This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to out-do the life: O could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he has hit His face; the print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass: But since he cannot, reader, look Not on his picture, but his book.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to out-do the life: O could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he has hit His face; the print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass: But since he cannot, reader, look Not on his picture, but his book." in the context of "Ben Jonson, on the Portrait of Shakespeare, from Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623), "To the Reader", as quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), p. 420." to mean that wisdom is timeless.