Theodore Watts-Dunton

"Theodore Watts, as he told me twenty years ago, holds the opinion that Shakespeare wrote private poetry in a separate book while composing his dramas, and that he gave such portions of it as he could make fit, to certain of his characters. He thought, if I remember aright that the soliloquy and the dagger-scence were morsels of this sort. It certainly must strike one that the "the laws delay" and "the insolence of office" were not prominent grievances in Hamlets career."

"When hope lies dead—ah, when tis death to live, And wrongs remembered make the heart still bleed, Better are Sleeps kind lies for Lifes blind need Than truth, if lies a little peace can give."

"Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear A restless lore like that the billows teach; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach From its own depths, and rest within you, dear, As, through the billowy voices yearning here Great nature strives to find a human speech.A sonnet is a wave of melody: From heaving waters of the impassiond soul A billow of tidal music one and whole Flows in the "octave"; then, returning free, Its ebbing surges in the "sestet" roll Back to the deeps of Lifes tumultuous sea."

"Mans knowledge, save before his fellow man, Is ignorance—his widest wisdom folly."

"We looked oer London, where men wither and choke, Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies, And lore of woods and wild wind prophecies, Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke."