenting in the Appendix to the second
edition of his translation of the comedies of Terence (1768)
on Richard Farmer’s _Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare_
(1767), which maintains that Shakespeare got his knowledge of
the ancients from translations, says: “Mr. Farmer closes these
general testimonies of Shakespeare’s having been only indebted
to Nature, by saying, ‘He came out of her hand, _as some one
else expresses it_, like Pallas out of Jove’s head, at full
growth and mature.’ It is whimsical enough, that this _some
one else_, whose expression is here quoted to countenance the
general notion of Shakespeare’s want of literature, should be
no other than myself. Mr. Farmer does not choose to mention
where he met with this expression of _some one else_; and _some
one else_ does not choose to mention where he dropped it.”
Colman’s “Appendix” was printed in the “Variorum” editions of
Shakespeare, and that of 1785 gave an anonymous note, stating
that Young “in his _Conjectures on Original Composition_ (vol.
v. p. 100, ed. 1773) has the following sentence: ‘An adult
genius comes out of Nature’s hands, as Pallas out of Jove’s
head, at full growth and mature.’ Shakespeare’s genius was
of this kind.” Young’s _Conjectures_ appeared in 1759, so
perhaps Colman borrowed, though, as he says (_Prose on Several
Occasions_, 1787, ii. p. 186), “The thought is obvious, and
might, without improbability, occur to different writers.” At
any rate, his form of the thought is better than Young’s, so he
has here been given the credit for it.
* * * * *
To mark her Shakespeare’s worth, and Britain’s love,
Let Pope design, and Burlington approve:
Superfluous care! when distant times shall view
This tomb grown old—his works shall still be new.
RICHARD GRAVES (1715-1804). “On erecting a
Monument to Shakespeare under the
direction of Mr. Pope and Lord
Burlington.” _Euphrosyne_, 1776.
This refers to the monument erected by public subscription in
Westminster Abbey in 1741. The design was by William Kent, and
the statue of Shakespeare, which was part of it, was executed
by Peter Scheemachers.
* * * * *
Our modern tragedies, hundreds of them do not contain a good line; nor
are they a jot the better, because Shakespeare, who was superior to all
mankind, wrote some whole plays that are as bad as any of our present
writers’.
HORACE WALPOLE (1717-1797). Letter to Sir Horace
Mann, Oct. 8, 1778. _Letters._ Ed. Peter
Cunningham, 1858, vol. vii. p. 135.
* * * * *
Write like Shakespeare, and laugh at the critics.
DANIEL WEBB (1719?-1798). _Literary Amusements_,
1787, p. 22.
* * * * *
Shakespeare, . . .
Lord of the mighty spell: around him press
Spirits and fairy forms. He, ruling wide
His visionary world, bids terror fill
The shivering breast, or softer pity thrill
E’en to the inmost heart.
W. L. BOWLES (1762-1850). “Monody on the
Death of Dr. Warton,” 1801. _Poems_,
1803, vol. ii. pp. 141-2.
* * * * *
Is there no bard of heavenly power possess’d,
To thrill, to rouse, to animate the breast?
Like Shakespeare o’er the sacred mind to sway,
And call each wayward passion to obey?
F. D. HEMANS (1793-1835). “England and
Spain,” 1807.
* * * * *
Our love of Shakespeare, therefore, is not a _monomania_ or solitary
and unaccountable infatuation; but is merely the natural love which
all men bear to those forms of excellence that are accommodated to
their peculiar character, temperament, and situation; and which will
always return, and assert its power over their affections, long after
authority has lost its reverence, fashions been antiquated, and
artificial tastes passed away.
FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY (1773-1850). _Edinburgh
Review_, Aug. 1811, vol. xviii. p. 285.
* * * * *
Shakespeare had the inward clothing of a fine mind; the outward
covering of solid reading, of critical observation, and the richest
eloquence; and compared with these, what are the trappings of the
schools?
GEORGE DYER (1755-1841). “The Relation of
Poetry to the Arts and Sciences,” in
_The Reflector_, 1811. Reprinted in
_Poetics_, 1812, ii. p. 19.
* * * * *
Shakespeare has been accused of profaneness. I for my part have
acquired from perusal of him, a habit of looking into my own heart,
and am confident that Shakespeare is an author of all others the most
calculated to make his readers better as well as wiser.
S. T. COLERIDGE (1772-1834). “Outline of an introductory
Lecture on Shakespeare,” 1812.
* * * * *
Let no man blame his son for learning history from Shakespeare.
_Id._ _Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton._
Ed. J. P. Collier, p. 19.
* * * * *
The greatest genius that, perhaps, human nature has yet produced, our
_myriad-minded_[232:1] Shakespeare.
_Id._ _Biographia Literaria_, 1817, chap. xv.
FOOTNOTES:
[232:1] Coleridge says that he borrowed this phrase from a Greek monk,
who applied it to a Patriarch of Constantinople.
* * * * *
The great, ever-living, dead man.
_Ibid._
* * * * *
Humanity’s divinest son,
That sprightliest, gravest, wisest, kindest one—
Shakespeare.
LEIGH HUNT (1784-1859). _Thoughts of the Avon
on 28 Sept. 1817._
* * * * *
His plays alone are properly expressions of the passions, not
descriptions of them. His characters are real beings of flesh and
blood; they speak like men, not like authors.
WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830). “On Shakespeare
and Milton,” _Lectures on the English
Poets_, 1818, p. 98.
* * * * *
In trying to recollect any other author, one sometimes stumbles, in
case of failure, on a word as good. In Shakespeare, any other word but
the true one, is sure to be wrong.[234:1]
_Ibid._, p. 108.
FOOTNOTES:
[234:1] “These remarks,” Hazlitt adds, “are strictly applicable only
to the impassioned parts of Shakespeare’s language, which flowed from
the warmth and originality of his imagination, and were his own. The
language used for prose conversation and ordinary business is sometimes
technical, and involved in the affectation of the time.”
* * * * *
Shakespeare was the least of a coxcomb of any one that ever lived, and
much of a gentleman.
_Ibid._, p. 111.
* * * * *
. . . Divinest Shakespeare’s might
Fills Avon and the world with light,
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged ’mid mortality.
P. B. SHELLEY (1792-1822). “Lines written among
the Euganean Hills,” October 1818.
* * * * *
Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.
JOHN KEATS (1795-1821). Letter to George and
Georgiana Keats, 18 Feb. 1819.
* * * * *
If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read
Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we
may study his commentators.
WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830). _Table Talk_, 1821,
vol. i. p. 177.
* * * * *
. . . Shakespeare, who in our hearts for himself hath erected an empire
Not to be shaken by time, nor e’er by another divided.
ROBERT SOUTHEY (1774-1843). _A Vision of
Judgment_, 1821, ix. ll. 17, 18.
* * * * *
I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most
extraordinary of writers.
LORD BYRON (1788-1824). Letter to Murray,
14 July 1821. Moore’s _Life of
Byron_.
* * * * *
Schiller has the material sublime: to produce an effect, he sets you
a whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the
flames, or locks up a father in an old tower. But Shakespeare drops a
handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow.
S. T. COLERIDGE (1772-1834). _Table Talk_,
29 Dec. 1822.
* * * * *
An immortal man,—
Nature’s chief darling, and illustrious mate,
Destined to foil old Death’s oblivious plan,
And shine untarnish’d by the fogs of Fate,
Time’s famous rival till the final date!
THOMAS HOOD (1799-1845). _The Plea of the
Midsummer Fairies_, cv. 1827, p. 53.
* * * * *
Who knows or can figure what the Man Shakespeare was, by the first, by
the twentieth, perusal of his works? He is a Voice coming to us from
the Land of Melody: his old brick dwelling-place, in the mere earthly
burgh of Stratford-on-Avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma.
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881). _Critical and Miscellaneous
Essays_, “Goethe.” Reprinted from _Foreign Review_,
No. 3, 1828.
* * * * *
Students of poetry admire Shakespeare in their tenth year; but go on
admiring him more and more, understanding him more and more, till their
threescore-and-tenth.
_Ibid._
* * * * *
No one can understand Shakespeare’s superiority fully until he has
ascertained, by comparison, all that which he possessed in common with
several other great dramatists of his age, and has then calculated the
surplus which is entirely Shakespeare’s own.
S. T. COLERIDGE (1772-1834). _Table Talk_,
12 May 1830.
* * * * *
His was the wizard spell,
The spirit to enchain:
His grasp o’er nature fell,
Creation own’d his reign.
“Poetical Portraits” by A Modern Pythagorean in
_Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, vol. xxvii.
1830, p. 632.
* * * * *
It is not too much to say, that the great plays of Shakespeare would
lose less by being deprived of all the passages which are commonly
called the fine passages, than those passages lose by being read
separately from the play. This is, perhaps, the highest praise which
can be given to a dramatist.
LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859). _Edinburgh Review_,
June 1831, vol. liii. pp. 567-8.
* * * * *
I believe Shakespeare was not a whit more intelligible in his own day
than he is now to an educated man, except for a few local allusions
of no consequence. And I said, he is of no age—nor, I may add, of
any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his
works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind: his
observation and reading, which were considerable, supplied him with the
drapery of his figures.
S. T. COLERIDGE (1772-1834). _Table Talk_,
15 March 1834.
* * * * *
I would be willing to live only as long as Shakespeare were the mirror
to Nature.
_Id._, _Letters_, etc., 1836, i. 196.
* * * * *
Than Shakespeare and Petrarch pray who are more living?
Whose words more delight us? whose touches more _touch_?
LEIGH HUNT (1784-1859). “Blue-stocking Revels;
or, the Feast of the Violets.” Canto III.
_Monthly Repository_, 1837.
* * * * *
In the gravest sense it may be affirmed of Shakespeare, that he is
among the modern luxuries of life.
T. DE QUINCEY (1785-1859). “Shakespeare,”
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, 7th ed.,
1842. Written 1838.
* * * * *
Produce us from any drama of Shakespeare one of those leading passages
that all men have by heart, and show us any eminent defect in the very
sinews of the thought. It is impossible; defects there may be, but they
will always be found irrelevant to the main central thought, or to its
expression.
_Id._ “Pope,” _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 7th ed.,
1842. Written 1839.
* * * * *
Shakespeare, a wool-comber, poacher, or whatever else at Stratford in
Warwickshire, who happened to write books! The finest human figure, as
I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely
diffused Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt or Sarmat, I find no human
soul so beautiful, these fifteen hundred known years;—our supreme
modern European man.
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881). “Geschichte der
Teutschen Sippschaft,” translated by
Carlyle in _Chartism_, 1839. _Critical
and Miscellaneous Essays._
* * * * *
It is to be doubted whether even Shakespeare could have told a story
like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfœtation of
thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired even in
his plays;—if it were possible, once possessing anything of his, to
wish it away.
LEIGH HUNT (1784-1859). “What is Poetry?”
_Imagination and Fancy_, 1844. Ed.
A. S. Cook, 1893, p. 65.
* * * * *
Now, literature, philosophy, and thought are Shakespearised. His mind
is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see.
R. W. EMERSON (1803-1882). “Representative
Men.” _Shakespeare; or the Poet_, 1844.
* * * * *
Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o’ the world: O eyes sublime,
With tears and laughter for all time!
E. B. BROWNING (1809-1861). _A Vision of Poets_,
1844.
* * * * *
A rib of Shakespeare would have made a Milton: the same portion of
Milton, all poets born ever since.
W. S. LANDOR (1775-1846). “Imaginary Conversations.”
_Works_, 1846, ii. p. 74.
* * * * *
In poetry there is but one supreme,
Tho’ there are many angels round his throne,
Mighty, and beauteous, while his face is hid.
_Id._ “On Shakespeare.” “Poems and
Epigrams.” _Works_, 1846.
* * * * *
A long list can be cited of passages in Shakespeare, which have been
solemnly denounced by many eminent men (all blockheads) as ridiculous:
and if a man _does_ find a passage in a tragedy that displeases him, it
is sure to seem ludicrous: witness the indecent exposures of themselves
made by Voltaire, La Harpe, and many billions beside of bilious people.
T. DE QUINCEY (1785-1859). “Schlosser’s Literary
History.” _Tait’s Magazine_, Sept., Oct.,
1847.
* * * * *
A thousand poets pried at life,
And only one amid the strife
Rose to be Shakespeare.
R. BROWNING (1812-1889). _Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day_, xvi., 1850.
* * * * *
When I began to give myself up to the profession of a poet for life,
I was impressed with a conviction, that there were four English
poets whom I must have continually before me as examples—Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton. These I must study, and equal _if I
could_; and I need not think of the rest.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850). _Memoirs._ By
Christopher Wordsworth, 1851, vol. ii. p.
470.
* * * * *
I cannot account for Shakespeare’s low estimate of his own writings,
except from the sublimity, the superhumanity of his genius. They were
infinitely below his conception of what they might have been, and ought
to have been.
_Ibid._
* * * * *
. . . Matchless Shakespeare, who, undaunted, took
From Nature’s shrinking hand her secret book,
And page by page the wondrous tome explored.
D. M. MOIR (1798-1851), before 1851. “Stanzas
on an Infant.” _Poetical Works_, 1852,
vol. ii. p. 50.
