Who wrote his Lines with a sun-beam, More durable than Time or Fate; Others boldly do blaspheme, Like those that seem to preach, but prate. 4 Thou wert truly priest elect, Chosen darling to the Nine; Such a trophy to erect By thy wit and skill divine. 5 That were all their other glories (Thine excepted) torn away, By thy admirable stories, Their garments ever shall be gay. 6 Where thy honoured bones do lie (As Statius once to Maro’s urn), Thither every year will I Slowly tread, and sadly mourn. _Epigrams Theological, Philosophical, and Romantick._ Six Books, etc., with other Select Poems. 1651. Book vi. Epig. 17, pp. 150, 152, 154. THOMAS FULLER, _c._ 1661 (1608-1661) He was an eminent instance of the truth of that rule, _Poeta non fit sed nascitur_; one is not _made_, but _born_ a poet. Indeed, his learning was very little, so that, as Cornish diamonds are not polished by any lapidary, but are pointed and smoothed even as they are taken out of the earth, so nature itself was all the _art_ which was used upon him. Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man of war: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention. _The History of the Worthies of England: Warwickshire._ 1662, p. 126. SAMUEL PEPYS, 1662-1667 (1633-1703) 1661-1662. March 1st. My wife and I by coach, first to see my little picture that is a-drawing, and thence to the Opera, and there saw “Romeo and Juliet,” the first time it was ever acted, but it is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard, and the worst acts that ever I saw these people do, and I am resolved to go no more to see the first time of acting, for they were all of them out more or less. 1662. September 29th. To the King’s Theatre, where we saw “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which I had never seen before, nor ever shall again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.