Index — Chapter PLAYERS <i>to</i> POET (Part 3 of 3)

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first, in loftiness of thought surpass’d;
The next, in majesty; in both, the last.
The force of nature could no further go;
To make a third, she join’d the former two.

Dryden.—Lines under Milton’s Picture.

Ages elapsed ere Homer’s lamp appear’d,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard;
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask’d ages more.

Cowper.—Table Talk, Line 557.

They best can judge a poet’s worth,
Who oft themselves have known
The pangs of a poetic birth
By labours of their own.

Cowper.—Miscellaneous Poems; To Dr. Darwin, Verse 2.

He holds no man can be a poet
That is not a good cook, to know the palates,
And several tastes of the time.

Ben Jonson.—The Staple of News, Act III. Scene 1.