They therefore brought him out, to do with him according to their Law; and first they Scourged him, then they Buffeted him, then they Lanced his flesh with Knives; after that they Stoned him with stones, then pricked him with their Swords; and last of all they burned him to ashes at the Stake. Thus came _Faithful_ to his end.
Brave _Faithful_, bravely done in Word and Deed; Judge, Witnesses, and Jury have instead Of overcoming thee, but shewn their Rage: When thou art dead, thou'lt live from Age to Age.
[Footnote 97: From "The Pilgrim's Progress."]
[Footnote 98: From "The Pilgrim's Progress."]
[Footnote 99: From "The Pilgrim's Progress."]
Born in 1631, died in 1700; educated at Cambridge; originally a Parliamentarian, but vent over to the Royalists; made poet-laureate in 1670; converted to Catholicism in 1686; his life written by Samuel Johnson; his works collected in 1808 in eighteen volumes by Sir Walter Scott.
To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it--you feel it too. Those who accused him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets.
Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.
The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton[101] say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better done in Shakespeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem. And in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakespeare far above him....