STYLE.

The word _style_ is often used in a sense equally appropriate to all

the forms of Art,--a sense having reference to some peculiar mode of

conception or execution; as the Saxon, the Norman, the Romanesque

style of architecture, or the style of Titian, of Raphael, of

Rembrandt, of Turner, in painting. In this sense, it includes the

whole general character or distinctive impression of any given

workmanship in Art, and so is applicable to the Drama; as when we

speak of a writer's tragic or comic style, or of such and such dramas

as being in too operatic a style. The peculiarities of Shakespeare's

style in this sense have been involved in the foregoing sections; so

that I shall have no occasion to speak further of them in this general

survey of the Poet's Art. The more restrained and ordinary meaning of

the word looks merely to an author's use of language; that is, his

choice and arrangement of words, the structure of his sentences, and

the cast and texture of his imagery; all, in short, that enters into

his diction, or his manner of conveying his particular thoughts. This

is the matter now to be considered. The subject, however, is a very

wide one, and naturally draws into a multitude of details; so that I

can hardly do more than touch upon a few leading points, lest the

discussion should quite overgrow the limits I have prescribed myself.

On a careful inspection of Shakespeare's poetry, it becomes evident

that none of the epithets commonly used in regard to style, such as

_plain, simple, neat, ornate, elegant, florid, figurative, severe,

copious, sententious_, can be rightly applied to him, at least not as

characteristic of him. His style is all of them by turns, and much

more besides; but no one of the traits signified by those terms is so

continuous or prominent as to render the term in any sort fairly

discriminative or descriptive of his diction.

Under this head, then, I am to remark, first, that Shakespeare's

language is as far as possible from being of a constant and uniform

grain. His style seems to have been always in a sort of fluid and

formative state. Except in two or three of his earliest plays, there

is indeed a certain common basis, for which we have no word but

_Shakespearian_, running through his several periods of writing; but

upon this basis more or less of change is continually supervening. So

that he has various distinct styles, corresponding to his different

stages of ripeness in his work. These variations, to be sure, are

nowise abrupt: the transition from one to another is gradual and

insensible, proceeding by growth, not by leaps: but still, after an

interval of six or seven years, the difference becomes clearly marked.

It will suffice for my purpose to speak of them all under the

threefold distinction of earlier, middle, and later styles. And I

probably cannot do better than to take _King Richard the Second, As

You Like It_, and _Coriolanus_, as representing, severally, those

three divisions.

Shakespeare began by imitating the prevailing theatrical style of the

time. He wrote in much the same way as those before and about him did,

till by experience and practice he found out a better way of his own.

It is even doubtful whether his first imitations surpassed his models.

In _Titus Andronicus_, the First Part of _King Henry the Sixth_, and

_The Comedy of Errors_, if there be any thing of the right

Shakespearian idiom, it is so overlaid by what he had caught from

others as to be hardly discoverable. Accordingly those pieces seem to

me little better than worthless, save as specimens of his

apprentice-work. In _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, also, _Loves

Labour's Lost_, and _The Taming of the Shrew_, imitation has decidedly

the upper hand; though in these plays, especially the latter, we have

clear prognostics of the forthcoming dramatic divinity. From thence

onward his style kept growing less imitative and more idiomatic till

not the least taste or relish of the former remained. So that in this

respect his course was in fact just what might be expected from a

thoroughly modest, teachable, receptive, and at the same time most

living, active, and aspiring mind,--a mind full indeed of native

boldness, but yet restrained by judgment and good sense from the

crudeness and temerity of self-will and eccentric impulse, and not

trusting to its own strength till it had better reasons for doing so

than the promptings of vanity and egotism.

* * * * *

It is to this process of imitation that the Poet's faults of style are

to be mainly ascribed; though in the end it was no doubt in a great

measure the source of his excellences also. For, taking his works in

the order of their production, we can perceive very clearly that his

faults of style kept disappearing as he became more and more himself.

He advanced in the path of improvement by slow tentative methods, and

was evidently careful not to deviate from what was before him till he

saw unmistakably how he could do better. As he was thus "most severe

in fashion and collection of himself"; so he worked in just the true

way for disciplining and regulating his genius into power; and so in

due time he had a good right to be "as clear and confident as Jove."

Shakespeare's faults of style, especially in his earlier plays, are

neither few nor small. Among these are to be reckoned, of course, his

frequent quibbles and plays upon words, his verbal conceits and

affectations, his equivoques and clinches. Many of these are palpable

sins against manliness; not a few of them are decidedly puerile; the

results of an epidemic of trifling and of fanciful prettiness. Some

critics, it is true, have strained a point, if not several points, in

defence of them; but it seems to me that a fair-minded criticism has

no way but to set them down as plain blemishes and disfigurements. And

our right, nay, our duty to call them such is fully approved in that

the Poet himself seasonably outgrew and forsook them; a comparison of

his earlier and later plays thus showing that his manlier taste

discarded them. They were however nowise characteristic of him: they

were the fashion of the day, and were common to all the dramatic

writers of the time. Nor were they by any means confined to the walks

of the Drama: many men of the highest character and position both in

Church and State were more or less infected with them.

It is not likely indeed that Shakespeare at first regarded these

things as faults, or that he adopted them reluctantly in compliance

with the popular bent, and as needful to success. In his youth he

doubtless used them in good faith, and even sought for them as traits

of excellence; for he himself shared to the fullest extent in the

redundancy of mental life which distinguished the age, and which

naturally loves to sport itself in such quirks of thought and speech.

But it is manifest that he was not long in growing to distaste them,

notwithstanding that he still continued occasionally to practise them.

For, even in _The Merchant of Venice_, which I reckon among the last

in his earlier or the first in his middle style, we find him censuring

the thing while indulging it:

"O, dear discretion, how his words are suited!

The fool hath planted in his memory

An army of good words; and I do know

A many fools, that stand in better place,

Garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy word

Defy the matter."

In the case here censured, however, the thing, though a vice in

itself, is no offence to good taste, and may even be justly noted as a

stroke of dramatic virtue, because it is rightly characteristic of the

person using it: which only makes the reproof the more pointed as

aimed at the habit, then but too common in the high places of

learning, of so twisting language into puns and conceits, that one

could hardly come at the sense. But I can admit no such plea, when, in

_King Richard the Second_, the dying Gaunt goes to punning on his

name:

"Old Gaunt indeed; and gaunt in being old:

Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;

And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt?

