George Keate, 1768 (1729-1797)
Yes! jealous wits may still for empire strive,
Still keep the flames of critick rage alive:
Our Shakespeare yet shall all his rights maintain,
And crown the triumphs of Eliza’s reign,
Above control, above each classick rule,
His tutress Nature, and the World his school.
On daring pinions borne, to him was given
Th’ aerial range of Fancy’s brightest Heaven,
To bid rapt thought o’er noblest heights aspire,
And wake each passion with a Muse of Fire.
Revere his genius—to the dead be just,
And spare the laurels, that o’ershade the dust.
Low sleeps the bard, in cold obstruction laid,
Nor asks the chaplet from a rival’s head.
O’er the dear vault, Ambition’s utmost bound,
Unheard shall Fame her airy trumpet sound!
Unheard alike, nor grief nor transport raise,
Thy blast of censure, or thy note of praise!
As Raphael’s own creation grac’d his hearse,
And sham’d the pomp of ostentatious verse,
Shall Shakespeare’s honours by himself be paid,
And Nature perish ere his pictures fade.
Ferney: An Epistle to Monsr. De Voltaire. 1768. Poetical Works, 1781, pp. 136-7.
Raphael’s Own Creation:—The Transfiguration, that well-known picture of Raphael, was carried before his body to the grave, doing more real honour to his memory than either his epitaph in the Pantheon, the famous distich of Cardinal Bembo, or all the other adulatory verses written on the same occasion.—Keate.