O!'tis wondrous much (Though nothing prisde) that the right vertuous touch Of a well written soule, to vertue moves. Nor haue we soules to purpose, if their loves Of fitting objects be not so inflam'd. How much then, were this kingdome's maine soule maim'd, To want this great inflamer of all powers That move in humane soules! All realmes but yours, Are honor'd with him; and hold blest that state That have his workes to reade and contemplate. In which, humanitie to her height is raisde; Which all the world (yet, none enough) hath praisde. Seas, earth, and heaven, he did in verse comprize; Out sung the Muses, and did equalise Their king Apollo; being so farre from cause Of princes light thoughts, that their gravest lawes May finde stuffe to be fashiond by his lines. Through all the pompe of kingdomes still he shines And graceth all his gracers. Then let lie Your lutes, and viols, and more loftily Make the heroiques of your Homer sung, To drums and trumpets set his Angels tongue: And with the princely sports of haukes you use, Behold the kingly flight of his high Muse: And see how like the Phöenix she renues Her age, and starrie feathers in your sunne; Thousands of yeares attending; everie one Blowing the holy fire, and throwing in Their seasons, kingdomes, nations that have bin Subverted in them; lawes, religions, all Offerd to change, and greedie funerall; Yet still your Homer lasting, living, raigning.-- and likewise the 1st, the 11th, and last but one, of the prefatory sonnets to the 'Odyssey'. Could I have foreseen any other speedy opportunity, I should have begged your acceptance of the volume in a somewhat handsomer coat; but as it is, it will better represent the sender,--to quote from myself-- A man disherited, in form and face, By nature and mishap, of outward grace. [2] Chapman in his moral heroic verse, as in this dedication and the prefatory sonnets to his 'Odyssey', stands above Ben Jonson; there is more dignity, more lustre, and equal strength; but not midway quite between him and the sonnets of Milton. I do not know whether I give him the higher praise, in that he reminds me of Ben Jonson with a sense of his superior excellence, or that he brings Milton to memory notwithstanding his inferiority. His moral poems are not quite out of books like Jonson's, nor yet do the sentiments so wholly grow up out of his own natural habit and grandeur of thought, as in Milton. The sentiments have been attracted to him by a natural affinity of his intellect, and so combined;-but Jonson has taken them by individual and successive acts of choice. [3]