“Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walked along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse.”

—  Walter Savage Landor

To Robert Browning (1846). Compare: "Nor sequent centuries could hit/ Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit", Ralph Waldo Emerson, May-Day and Other Pieces, Solution.

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Walter Savage Landor photo
Walter Savage Landor 23
British writer 1775–1864

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