...quotes Dryden's words [from Dryden's Essay of Dramatick Poesie, edit. of 1701, i. 19] 'that Shakespeare was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient...poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.' Ib., p. 153. Mrs. Piozzi records (Anec,, p. 58), that she 'forced Johnson one day in a similar humour...

...and one of them, in my opinion, 10 at least his equal, perhaps" his superior. 'To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who of all modern, and...the images of nature were still present to him, and !5 he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you...

...and reckons him among her greatest sons, fully endorsing the lofty eulogy pronounced by Dry den : " He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient...poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul." Some of these men may not have been everything that we would wish them to be. They may have strayed...

..."all for love" tragic formula. Neander in Dryden's "Of Dramatic Poesy" (1688) says: "Shakespeare . . . was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul."1 But comprehensive and Neo-Classically Hight may be at odds. Practically everybody has been...

...poet, author He was not of an age, but for all time! Ben Jonson (1573-1637) English dramatist, poet He was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient...poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. John Dryden (1631-1700) English poet, dramatist A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are...

...dramatist.64 In the "Essay of Dramatic Poesy," for instance, Dryden writes of Shakespeare as the author who "of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul."65 The usage appeared in the fourteenth century and continued through most of the eighteenth...

...English Poetry" (II, 4), while Dryden, in the encomium in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, commends him as "the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul" — "soul" being the seat of inspiration and thus of poetic greatness. Such eulogizing presents Shakespeare...

...acknowledgement of a Shakespearean archetype. We are in some sense back with Dryden's claim that Shakespeare: 'was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient...comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily'." I will now turn to another species...

...the mind and its powers inspires almost all his praise. Like Dryden, whose tribute to Shakespeare as "the man, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul" is saved for the end of the "Preface," he especially values how much that mind could take in.64 Others...

...Allegory; his works are the comments on it."i6 Dryden, in a phrase equally familiar, calls Shakespeare "the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient, poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul."i7 The suggestion in all of these cases is of a kind of transcendent ventriloqmsm. It is as though...