For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;

Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt:

The pleasure that some fathers feed upon

Is my strict fast,--I mean my children's looks;

And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt:

Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,

Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones."

This, notwithstanding it is defended by so sound a critic as Schlegel,

seems to me a decided blot; I cannot accept it as right either in

itself or on the score of dramatic fitness. Many like instances occur

in _Romeo and Juliet, King John_, and other plays of that period;

instances which I cannot help regarding not only as breaches of good

taste in the speakers, but as plain faults of style in the Poet

himself: the blame of them indeed properly rests with him, not with

the persons; for they are out of keeping with the sentiments of the

occasion, and jar on the feelings which the surrounding matter

inspires; that is, they are sins against dramatic propriety, as well

as against honest manliness of style: so that, however the pressure of

the age may account for them, it must not be taken as excusing them;

and the best we can say on this point is, that in his faults of style

the Poet went with the custom and fashion of his time, while in his

virtues he went quite above and beyond the time.

Near akin to these are other faults of still graver import. In his

earlier plays, the Poet's style is often, not to say generally, at

least in the more serious parts, rather rhetorical than rightly

dramatic. The persons often lay themselves out in what may not

unfairly be called speech-making. Their use of language is highly

self-conscious, and abounds in marks of elaborateness, as if their

mind were more intent on the figure they are making than on what they

are talking about: so that the right colloquial tone is lost in a

certain ambitious, oratorical, got-up manner of speech; and we feel a

want of that plain, native, spontaneous talk wherein heart and tongue

keep touch and time together: in short, they speak rather as authors

having an audience in view than as men and women moved by the real

passions and interests of life.

The reason of all this I take to be, that the Poet himself was at that

time highly self-conscious in his use of language. His art was then

too young to lose itself in the enthusiasm of Truth and Nature; and,

as remarked before, he seems to have felt no little pleasure in the

tokens of his own skill. Thus, in his earlier plays, written before he

had fully found himself, the arts and motives of authorship are but

too apparent: he was then, I should say, somewhat in the humour of

flirting with the Muses and Graces; which, because it lacks the

modesty and delicacy of genuine passion, therefore naturally runs into

that excess of manner and style which is commonly called "fine

writing." And it is a very note-worthy point, that when he studies

most for effect, then it is that we find him least effective. But here

too, as in the matter mentioned before, his fault was clearly the

result of imitation, not of character. Accordingly, in the earnestness

of his work, he gradually outgrew it. In the plays of his later

period, the fault disappears entirely; there is not a vestige of it

left: in fact, this fault is mainly revealed to us by the higher

standard of judgment which his later plays supply. Here all is

straightforward, genuine, natural, with no rhetorical trickeries or

fineries whatever; and among all modern writers his style stands quite

alone in the solid purity, directness, and inward virtue of that

perfect art which not only conceals itself from others, but is even a

secret unto itself; or at least is too intent on something else to be

listening to the music of its own voice. For so his highest style was

when, in the maturity of his power, he left the style to take care of

itself, and therefore had it perfectly subordinated to his matter and

thought: in other words, he always writes best when most unconscious

of it, being so possessed with his theme as to take no thought of

himself.

We have somewhat the same order and course of things in Burke, who may

be not unfitly described as the Shakespeare of political philosophy.

His treatise _On the Sublime and Beautiful_ was, though in a good

sense, mainly the fruit of literary ambition. There he rather sought

for something to say because he wanted to speak, than spoke because he

had something he wanted to say. And so he is not properly himself in

that work, but only a studious, correct, and tasteful writer. When

thoroughly roused and kindled in the work of defending, intrenching,

and illustrating the Constitution of his country as the sacred

guardian of liberty and order, he became quite another man; then it

was that all the powers of his great mind were taught and inspired to

act in concert and unity. As Wordsworth says of him,--

"This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit,

No stammerer of a minute, painfully

Deliver'd. No! the Orator hath yok'd

The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car:

Thrice-welcome Presence! how can patience e'er

Grow weary of attending on a track

That kindles with such glory!"

The mere ambitions of authorship are not enough to make good authors;

and what Burke needed was something to lift him far above them. And

when he came to grapple with the high practical questions and living

interests of mankind, here he was too full of his matter, and too

earnest in his cause, to observe how finely he was working; and

because he was captivated by his theme, not by the figure he made in

handling it, therefore he earned a prerogative place among the sons of

light.

The distinction I have been remarking between Shakespeare's rhetorical

and dramatic use of language, or, as I before termed it, his imitative

and idiomatic style, may be better understood on comparing some brief

specimens of his earlier and later workmanship. As an instance of the

former, take a part of York's speech to the King, in _King Richard the

Second_, ii. 1:

"I am the last of noble Edward's sons,

Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first:

In war was never lion rag'd more fierce,

In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,

Than was that young and princely gentleman.

His face thou hast, for even so look'd he,

Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours;

But when he frown'd, it was against the French,

And not against his friends: his noble hand

Did win what he did spend, and not spend that

Which his triumphant father's hand had won:

His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood,

But bloody with the enemies of his kin."

No one, I think, can help feeling that this is the style of a man

rather aiming at finely-turned phrases than deeply in earnest with the

matter in hand; more the language of brilliant rhetoric than of

impassioned thought. At all events, there is to my taste an air of

falsetto about it; it seems more like the image of a painted than of a

living passion. Be this as it may, the Poet's own riper style quite

discredits it; though I have to confess that, but for his teachings,

we might not so well have known of any thing better. Now contrast with

the foregoing one of the hero's speeches in _Coriolanus_, iii. 2,

where his mother urges him to play the demagogue, and practise smiles

for the gaining of votes:

"Away, my disposition, and possess me

Some harlot's spirit! my throat of war be turn'd--

Which quirèd with my drum--into a pipe

Small as an eunuch's, or the virgin voice

That babies lulls asleep! the smiles of knaves

Tent in my cheeks; and school-boys' tears take up

The glasses of my sight! a beggar's tongue

Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees,

Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his

That hath receiv'd an alms!--I will not do't;

Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,

And by my body's action teach my mind

A most inherent baseness."

Perhaps the Poet's different styles might be still better exemplified

in passages of pathos; but here I must rest with merely referring, for

instance, to York's speech in _King Richard the Second_, beginning,

"As in a theatre the eyes of men," and the passage in _Macbeth_ where

Macduff first learns of the slaughter of his wife and children. Both

are indeed very noble in their way; but I think no reader of

disciplined taste can fail to see the vast superiority of the latter,

and that this is owing not so much to any difference of character in

the speakers as to a far higher stage of art in the Poet. I must add

that the rhetorical or speech-making style appears more or less in all

the plays of his first period: we find something of it even in such

high specimens as _The Merchant of Venice_ and _King Henry the

Fourth_.

