These sonnets, like the Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, are
characterized by boundless fertility and laboured condensation of thought,
with perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are the essentials
in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards habit and consciousness of power
teach more ease--_praecipitandum liberum spiritum_.
[Footnote 1:
I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed
that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but
it contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach
to it seems to be:--"As for masculine love, they have no touch of it; and
yet there are not so faithful and inviolate friendships in the world again
as are there; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of
any such chastity in any people as theirs."--ED.]
[Footnote 2:
"William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and making, and
of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most universally
beloved and esteemed of any man of that age." ......."He indulged to
himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses."--_Hist. of the
Rebellion_, book i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication by T.
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