Shakespeare's funerary monument Socrates in genius, a Maro in art," comparing Shakespeare to Nestor the wise King of Pylus, to the Greek philosopher Socrates, and to the Roman poet Virgil (whose last name, or "cognomen" was Maro). The second reads "The earth buries him, the people mourn him, Olympus possesses him," referring to Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods. The English poem reads: As modernized by Katherine Duncan-Jones: Stanley Wells is one of the few biographers to comment on the poem, saying that it "somewhat cryptically calls on the passer-by to pay tribute to his greatness as a writer", and admitting
The Inspiration of the Poet is writing under his inspiration. It is not known to what the painting alludes, nor what is its exact subject: perhaps the latter was always indefinite, because the picture appears in Mazarin's inventory of 1653 as "Apollo with a Muse and a Poet crowned with Laurels". Its warm colouring reveals the Titianesque strain in Poussin's work; it must have been painted during his first Roman period, at the end of the 1620s. Several other paintings of this period are related to this work: "", the "", and the book frontispiece drawn by Poussin and engraved by Claude Mellan for an