I have spoken of the fault in question as specially marking the _more

serious_ parts of the Poet's earlier plays. The more comic portions of

the same plays are much less open to any such reproof. The Poet's

style in comedy from the first ran closer to nature, and had much more

of freedom, simplicity, and heartiness in its goings. The reason of

this difference seems to be, that the lessons of nature in sport are

more quickly learnt than those of nature in her graver moods. The

child plays, the man works. And there needs a ripe soul of manhood,

with much discipline besides, before a man warms into his work with

the free gust and spirit of play.

In what more I have to say under this head, I shall spare further

reference to the Poet's faults of imitation, and speak only of his

characteristic or idiomatic traits of style.

* * * * *

In regard to Shakespeare's choice of words there probably need not

much be said. Here the point I shall first consider is the relative

proportion of Saxon and Latin words in his writing.--Students somewhat

curious in this behalf have found his words of Latin derivation to

average about forty per cent. This, I believe, does not greatly differ

from the average used by the most select and accomplished writers of

that age. I suspect that Hooker has a somewhat larger proportion of

Latin words, but am not sure of it.--The English had already grown to

be a learned tongue; and, which is far better, the learned portion of

it had got thoroughly diffused and domesticated in the popular mind:

for centuries the Saxon and Latin elements had been in process of

blending and fusing together, so as to work smoothly and even lovingly

side by side in the same thought; common people using both with the

same easy and unstudied naturalness. Therewithal the language was then

in just its freshest state of maturity; flexible to all the turns of

philosophical and poetical discourse; full of vital sap and flavour;

its cheeks plump and rosy, its step light and graceful, with health:

pedants and grammarians had not starched and ironed it into

self-conscious dignity and primness: it had not learnt the vice of

putting on literary airs, and of practising before a looking-glass.

Our translation of the Bible is enough of itself to prove all this,

even if we had no other monuments of the fact. And the Elizabethan

English was a right joyous and jolly tongue also, as became the heart

of brave, honest, merry old England; yet it was earnest and candid

withal, and had in no sort caught the French disease of vanity and

persiflage: it was all alive, too, with virgin sensibility and

imaginative delicacy; to say nothing of how Spenser found or made it

as melodious and musical as Apollo's lute.

Shakespeare has many passages, some of them running to considerable

length, made up almost wholly of Saxon words. Again, he has not a few

wherein the Latin largely shares. Yet I can hardly see that in either

case any thing of vigour and spirit is lost. On the other hand, I can

often see a decided increase of strength and grasp resulting in part

from a judicious mixing and placing of the two elements. I cite a few

passages in illustration; the first two being from _King Lear_, the

third from _Antony and Cleopatra_:

"Mine enemy's dog,

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night

Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,

To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,

In short and musty straw?"

"We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,

And ask of thee forgivness: so we'll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of Court news; and we'll talk with them too,--

Who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out;--

And take upon 's the mystery of things,

As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,

In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,

That ebb and flow by th' Moon."

"Henceforth

The white hand of a lady fever thee,

Shake thou to look on't. Get thee back to Cæsar,

Tell him thy entertainment: look thou say

He makes me angry with him; for he seems

Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,

Not what he knew I was: he makes me angry;

And at this time most easy 'tis to do't,

When my good stars, that were my former guides,

Have empty left their orbs, and shot their fires

Into th' abysm of Hell."

With these collate the following from _Troilus and Cressida_ and _King

Lear_, where, for aught I can see, the interweaving of Saxon and Latin

words proceeds with just as much ease and happiness as the almost pure

Saxon of the foregoing:

"How could communities,

Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenity and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by degree, stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,

And make a sop of all this solid globe:

Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead:

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong--

Between whose endless jar justice resides--

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Then every thing includes itself in power

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself."

"Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulgèd crimes,

Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjur'd, and thou simular of virtue,

That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,

That under covert and convenient seeming

Hast practis'd on man's life: close pent-up guilts,

Rive your concealing continents, and cry

These dreadful summoners grace."

Observe what a sense of muscularity this usage carries, not only in

the foregoing, but also in various shorter instances:

"Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose."

"This my hand will rather

The multitudinous sea incarnardine."

"What is it then to me, if impious War--

Array'd in flames, like to the Prince of Fiends--

Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats

Enlink'd to waste and desolation?"

"And other devils, that suggest by treasons,

Do botch and bungle up damnation."

It should be noted, further, that Shakespeare has many palpable

Latinisms, some of them very choice too; that is, words of Latin

origin used quite out of their popular English sense; such as,--"Th'

_extravagant_ and _erring_ spirit hies to his confine,"--"Upon my

_secure_ hour thy uncle stole,"--"Rank corruption, mining all within,

_infects_ unseen,"--and, "To _expostulate_ what majesty should be,

what duty is." And sometimes, not having the fear of poetical, or

rather of unpoetical precisians and martinets before his eyes, he did

not even scruple to naturalize words for his own use from foreign

springs, such as _exsufflicate_ and _deracinate_; or to coin a word,

whenever the concurring reasons of sense and verse invited it; as in

_fedary, intrinse, intrinsicate, insisture_, and various others.

As to the sources from which Shakespeare drew his choice and use of

words, the most material point seems to be, that he certainly did not

go to books or scholars, or to those who made language a special

object of study. Yet he knew right well that this was often done; for

he ridicules it deliriously in _Love's Labour's Lost_, when Sir

Nathaniel the Curate says of Constable Dull, "He hath never fed of the

dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were;

he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished"; and again,

still better, when it is said of the learned Curate and Holofernes the

School-master, "They have been at a great feast of languages, and

stolen the scraps";--"They have lived long in the alms-basket of

words." Shakespeare did not learn his language in this way: he went

right into familiar, everyday speech for his words; caught them fresh,

and beating with life, from the lips of common people and intelligent

men of the world, farmers, mechanics, tradesmen, and housekeepers, who

used language purely as a medium, not as an object, of thought; and of

professional men, as they spoke when conversing with practical things,

and stirred by the motives and feelings of actual life; that is, when,

however they might think as wise men do, they spoke as common people

do.

