George Chapman - Homage

Homage

In Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, The Revolt of Islam, Shelley quotes a verse of Chapman's as homage within his dedication "to Mary__ __", presumably his wife Mary Shelley:

There is no danger to a man, that knows
What life and death is: there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.

Irish playwright, Oscar Wilde, quoted the same verse in his part fiction, part literary criticism, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H.".

The English poet Keats wrote "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" for his friend Charles Cowden Clarke in October 1816. The poem begins "Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold" and is much quoted. For example, P.G. Wodehouse in his review of the first Flashman novel that came to his attention: "Now I understand what that ‘when a new planet swims into his ken’ excitement is all about." Arthur Ransome uses two references from it in his children's books, the Swallows and Amazons series.

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Famous quotes containing the word homage:

    But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I make! O no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement, before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    Your business is not to catch men with show,
    With homage to the perishable clay,
    But lift them over it, ignore it all,
    Make them forget there’s such a thing as flesh.
    Your business is to paint the souls of men—
    Robert Browning (1812–1889)