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 |