If you read only the best, you will have no need of reading the other books, because the latter are nothing but a rehash of the be...st and the oldest. To read Shakespeare, Plato, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, and their compeers in prose, is to read in condensed form what all others have diluted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion, and an English man of War;... Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid but Slow in his performances. Shakespeare with the English-man of War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Imagination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We do not fear censorship for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liber...ty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue--the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word, that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented wit...h flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Children who hear acquire language without any particular effort; the words that fall from others' lips they catch on the wing, as... it were, delightedly, while the little deaf child must trap them by a slow and often painful process. But whatever the process, the result is wonderful. Gradually from naming an object we advance step by step until we have traversed the vast distance between our first stammered syllable and the sweep of thought in a line of Shakespeare.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is those deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probin...gs at the very axis of reality;Mthese are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We cannot escape the impression that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we come to the literature of civilized eras....... The bard has in a great measure lost the dignity and sacredness of his office. Formerly he was called a seer, but now it is thought that one man sees as much as another. He has no longer the bardic rage, and only conceives the deed, which he formerly stood ready to perform. Hosts of warriors earnest for battle could not mistake nor dispense with the ancient bard. His lays were heard in the pauses of the fight. There was no danger of his being overlooked by his contemporaries. But now the hero and the bard are of different professions. When we come to the pleasant English verse, the storms have all cleared away, and it will never thunder and lighten more. The poet has come within doors, and exchanged the forest and crag for the fireside, the hut of the Gael, and Stonehenge, with its circles of stones, for the house of the Englishman. No hero stands at the door prepared to break forth into song or heroic action, but a homely Englishman, who cultivates the art of poetry. We see the comfortable fireside, and hear the crackling fagots, all in verse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is enough if Homer but say the sun sets. He is as serene as nature, and we can hardly detect the enthusiasm of the bard. It is ...as if nature spoke.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these out...ward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,--these are some of our astronomers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »