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To The Memory Of My Beloved Master William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us by Ben Jonson
...While I confess thy writings to be such, As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much... Soul of the age! The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage! ...Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read, and praise to give... I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line... And shake a stage : or when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison... Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time ! ...For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion... Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well torned and true filed lines; In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandisht at the eyes of ignorance. Sweet Swan of Avon ! ...Shine forth, thou Star of Poets...

(that's all of the snips found in the old A&E Biography, and some more of my choosing)

I still say the best three works written in the English language were all written during the English Renaissance: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Paradise Lost and the King James Bible.