Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she join'd the former two.
John Dryden, John Mitford (1847). “The Works of John Dryden in Verse and Prose”, p.139
