Henry Hart Milman

"Ride on, ride on, in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die."

"Thou our throbbing flesh hast worn; Thou our mortal griefs hast borne; Thou hast shed the human tear; Jesus, Son of Mary, hear!"

"Death cannot come To him untimely who is fit to die; The less of this cold world, the more of heaven; The briefer life, the earlier immortality."

"And the cold marble leapt to life a god."

"Too fair to worship, too divine to love."

"His intellect may have lacked originality, but he was a pioneer in the study of Sanscrit poetry and in the application of criticism to Jewish history."

"Brilliant and numerous as are the works of the late Dean Milman, it was those only who had the great privilege of his friendship who could fully realise the amazing extent and variety of his knowledge; the calm, luminous, and delicate judgment which he carried into so many spheres; the inimitable grace and tact of his conversation, coruscating with the happiest anecdotes, and the brightest and yet the gentlest humour; and what was perhaps more remarkable than any single faculty, the admirable harmony and symmetry of his mind and character, so free from all the disproportion, and eccentricity, and exaggeration, that sometimes make even genius assume the form of a splendid disease. They can never forget those yet higher attributes, which rendered him so unspeakably reverent to all who knew him well—his fervent love of truth, his wide tolerance, his large, generous, and masculine judgments of men and things; his almost instinctive perception of the good that is latent in each opposing party, his disdain for the noisy triumphs and the fleeting popularity of mere sectarian strife, the fond and touching affection with which he dwelt upon the images of the past, combining, even in extreme old age, with the keenest and most hopeful insight into the progressive movements of his time, and with a rare power of winning the confidence and reading the thoughts of the youngest about him."

"That such a writer should have devoted himself to the department of history, which more than any other has been distorted by ignorance, puerility, and dishonesty, I conceive to be one of the happiest facts in English literature, and (though sometimes diverging from his views) in many parts of the following work I have largely availed myself of his researches."

"Began Milman's Latin Christianity. Bating the faults of style, it is most valuable."

"Milman – read a good deal – more impressed than ever by the contrast between the substance and the style. The substance excellent – the style very much otherwise."

"He is a fine young man: and his powers are very great. They are, however, better fitted for the drama than for narration; the drama admits his favourite strain of composition, and is easier in its structure."

"Our successors (for you and I are now old enough in authorship to use this term) are falling into the same faults as the Roman poets after the Augustan age, and the Italians after the golden season of their poetry. They are overlabouring their productions, and overloading them with ornament, so that all parts are equally prominent, everywhere glare and glitter, and no keeping and no repose. Henry Milman has spoilt his Samor in this way. It is full of power and of beauty, but too full of them."