* * * * *
Shakespeare’s glowing soul,
Where mightiness and meekness met.
_Ibid._, p. 341, “Hymn to the Moon.”
* * * * *
Kind Shakespeare, our recording angel.
T. L. BEDDOES (1803-1849). “Lines written in
Switzerland.” _Poems_, 1851, vol. i. p.
215.
* * * * *
Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakespeare sung!
EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON (1805-1873). “The
Souls of Books,” i. l. 21. _Works_,
1853, vol. iii. p. 282.
* * * * *
Shakespeare . . .
. . . Wise and true,
Bright as the noon-tide, clear as morning dew,
And wholesome in the spirit and the form.
CHARLES MACKAY (1814-1899). “Mist.” _Under
Green Leaves_, 1857.
* * * * *
I care not how Shakespeare is acted: with him the thought suffices.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865), _c._ 1860.
* * * * *
I am always happy to meet persons who perceive the transcendent
superiority of Shakespeare over all other writers.
R. W. EMERSON (1803-1882). “Culture.” _Conduct
of Life_, 1860.
* * * * *
We may consider Shakespeare, as an ancient mythologist would have done,
as “enskied” among “the invulnerable clouds,” where no shaft, even of
envy, can assail him. From this elevation we may safely predict that he
never can be plucked.
CARDINAL WISEMAN (1802-1856). _William Shakespeare_,
1865, p. 28.
* * * * *
To say truth, what I most of all admire are the traces he shows of a
talent that could have turned the _History of England_ into a kind of
_Iliad_, almost perhaps into a kind of _Bible_.
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881). “Shooting Niagara:
and After?” _Macmillan’s Magazine_,
August, 1867.
* * * * *
Shakespeare! loveliest of souls,
Peerless in radiance, in joy.
MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888). “Heine’s Grave.”
_New Poems_, 1867, p. 198.
* * * * *
If Shakespeare did not know the ancients, I think they were at least as
unlucky in not knowing him.
J. R. LOWELL (1819-1891). _Among my Books_,
1870, p. 190.
* * * * *
Shakespeare recognised both our human imperfections and our human
greatness. . . . A woman is dearer to Shakespeare than an angel; a man
is better than a god.
EDWARD DOWDEN (_b._ 1843). _Shakespeare: His Mind
and Art_, 1875, p. 346.
* * * * *
Shakespeare frequently has lines and passages in a strain quite false,
and which are entirely unworthy of him. But one can imagine his smiling
if one could meet him in the Elysian Fields and tell him so; smiling
and replying that he knew it perfectly well himself, and what did it
matter?
MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888). “Preface to Poems of
Wordsworth,” 1879. _Essays in Criticism_,
2nd ser., p. 135.
* * * * *
All Castaly flowed crystalline
In gentle Shakespeare’s modulated breath.
D. G. ROSSETTI (1828-1882). “On certain Elizabethan
Revivals.” _Recollections of D. G. Rossetti._
By T. Hall Caine, 1882, p. 256.
* * * * *
Conception, fundamental brain work, that is what makes the difference
in all art. Work your metal as much as you like, but first take care
that it is gold, and worth working. A Shakespearean sonnet is better
than the most perfect in form, because Shakespeare wrote it.
_Ibid._, p. 249.
* * * * *
I close your Marlowe’s page, my Shakespeare’s ope,
How welcome—after gong and cymbal’s din—
The continuity, the long slow slope
And vast curves of the gradual violin!
WILLIAM WATSON (_b._ 1858). _Epigrams of Art, Life,
and Nature_, 1884, vii.
* * * * *
Shakespeare illustrates every phase and variety of humour: a complete
analysis of Shakespeare’s humour would make a system of psychology.
G. MOULTON (_b._ 1849). _Shakespeare as a Dramatic
Artist_, 1893, p. 285.
* * * * *
From Shakespeare, no doubt, the world may learn, and has learnt, much;
yet he professed so little to be a teacher, that he has often been
represented as almost without personal opinions, as a mere undisturbed
mirror, in which all Nature reflects herself. Something like a century
passed before it was perceived that his works deserved to be in a
serious sense studied.
J. R. SEELEY (1834-1895). _Goethe reviewed after
Sixty Years_, 1894, p. 98.
* * * * *
Shakespeare and Chaucer throw off, at noble work, the lower part of
their natures as they would a rough dress.
JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900). _Fors Clavigera._ Letter
XXXIV., 1896, ii. 235.