Hence we find him using the special terms of the street, the farm, the

garden, the shop, the kitchen, the pantry, the wine-vault, the

forecastle, the counting-room, the exchange, the bower, of hunting,

falconry, angling, war, and even the technical terms of the Law, of

Medicine, and Divinity, all as they actually lived on the tongues of

men, and just as life had steeped its sense and spirit into them. This

it is, in great part, that has made him so high and so wide an

authority in verbal definition: as he took the meaning of words at

first hand, and so preserved them with all their native sap and juice

still in them; so lexicography uses him as its best guide. Hence, too,

the prodigious compass, variety, limberness, and ever-refreshing

raciness of his diction: no familiarity can suck the verdure out of

it: the perennial dews of nature are incorporated in its texture: so

that no words but his own can fitly describe it; as when he says of

Cleopatra, "Other women cloy the appetites they feed; but she makes

hungry where most she satisfies." Yet there is very seldom any smack

of vulgarity in his language, save when the right delineation of

character orders it so: words, that are nothing but vulgar as used by

vulgar minds, are somehow in his use washed clean of their vulgarity;

for there was a cunning alchemy in his touch that could instantly

transmute the basest materials into "something rich and strange." In

this respect, Mr. White justly applies to him what Laertes says of his

sister:

"Thought and affliction, passion, Hell itself,

She turns to favour and to prettiness."

The Poet's arrangement of words is often very peculiar, and sometimes

such as to render his meaning rather obscure; not obscure, perhaps, to

his contemporaries, whose apprehension was less fettered by

grammatical rules; but so to us, because our wits are more tied up

from nimbleness with notions of literal correctness, and with habits

of mind contracted from long intercourse with parsing writers. I mean

that Shakespeare often sorts and places his words in what seems to us

an arbitrary manner, throwing them out, so to speak, almost at random.

Here is a small instance: "At our more consider'd time, we'll read,

answer, and think upon this business." Of course, _our more consider'd

time_ means, when we have taken time for further consideration. So too

when the King suddenly resolves on sending Hamlet to England, and on

having him there put to death; fearing a popular tumult, because

Hamlet is loved by the multitude, he says, "To bear all smooth and

even, this sudden sending him away must seem deliberate pause"; that

is, a thing that we have paused and deliberated upon. Here it would

seem that the Poet, so he got the several elements of thought and the

corresponding parts of expression drawn in together, cared little for

the precise form and order of the latter, trusting that the hearer or

reader would mentally shape and place them so as to fit the sense. But

the meaning is not always so easy to come at as in these two cases. In

_Macbeth_, v. 4, when others are surmising and forecasting the issue

of the war, Macduff says, "Let our just censures attend the true

event, and put we on industrious soldiership." He wants to have the

present time all spent in doing the work, not in speculating of the

issue; and his meaning is, Let us not try to judge how things are

going, till the actual result enables us to judge rightly; or, Let

our judgments wait till the issue is known, _that so they may be_

just. In this case, the ideas signified by _judgment, waiting, result,

known_, and _just_ were all to be expressed together, and the

answering parts of language are disposed in the handiest order for

metre and brevity; while the relations which those parts bear to each

other in the speaker's thought are to be gathered from the subject and

drift of the foregoing dialogue.

As this is at times a rather troublesome feature in the Poet's style,

I will add a few more instances. Thus in the same play: "This castle

hath a pleasant seat: the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

unto our gentle senses"; that is, the air _sweetens_ our senses _into

gentleness_, or _makes_ them gentle, by its purity and pleasantness.

Again: "Ere humane statute purg'd the gentle weal"; which means, ere

humane laws _made_ the commonwealth gentle by cleansing it from the

wrongs and pollutions of barbarism. So too in _King Henry the Fifth_,

when the conspiring lords find their plot detected, and hear the doom

of death pronounced upon them by the King, one of them says, "And God

be thankèd for prevention; which I in sufferance heartily will

rejoice;" meaning, that he is thankful their murderous purpose is

defeated, though it be by their death; and that he will heartily

rejoice for such defeat, even while suffering the pains it involves.

Again, in _King Henry the Fourth_, when Hotspur is burning to cross

swords with Prince Henry in the forthcoming battle:

"And, fellows, soldiers, friends,

Better consider what you have to do,

Than I, that have not well the gift of tongue,

Can lift your blood up with persuasion."

That is, you can better kindle your spirits to the work by thinking

with yourselves what is to be done, than my small power of speech can

heat your courage up for the fight by any attempts at persuasion. The

well-known words of Juliet--"That runaway's eyes may wink"--come

under the same class of cases; and how hard such forms of language

sometimes are to understand, may be judged from the interminable

discussion occasioned by that famous passage. And it must be

confessed, I think, that in several cases of this kind perspicuity is

not a little sacrificed to metrical convenience and verbal dispatch.

But Shakespeare wrote with the stage in view, not the closet; and he

doubtless calculated a good deal on the help of the actor's looks,

tones, and gestures, in rendering his meaning intelligible.

As regards the other points in Shakespeare's arrangement of words, I

have little more to say than that here again his practice has nothing

bookish or formal about it, but draws right into life and the living

speech of men. He has no settled rules, no favourite order. In this

respect, as in others, language was in his hands as limber as water at

the fountain. He found it full of vital flexibility, and he left it

so; nay, rather made it more so. As he did not learn his craft in the

little narrow world of school rhetoricians, where all goes by the

cut-and-dry method, and men are taught to "laugh by precept only, and

shed tears by rule," but from the spontaneous rhetoric of the great

and common world; so we find him varying the order of his words with

the unconscious ease of perfect freedom, and moulding his language

into an endless diversity of shapes. Perhaps I cannot better express

his style in this behalf than by saying that he pitches right into the

matter, instead of walking or wording round it; not looking at all to

the gracefulness of his attitudes or the regularity of his motions,

but driving straight ahead at directness, compactness, perspicuity,

and force; caring little for the grammar of his speech, so it convey

his sense; and taking no thought about the facility or even

possibility of parsing, but only to get the soul of his purpose into a

right working body. Thus in _Cymbeline_, iii. 2, where the hard-beset

Imogen is first beguiled into the hope of meeting her husband at

Milford Haven:

"Then, true Pisanio,--

Who long'st, like me, to see thy lord; who long'st,--

O, let me bate,--but not like me;--yet long'st,--

But in a fainter kind;--O, not like me,

For mine's beyond beyond;--say, and speak thick,--

Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing

To th' smothering of the sense,--how far it is

To this same blessèd Milford: and, by th' way,

Tell me how Wales was made so happy as

T' inherit such a haven: but, first of all,

How we may steal from hence; and for the gap

That we shall make in time, from our hence-going,

And our return, t' excuse:--but, first, how get hence:

Why should excuse be born or e'er begot?

