Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/168

 152 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES the two pieces, "Underwoods," xi. and xii., "On the Portrait of Shakespeare," prefixed to the first foUo edition, 1623, and, "To the Memory of my beloved Master WilUam Shakespeare, and What He hath Left Us." Would that we had space here to give this latter at full length, for it is so honourable to both that it can hardly be too often reprinted. I ask where, even now, when the supremacy has long been unchallenged, which was then challenged freely, and by many as wise in their great generation as the wisest in ours, which is so much smaller — where even now shall we find a tribute to that supremacy more ample, more magnificent, or rendered with more loyal free will ? — " To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book and fame ; While I confess thy writings to be such, As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much. 'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. Soul of the age 1 The applause 1 delight ! the wonder of our st^e I My Shakespeare rise ! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further to make thee a room : * W. Basse, which opens thus : — " Renowned Spenser, Ilea thought more nigh To learned Chaucer; and, rare Beaumont, lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. To lodge all four in one bed make a shift. For until doomsday hardly will a fifth, Betwixt this day and that, by fates be slain. For whom your curtains need be drawn again.
 * Alluding, as Whalley noted, to an elegy on Shakespeare by