Page:Essays and criticisms by Wainewright (1880).djvu/90

2 Passado, the invincible Ah ha! fit for every thing, prepared for all accidents: ready to pass from grave to gay, from lively to severe; to sigh in concert with the woods that wave o'er Delphi's steep; or laugh with Momus and his train:—in a word, Sir, I hereby pronounce myself to be, not one, but all mankind's epitome.

From mere experiment, therefore, of my potencies, your work must derive an infinite advantage; for, Sir, in addition to what I have said, I would have you know, that it is to me

to discourse in terms, comprehensible only to the initiate few, about the wits of Elizabeth's reign; nay, to describe self-evident beauties in Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and all the poets that have ever lived:—dead things with inbreathed sense I am able to pierce, and, by windy suspiration of oracular breath, pour into any reader's mind the genuine characteristics of the great and good of every kindred and nation under heaven. I know how to apply sententious opinions in the mode of modern infallibility. As, for instance, in noticing the poet of the Inferno, I should say—there's Dante mingling the bitterness of satire with the gloomy grandeur of his sublime genius: if I would be ringing changes upon other great ones of the olden time, who blazed, the comets of their season, I should talk of the elegant licentiousness of Boccacio; the delightful varieties of Ariosto; the