Page:Essays and criticisms by Wainewright (1880).djvu/91

Rh tender querulence of laureate Petrarch's erotic conceits; of Tasso's misfortunes, and the harmonious spirit and majesty of his numbers. Then, there's the poetical and linked sweetness, and (as alliteration sometimes tells) the mighty magic of the majestic Michael Angelo: nor would I omit to press into my service the divine grace of Raphael, the costume-loving precision of N. Poussin, the happy imagination of Camoens, nor the sixty thousand verses of Ferdousi: besides, there's Hafiz, with his such a thing, and, not least in our dear love, **** (whose name I have forgotten), to say nothing of a hundred others, quos nunc perscribere longum est, with their various so-and-so's—all excellent. But—sat sapienti: you will see what I mean; and I need hardly mention the extraordinary faculty I have, as occasion may require, of praising or reviling Voltaire; admiring the purity, amidst pity for the sensitiveness, of Racine; giving way before the passionate force of Corneille; pitching a steepy flight with Eschylus; being wildly enthusiastic with Schiller: running mad with Nat Lee;—and, to jump at once to our own days (chronology being nothing to genius, which is not for an age, but for all time), trilling a love-song with the young Catullus of our day; or playing the devil with Don Juan! Yet I must needs let you into the secret of my competency to emulate, nay to out-Herod those who hold their rushlights to the sun, and spend such quantities of panegyrical breath upon the beauties of the admirable and infinite