We'll talk of that hereafter."

What a chaos of verbal confusion have we here, until we penetrate to

the soul of the heroine! and then what a pavilion of life and beauty

this soul organizes that chaos into! How ignorant the glorious

creature is of grammar; yet how subtile and sinewy of discourse! How

incorrect her placing of words, yet how transfigured with grace of

feeling and intelligence! Just think into what a nice trim garden of

elocution a priest of the correct and classical church, like Pope,

would have dressed this free outpouring of the speaker's heart. No

doubt the language would be faultlessly regular; you might analyze and

parse it _currente lingua_; but how lifeless and odourless the whole

thing! how all the soul of nature, which now throbs so eloquently in

it, would have been dried and crimped out of it! The workmanship, in

short, to borrow an illustration from Schlegel, would have been like

the mimic gardens of children; who, eager to see the work of their

hands, break off twigs and flowers, and stick them in the ground;

which done, the childish gardener struts proudly up and down his showy

beds.

Perhaps the Poet's autocratic overshooting of grammar and rhetoric is

still better instanced in the same play, v. 3, where Posthumus relates

the doings of old Belarius and the Princes in a certain lane. On being

asked, "Where was this lane?" he replies:

"Close by the battle, ditch'd, and wall'd with turf;

Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier,--

An honest one, I warrant; who deserv'd

So long a breeding as his white beard came to,

In doing this for 's country: athwart the lane,

He, with two striplings,--lads more like to run

The country base than to commit such slaughter;

With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer

Than those for preservation cas'd or shame,--

Made good the passage; cried to those that fled,

_Our Britain's harts die flying, not our men_."

And so on to the end of the speech; which is all, from first to last,

as glorious in conception and imagery as it is reckless of rhetorical

form.

* * * * *

I am next to say somewhat touching the Poet's sentence-building, this

being a matter that rhetoricians make much of; though in this, also, I

must in the outset acquit him of any practical respect for the rulings

of courts rhetorical. For here, again, he has no set fashion, no

preferred pattern, no oft-recurring form; nothing at all stereotyped

or modish; but just ranges at large in all the unchartered freedom and

versatility of the English colloquial idiom. You may find in him

sentences of every possible construction; but, except in his early

plays, you can hardly say that he took to any one mould of structure

more than another. So that his most peculiar feature here is absence

of peculiarity. Thought dominates absolutely the whole material of

expression, working it, shaping it, out-and-out, as clay in the

potter's hands; which has no character but what it receives from the

occasion and purpose of the user. As the Poet cares for nothing but to

"suit the action to the word, the word to the action," so his word

takes on forms as various as the action of his persons; nay, more; is

pliant to all their moods and tenses of thought, passion, feeling, and

volition. Thus, in the structure of his sentences, as in other things,

his language is strictly physiognomic of his matter, the speaking

exterior of the inward life; which life is indeed the one sole

organizing principle of it. Accordingly he has specimens of the most

pithy, piercing, sententious brevity; specimens with all the ample and

rich magnificence of ordered pomp; specimens of terse, restrained, yet

rhythmical, and finely-modulated vigour; specimens of the most copious

and varied choral harmony; specimens of the most quiet, simple, and

pure-flowing melody; now a full burst of the many-voiced lordly organ,

now the softest and mellowest notes of the flute. Not only these, but

all the intermediate, and ever so many surrounding varieties of

structure are met with in his omniformity of sentence-building. In

short, the leaves of a forest are hardly more varied in figure and

make than Shakespeare's sentences; so that if these were all sorted

into rhetorical classes, and named, it would "dizzy the arithmetic of

memory" to run through their names.

The only divisions on this score that I shall attempt to speak of are

those called the Period and the Loose Sentence. Everybody knows, I

presume, that in a periodic sentence, when rightly fashioned, the

sense is not completed till you reach the close; so that the whole has

to be formed in thought before any part is set down. The beginning

forecasts the end, the end remembers the beginning, and all the

intermediate parts are framed with an eye to both beginning and end.

And the nearer it comes to a regular circle, the better it is held to

be. This style of writing, then, may be not unfitly said to go on

wheels. It is naturally rolling and high-sounding, or at least may

easily be made so, and therefore is apt to be in favour with geniuses

of a swelling, oratorical, and elocutionary order. Besides, it is a

style easily imitated, and so is not unfavourable to autorial

equality. On the other hand, the Loose Sentence begins without any

apparent thought of how it is to end, and proceeds with as little

apparent thought of how it began: the sense may stand complete many

times before it gets through: it runs on seemingly at random, winding

at its "own sweet will," though the path it holds is much nearer a

straight line than a circle; and it stops, not where the starting

foresaw, but where the matter so carries it. Thus it is a sort of

lingual straggler, if you please, and may be said to wander with

little or no conscience of the rhetorical toilet.

Shakespeare has many periodic sentences: at first he seems to have

rather affected that structure: in the more serious parts of the plays

written in his earlier style it is so common as to be almost

characteristic of them. But, on the whole, he evidently much preferred

writing in straight lines to writing in circles; and this preference

grew stronger as he ripened in his art; so that in his later

workmanship the periodic construction becomes decidedly rare: and the

reason of his so preferring the linear to the circular structure seems

to have been, not only because the former is the more natural and

spontaneous way of speaking, but also because it offers far more scope

for the proper freedom and variety of English colloquial speech. He

has numberless sentences of exquisite beauty of structure; many indeed

of the circular kind, but far more of the linear; and the beauty of

the latter is purer and higher than that of the former, because it is

much more unconscious and unsought, and comes along of its own accord

in the undivided quest of something else: for, say what you will, the

true law in this matter is just that so well stated by Professor

Shairp in the passage before quoted in a note on page 138: "No one

ever became really beautiful by aiming at beauty. Beauty comes, we

scarce know how, as an emanation from sources deeper than itself." And

so it was with Shakespeare in all respects,--I mean Shakespeare the

master, not Shakespeare the apprentice,--and in none more so than in

the matter of style.

Before quitting this branch of the theme, I will add a few

illustrations. And I will begin with two specimens of the circular

structure; the first being from the night-scene in _The Merchant of

Venice_, v. I:

"For do but note a wild and wanton herd,

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud,

Which is the hot condition of their blood;

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,

Or any air of music touch their ears,

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,

Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,

By the sweet power of music."

