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JAMES HOGG, 1831
(1770-1835)

"To the Genius of Shakespeare."

SPIRIT all limitless,

Where is thy dwelling-place?

Spirit of him whose high name we revere,

Come on thy seraph wings,

Come from thy wanderings,

And smile on thy votaries, who sigh for thee here!

Come, O thou spark divine,

Rise from thy hallowed shrine;

Here in the windings of Forth thou shalt see

Hearts true to nature's call

Spirits congenial,

Proud of their country, yet bowing to thee.

Here with rapt heart and tongue,

While our fond minds were young,

Oft thy bold numbers we poured in our mirth;
Now in our hall for aye

This shall be holiday,

Bard of all Nature, to honour thy birth.

Whether thou tremblest o'er

Green grave of Elsinore,

Stayest o'er the hill of Dunsinnan to hover,

Bosworth, or Shrewsbury,

Egypt or Philippi;

Come from thy roamings the universe over.

Whether thou journey'st far

On by the morning star,

Dream'st on the shadowy brows of the moon,

Or linger'st in fairyland,

'Mid lovely elves to stand,

Singing thy carols unearthly and boon ;—

Here thou art called upon,

Come thou to Caledon !

Come to the land of the ardent and free!

The land of the love recess,

Mountain and wilderness,

This is the land, thou wild meteor, for thee!

Oh, never since time had birth,

Rose from the pregnant earth

Gems such as late have in Scotia sprung;—

Gems that in future day,

When ages pass away,

Like thee shall be honoured, like thee shall be sung!

Then here, by the sounding sea,

Forest, and greenwood tree,

Here to solicit thee cease shall we never :

Yes, thou effulgence bright,

Here must thy flame relight,

Or vanish from Nature for ever and ever!

Songs. By the Ettrick Shepherd. Now first collected. 1831, p. 304.

CHARLES LAMB, 1833
(1775-1834)

I AM jealous of the combination of the sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres) did Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery do me with Shakespeare? -to have Opie's Shakespeare, Northcote's Shakespeare, light-headed Fuseli's Shakespeare, heavy-headed Romney's Shakespeare, wooden-headed West's Shakespeare (though he did the best in "Lear"), deaf-headed Reynolds's Shakespeare, instead of my, and everybody's Shakespeare. To be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen's portrait! To confine the illimitable!

Letter to Samuel Rogers, December 21, 1833.

Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Ed.
E. V. Lucas, 1903-4. Vol. vii.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, 1833

(1796-1849)

"To Shakespeare."

THE Soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathom'd centre. Like that Ark,

Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drown'd hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So in the compass of the single mind

The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds. Great Poet, 'twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be

Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny,

Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart,

Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

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THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 1838
(1785-1859)

IN the great world of woman, as the interpreter of the shifting phases and the lunar varieties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely satellite of man, Shakespeare stands not the first only, not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of truth. Woman, therefore, the beauty of the female mind, this is one great field of his power. The supernatural world, the world of apparitions, that is another. . . . In all Christendom, who, let us ask, who, who but Shakespeare has found the power for effectually working this mysterious mode of being?

A third fund of Shakespeare's peculiar power lies in his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. From his works alone might be gathered a golden beadroll of thoughts, the deepest, subtilest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelligible; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of every human being, under all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune. But this subject offers so vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the prerogative of Shakespeare to have thought more finely and more extensively than all other poets combined, that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by doing more, in our narrow limits, than

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