I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers. LORD BYRON (1788-1824). Letter to Murray, 14 July 1821. Moore’s _Life of Byron_. * * * * * Schiller has the material sublime: to produce an effect, he sets you a whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up a father in an old tower. But Shakespeare drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow. S. T. COLERIDGE (1772-1834). _Table Talk_, 29 Dec. 1822. * * * * * An immortal man,— Nature’s chief darling, and illustrious mate, Destined to foil old Death’s oblivious plan, And shine untarnish’d by the fogs of Fate, Time’s famous rival till the final date! THOMAS HOOD (1799-1845). _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, cv. 1827, p. 53. * * * * * Who knows or can figure what the Man Shakespeare was, by the first, by the twentieth, perusal of his works? He is a Voice coming to us from the Land of Melody: his old brick dwelling-place, in the mere earthly burgh of Stratford-on-Avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma. THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881). _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_, “Goethe.” Reprinted from _Foreign Review_, No. 3, 1828. * * * * * Students of poetry admire Shakespeare in their tenth year; but go on admiring him more and more, understanding him more and more, till their threescore-and-tenth. _Ibid._ * * * * * No one can understand Shakespeare’s superiority fully until he has ascertained, by comparison, all that which he possessed in common with several other great dramatists of his age, and has then calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakespeare’s own. S. T. COLERIDGE (1772-1834). _Table Talk_, 12 May 1830. * * * * * His was the wizard spell, The spirit to enchain: His grasp o’er nature fell, Creation own’d his reign. “Poetical Portraits” by A Modern Pythagorean in _Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine_, vol. xxvii. 1830, p. 632. * * * * * It is not too much to say, that the great plays of Shakespeare would lose less by being deprived of all the passages which are commonly called the fine passages, than those passages lose by being read separately from the play. This is, perhaps, the highest praise which can be given to a dramatist.