The next is from one of Westmoreland's speeches in the Second Part of

_King Henry the Fourth_, iv. 1:

"You, Lord Archbishop,--

Whose See is by a civil peace maintain'd;

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd;

Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd;

Whose white investments figure innocence,

The dove and very blessèd spirit of peace,--

Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself

Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,

Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war?"

Now for some specimens in the linear style. The first is from the

courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda, _The Tempest_, iii. 1:

"I do not know

One of my sex; no woman's face remember,

Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen

More that I may call men, than you, good friend,

And my dear father: how features are abroad,

I'm skilless of; but, by my modesty,--

The jewel in my dower,--I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you;

Nor can imagination form a shape,

Besides yourself, to like of."

The next is from the speech of Cominius to the people on proposing the

hero for Consul, in _Coriolanus_, ii. 2:

"At sixteen years,

When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought

Beyond the mark of others: our then Dictator,

Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight,

When with his Amazonian chin he drove

The bristled lips before him: he bestrid

An o'erpress'd Roman, and i' the Consul's view

Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met,

And struck him on his knee: in that day's feats,

When he might act the woman in the scene,

He prov'd best man i' the field, and for his meed

Was brow-bound with the oak."

The following is from the history of Posthumus given by one of the

Gentlemen in _Cymbeline_, i. 1:

"The King he takes the babe

To his protection; calls him Posthumus Leonatus;

Breeds him, and makes him of his bed-chamber;

Puts to him all the learnings that his time

Could make him the receiver of; which he took,

As we do air, fast as 't was minister'd,

And in his spring became a harvest; liv'd in Court--

Which rare it is to do--most prais'd, most lov'd;

A sample to the youngest; to the more mature

A glass that feated them; and to the graver

A child that guided dotards: to his mistress,

For whom he now is banish'd,--her own price

Proclaims how she esteem'd him and his virtue;

By her election may be truly read

What kind of man he is."

In all these three passages, the structure shapes itself from step to

step as it goes on, one idea starting another, and each clause being

born of the momentary impulse of the under-working vital current;

which is indeed the natural way of unpremeditated, self-forgetting

discourse. There is no care about verbal felicities; none for rounded

adjustment of parts, or nice balancing of members, or for exactness of

pauses and cadences, so as to make the language run smooth on the ear;

or, if there be any care about these things, it is rather a care to

avoid them. This it is that gives to Shakespeare's style such a truly

organic character, in contradistinction to mere pieces of

nicely-adjusted verbal joinery or cabinet-work; so that, as we

proceed, the lingual form seems budding and sprouting at the moving of

the inner mental life; the thought unfolding and branching as the

expression grows, and the expression growing with the growth of the

thought. In short, language with him is not the dress, but the

incarnation of ideas: he does not robe his thoughts with garments

externally cut and fitted to them, but his thoughts robe themselves in

a living texture of flesh and blood.

* * * * *

Hence the wonderful correspondence, so often remarked, between the

Poet's style and the peculiar moods, tempers, motives, and habits of

his characters, as if the language had caught the very grain and

tincture of their minds. So, for instance, we find him rightly making

the most glib-tongued rhetoric proceed from utter falseness of heart;

for men never speak so well, in the elocutionary sense, as when they

are lying; while, on the other hand, "there are no tricks in plain and

simple faith." Thus, in _Macbeth_, when the murder of Duncan is first

announced, we have the hero speaking of it to the Princes, when one of

them asks, "What is amiss?"

"You are, and do not know't:

The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood

Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd."

Of course he words the matter so finely all because he is playing the

hypocrite. Compare with this the quick honest way in which Macduff

dashes out the truth: "Your royal father's murder'd." We have a still

more emphatic instance of the same kind in Goneril and Regan's

hollow-hearted, and therefore highly rhetorical professions of love,

when the doting old King invites his three daughters to an auction of

falsehood, by proposing,

"That we our largest bounty may extend

Where nature doth with merit challenge."

So, again in _Hamlet_, i. 2, the King opens with an elaborate strain

of phrase-making, full of studied and ingenious antitheses; and he

keeps up that style so long as he is using language to conceal his

thoughts; but afterwards, in the same speech, on coming to matters of

business, he falls at once into the direct, simple style of plain

truth and intellectual manhood.

But we have a more curious illustration, though in quite another kind,

in _Macbeth_, iv. 3, where Ross, fresh from Scotland, comes to Macduff

in England:

"_Macd_. Stands Scotland where it did?

_Ross_. Alas, poor country,

Almost afraid to know itself! it cannot

Be call'd our mother, but our grave: where nothing,

But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rend the air,

Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems

A modern ecstasy: the dead man's knell

Is there scarce ask'd for whom; and good men's lives

Expire before the flowers in their caps,

Dying or e'er they sicken.

_Macd_. O, relation

Too nice, and yet too true!"

Here Ross's picked and precise wording of the matter shows his speech

to be the result of meditated preparation; for he has come with his

mind so full of what he was to say, that he could think of nothing

else; and Macduff, with characteristic plainness of ear and tongue,

finds it "too nice." His comment, at once so spontaneous and so apt,

is a delightful touch of the Poet's art; and tells us that

Shakespeare's judgment as well as his genius was at home in the secret

of a perfect style; and that he understood, no man better, the

essential poverty of "fine writing."

Equally apt and characteristic is another speech of Macduff's later in

the same scene, after learning how "all his pretty chickens and their

dam" have been put to death by the tyrant:

"Gentle Heaven,

Cut short all intermission; front to front

Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;

Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape,

Heaven forgive him too."

Macduff is a man of great simplicity, energy, and determination of

character; and here we have all these qualities boiled down to the

highest intensity, as would naturally be the effect of such news on

such a man. And observe how much is implied in that little word

_too_,--"Heaven forgive him too." As much as to say, "Let me once but

have a chance at him, if I don't kill him, then I'm as great a sinner

as he, and so God forgive us both!" I hardly know of another instance

of so great a volume of meaning compressed into so few words. And how

like it is to noble Macduff!

I could fill many pages with examples of this perfect suiting of the

style to the mental states of the dramatic speakers, but must rest

with citing a few more.

Hotspur is proverbially a man of impatient, irascible, headstrong

temper. See now how all this is reflected in the very step of his

language, when he has just been chafed into a rage by what the King

has said to him about the Scottish prisoners:

"Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourg'd with rods,

Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear

Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.

