Such a career is sufficiently diversified, and it forms a striking contrast to the plainness and severity of his work.

But it must not lead us to forget or under-estimate his learning and knowledge.

Not Gray nor Tennyson, nor Swinburne--perhaps not even Milton--was a better scholar.

He is one of the earliest of English writers to hold and express different theories about literature.

He consciously appointed himself a teacher; was a missionary of literature with a definite creed.
But though in a general way his dramatic principles are opposed to the romantic tendencies of his age, he is by no means blindly classical.