In courts, or fill the golden seat of kings :
O sons of sport and pleasure: O thou wretch
That weep'st for jealous love, or the sore wounds
Of conscious guilt, or death's rapacious hand,
Which left thee void of hope: O ye who roam
In exile; ye who through the embattled field
Seek bright renown; or who for nobler palms
Contend, the leaders of a public cause;
Approach! behold this marble. Know ye not
The features? Hath not oft his faithful tongue
Told you the fashion of your own estate,
The secrets of your bosom? Here then, round
His monument with reverence while you stand,
Say to each other: "This was Shakspere's form;
"Who walk'd in every path of human life,
"Felt every passion; and to all mankind
"Doth now, will ever, that experience yield
"Which his own genius only could acquire."
From the same Author's Pleasures of Imagination,
Book III.
The arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground,
When furious whirlwinds rend the howling air,
And ocean, groaning from his lowest bed,
Heaves his tempestuous billows to the sky;
Amid the general uproar, while below
The nations tremble, Shakspere looks abroad
From some high cliff, superior, and enjoys
The elemental war.
Creative fancy, and inspection keen,
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakspere thine and nature's boast?
THOMSON'S Summer.
When learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakspere rose;
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain :
His pow'rful strokes presiding truth impress'd,
And unresisted passion storm'd the breast.
Prologue at the opening of Drury-Lane Theatre in 1747.
By Dr. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
What are the lays of artful Addison,
Coldly correct, to Shakspere's warblings wild
Whom on the winding Avon's willow'd banks
Fair Fancy found, and bore the smiling babe
To a close cavern (still the shepherds shew
The sacred place, whence with religious awe
They kear, returning from the field at eve,
Strange whisp'ring of sweet musick thro' the air).
Here, as with honey gathered from the rock,
She fed the little prattler, and with songs
Oft sooth'd his wond'ring ears, with deep delight
On her soft lap he sat, and caught the sounds.
The Enthusiast, or The Lover of Nature, a Poem, by the Rev. JOSEPH WARTON.
From the Rev. THOMAS WARTON'S Address to the
Queen on her Marriage.
Here, boldly mark'd with every living hue,
Nature's unbounded portrait Shakspere drew:
But, chief, the dreadful groupe of human woes
The daring artist's tragick pencil chose;
Explor'd the pangs that rend the royal breast,
Those wounds that lurk beneath the tissued vest.
Monody, written near Stratford upon Avon.
Avon, thy rural views, thy pastures wild,
The willows that o'erhang thy twilight edge,
Their boughs entangling with th' embattled sedge:
Thy brink with watery foliage quaintly fring'd,
Thy surface with reflected verdure ting'd;
Sooth me with many a pensive pleasure mild.
But while I muse, that here the Bard Divine,
Whose sacred dust yon high-arch'd isles enclose,
Where the tall windows rise in stately rows,
Above th' embowering shade;
Here first, at Fancy's fairy-circled shrine,
Of daisies pied his infant offering made;
Here playful yet, in stripling years unripe,
Fram'd of thy reeds a shrill and artless pipe:
Sudden thy beauties, Avon, all are fled,
As at the waving of some magick wand;
An holy trance my charmed spirit wings,
And awful shapes of leaders, and of kings,
People the busy mead,
Like spectres swarming to the wizard's hall;
And slowly pace, and point with trembling hand
The wounds ill-cover'd by the purple pall.
Before me Pity seems to stand
A weeping mourner, smote with anguish sore,
To see Misfortune rend in frantick mood
His robe, with regal woes embroider'd o'er.
Pale Terror leads the visionary band,
And sternly shakes his sceptre, dropping blood.
Far from the sun and summer gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avón stray'd,
To him the mighty mother did unveil
Her awful face: The dauntless child
Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil❜d.
This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year:
Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy!
This can unlock the gates of joy;
Of horror that, and thrilling fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetick tears.
GRAY's Ode on the Progress of Poesy*.
Next Shakspere sat, irregularly great,
And in his hand a magick rod did hold,
Which visionary beings did create,
And turn the foulest dross to purest gold:
Whatever spirits rove in earth or air,
Or bad, or good, obey his dread command;
To his behests these willingly repair,
Those aw'd by terrors of his magick wand,
The which not all their powers united might withstand. LLOYD's Progress of Envy, 1751.
Oh, where's the bard, who at one view Could look the whole creation through, Who travers'd all the human heart, Without recourse to Grecian art?
*Of all the many encomiums passed on our great dramatick poet, the most truly poetical one, seems to be contained in the third strophe of Mr. Gray's admirable Ode on the PROGRESS OF POESY, particularly in the fine Prosopopeia and Speech of NATURE to him. Dr. J. WARTON.
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