In Richard's time,--what do you call the place?--

A plague upon 't!--it is in Glostershire;--

'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept,

His uncle York;--where I first bow'd my knee

Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke;--

When you and he came back from Ravenspurg.--

Why, what a candy deal of courtesy

This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!

Look, _When his infant fortune came to age_,

And, _Gentle Harry Percy_, and, _Kind cousin_,--

O, the Devil take such cozeners!"

Hotspur's spirit is so all-for-war, that he can think of nothing else;

hence he naturally scorns poetry, though his soul is full of it. But

poetry is so purely an impulse with him, that he is quite unconscious

of it. With Glendower, on the contrary, poetry is a purpose, and he

pursues it consciously. Note, then, in iii. 1, how this poetical mood

shapes and tunes his style, when he interprets his daughter's Welsh

to her English husband:

"She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down,

And rest your gentle head upon her lap,

And she will sing the song that pleaseth you,

And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,

Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness;

Making such difference betwixt wake and sleep,

As is the difference betwixt day and night,

The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team

Begins his golden progress in the East."

Here the whole expression seems born of melody, and the melody to

pervade it as an essence. So, too, in the same scene, Mortimer being

deep in the lyrical mood of honeymoon, see how that mood lives in the

style of what he says about his wife's speaking of Welsh, which is all

Greek to him; her tongue

"Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd,

Sung by a fair queen in a Summer's bower,

With ravishing division, to her lute."

For another instance, take a part of the exiled Duke's speech in _As

You Like It_, ii. 1:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

The Duke is a thoughtful, pensive, kind-hearted man, feeling keenly

the wrong that has been done him, but not at all given to cherishing a

resentful temper; and here, if I mistake not, his language relishes of

the benevolent, meditative, and somewhat sentimental melancholy that

marks his disposition.

Still more to the point, perhaps, is the passage in _Hamlet_, iv. 5,

where Ophelia so touchingly scatters out the secrets of her virgin

heart: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter.--Lord, we know what

we are, but we know not what we may be.--God be at your table!" And

again: "I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot

choose but weep, to think they should lay him i' the cold ground. My

brother shall know of it; and so I thank you for your good

counsel.--Come, my coach!--Good night, ladies; good night, sweet

ladies; good night, good night." A poor, crazed, but still gentle,

sweet-tempered, and delicate-souled girl, quite unconscious of her own

distress, yet still having a dim remembrance of the great sorrows that

have crazed her,--such is Ophelia here; and her very manner of speech

takes the exact colour and tone of her mind.

Probably, however, the best example of all is one that I can but refer

to, it being too long for quotation. It is in the second scene of _The

Tempest_, where Prospero relates to his daughter the story of his past

life, at the same time letting her into the fact and the reasons of

what he has just been doing, and still has in hand to do. The dear

wise old gentleman is here absent-minded, his thoughts being busy and

very intent upon the tempest he has lately got up, and upon the

incoming and forthcoming consequences of it; and he thinks Miranda is

not attentive to what he is saying, because he is but half-attending

to it himself. This subdued mental agitation, and wandering of his

thoughts from the matter his tongue is handling, silently registers

itself in a broken, disjointed, and somewhat rambling course of

narrative; that is, his style runs so in sympathy with his state of

mind as to be unconsciously physiognomic of it. Certainly it is among

the Poet's finest instances of "suiting the word to the action"; while

at the same time it perfectly remembers the "special observance" of

"o'erstepping not the modesty of nature."

* * * * *

Since Homer, no poet has come near Shakespeare in originality,

freshness, opulence, and boldness of imagery. It is this that forms,

in a large part, the surpassing beauty of his poetry; it is in this

that much of his finest idealizing centres. And he abounds in all the

figures of speech known in formal rhetoric, except the Allegory and

the Apologue. The Allegory, I take it, is hardly admissible in

dramatic writing; nor is the Apologue very well suited to the place:

the former, I believe, Shakespeare never uses; and his most

conspicuous instance of the latter, in fact the only one that occurs

to me, is that of the Belly and the Members, so quaintly delivered to

the insurgent people by the juicy old Menenius in the first scene of

_Coriolanus_. But, though Shakespeare largely uses all the other

figures of speech, I shall draw most of what I have to say of his

style in this respect, under the two heads of Simile and Metaphor,

since all that can properly be called imagery is resolvable into

these. Shakespeare uses both a great deal, but the Simile in a way

somewhat peculiar: in fact, as it is commonly used by other poets, he

does not seem to have been very fond of it; and when he admits it, he

generally uses it in the most informal way possible. But, first, at

the risk of seeming pedantic, I will try to make some analysis of the

two figures in question.

Every student knows that the Simile may be regarded as an expanded

Metaphor, or the Metaphor as a condensed Simile. Which implies that

the Metaphor admits of greater brevity. What, then, is the difference?

Now a simile, as the name imports, is a comparison of two or more

things, more or less unlike in themselves, for the purpose of

illustration. The thing illustrated and the thing that illustrates

are, so to speak, laid alongside each other, that the less known may

be made more intelligible by the light of that which is known better.

Here the two parts are kept quite distinct, and a sort of parallel run

between them. And the actions or the qualities of the two things stand

apart, each on their own side of the parallel, those of neither being

ascribed to the other. In a metaphor, on the other hand, the two

parts, instead of lying side by side, are drawn together and

incorporated into one. The idea and the image, the thought and the

illustration, are not kept distinct, but the idea is incarnated in the

image, so that the image bears the same relation to the idea as the

body does to the soul. In other words, the two parts are completely

identified, their qualities interfused and interpenetrating, so that

they become one. Thus a metaphor proceeds by ascribing to a given

object certain actions or qualities which are not literally true of

that object, and which have in reference to it only the truth of

analogy.

