Leigh Hunt, 1851 (1784-1859)
“Associations with Shakespeare.”
How naturally the idea of Shakespeare can be made to associate itself with anything which is worth mention! Take Christmas for instance: “Shakespeare and Christmas”; the two ideas fall as happily together as “wine and walnuts,” or heart and soul. So you may put together “Shakespeare and May,” or “Shakespeare and June,” and twenty passages start into your memory about spring and violets. Or you may say “Shakespeare and Love,” and you are in the midst of a bevy of bright damsels, as sweet as rosebuds; or “Shakespeare and Death,” and all graves, and thoughts of graves, are before you; or “Shakespeare and Life,” and you have the whole world of youth, and spirit, and Hotspur, and life itself; or you may say even, “Shakespeare and Hate,” and he will say all that can be said for hate, as well as against it, till you shall take Shylock himself into your Christian arms, and tears shall make you of one faith.
Table Talk. 1851, p. 154.