To illustrate this. When, in his sonnet composed on Westminster

Bridge, Wordsworth says, "This City now doth, like a garment, wear the

beauty of the morning," the language is a simile in form. If he had

said, This City hath now robed herself in the beauty of the morning,

it would have been in form a metaphor. On the other hand, when in the

same sonnet he says, "The river glideth at his own sweet will," the

language is a metaphor. If in this case he had said, The river floweth

smoothly along, like a man led on by the free promptings of his own

will, it would have been a simile. And so, when Romeo says of

Juliet,--

"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night,

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear";

here we have two metaphors, and also one simile. Juliet cannot be said

literally to teach the torches any thing; but her brightness may be

said to make them, or rather the owner of them ashamed of their

dimness; or she may be said to be so radiant, that the torches, or the

owner of them may learn from her how torches ought to shine. Neither

can it be said literally that her beauty hangs upon the cheek of

night, for the night has no cheek; but it may be said to bear the same

relation to the night as a diamond pendant does to the dark cheek that

sets it off. Then the last metaphor is made one of the parts in a

simile; what is therein expressed being likened to a rich jewel

hanging in an Ethiop's ear. So, too, when Wordsworth apostrophizes

Milton,--

"Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea";--

here we have two similes. But when he says,--

"Unruffled doth the blue lake lie,

The mountains looking on";

and when he says of the birds singing,--

"Clear, loud, and lively is the din,

From social warblers gathering in

Their harvest of sweet lays";

and when he says of his Lucy,--

"The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face";--

in these lines we have four pure and perfect metaphors.

Again: In _Cymbeline_, old Belarius says of the "two princely boys"

that are with him,--

"They are as gentle

As zephyrs, blowing below the violet,

Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,

Their royal blood enchaf'd, as the rud'st wind,

That by the top doth take the mountain pine,

And make him stoop to th' vale."

Here are two similes, of the right Shakespeare mintage. As metaphors

from the same hand, take this from Iachimo's temptation of Imogen,

"This object, which takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye"; and

this from Viola, urging Orsino's suit to the Countess,--

"Holla your name to the reverberate hills,

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out, _Olivia_!"

and this of Cleopatra's with the asp at her bosom,--

"Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,

That sucks the nurse asleep?"

Or, as an instance of both figures together, take the following from

_King Lear_, iv. 3, where the Gentleman describes to Kent the

behaviour of Cordelia on hearing of her father's condition:

"You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears

Were like: a better way,--those happy smilets

That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know

What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence

As pearls from diamonds dropp'd."

Here we have two similes, in the first two and last clauses; and also

two metaphors, severally conveyed in,--"That play'd on her ripe lip,"

and, "What guests were in her eyes." Perhaps I ought to add that a

simile is sometimes merely suggested or implied; as in these lines

from Wordsworth:

"What is glory?--in the socket

See how dying tapers fare!

What is pride?--a whizzing rocket

That would emulate a star.

What is friendship?--do not trust her,

Nor the vows which she has made;

Diamonds dart their brightest lustre

From a palsy-shaken head."

Thus much by way of analyzing the two figures, and illustrating the

difference between them. In all these instances may be seen, I think,

how in a metaphor the intensity and fire of imagination, instead of

placing the two parts side by side, melts them down into one

homogeneous mass; which mass is both of them and neither of them at

the same time; their respective properties being so interwoven and

fused together, that those of each may be affirmed of the other.

I have said that Shakespeare uses the Simile in a way somewhat

peculiar. This may require some explication.--Homer, Virgil, Dante,

Spenser, Milton, and the great Italian poets of the sixteenth century,

all deal largely in what may be styled full-drawn similes; that is,

similes carefully elaborated through all their parts, these being knit

together in a balanced and rounded whole. Here is an instance of what

I mean, from _Paradise Lost_, i.:

"As when the potent rod

Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,

Wav'd round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud

Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,

That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung

Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile;

So numberless where those bad angels seen

Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,

'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires."

This may be fitly taken as a model specimen of the thing; it is

severely classical in style, and is well worthy of the great hand that

made it. Here is another, somewhat different in structure, and not

easy to beat, from Wordsworth's _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, Part ii.:

"Desponding Father! mark this alter'd bough,

So beautiful of late, with sunshine warm'd,

Or moist with dews; what more unsightly now,

Its blossoms shrivell'd, and its fruit, if form'd,

Invisible? yet Spring her genial brow

Knits not o'er that discolouring and decay

As false to expectation. Nor fret thou

At like unlovely process in the May

Of human life: a Stripling's graces blow,

Fade, and are shed, that from their timely fall

(Misdeem it not a cankerous change) may grow

Rich mellow bearings, that for thanks shall call."

It may be worth noting, that the first member of this no less

beautiful than instructive passage contains one metaphor,--"Spring her

genial brow knits not"; and the second two,--"in the May of human

life," and, "a Stripling's graces blow, fade, and are shed." Herein it

differs from the preceding instance; but I take it to be none the

worse for that.

Shakespeare occasionally builds a simile on the same plan; as in the

following from _Measure for Measure_, i. 3:

"Now, as fond fathers,

Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,

Only to stick it in their children's sight

For terror, not to use, in time the rod

Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees,

Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;

And liberty plucks justice by the nose;

The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart

Goes all decorum."

But the Poet does not much affect this formal mode of the thing: he

has comparatively few instances of it; while his pages abound in

similes of the informal mode, like those quoted before. And his

peculiarity in the use of the figure consists partly in what seems not

a little curious, namely, that he sometimes begins with building a

simile, and then runs it into a metaphor before he gets through; so

that we have what may be termed a mixture of the two; that is, he sets

out as if to form the two parts distinct, and ends by identifying

them. Here is an instance from the Second Part of _King Henry the

Fourth_, iv. 1:

"His foes are so enrooted with his friends,

That, plucking to unfix an enemy,

He doth unfasten so and shake a friend.

So that this land, like an offensive wife

That hath enrag'd him on to offer strokes,

As he is striking, holds his infant up,

And hangs resolv'd correction in the arm

That was uprear'd to execution."

And so in _King Henry the Fifth_, ii. 4:

"In cases of defence 'tis best to weigh

The enemy more mighty than he seems:

So the proportions of defence are fill'd;

Which of a weak and niggardly projection,

Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting

A little cloth."

Also in _Hamlet_, iv. 1:

"So much was our love,

We would not understand what was most fit;

But, like the owner of a foul disease,

To keep it from divulging, let it feed

Even on the pith of life."

And somewhat the same again in iii. 4:

"No, in despite of sense and secrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the house's top,

Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,

To try conclusions, in the basket creep,

And break your own neck down."

Something very like this mixing of figures occurs, also, in _Timon of

Athens_, iv. 3:

"But myself,

Who had the world as my confectionary;

The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men

At duty, more than I could frame employment;

That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves

Do on an oak, have with one Winter's brush

Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare

For every storm that blows."

And I suspect that certain passages, often faulted for confusion of

metaphors, are but instances of the same thing, as this:

"Blest are those

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,

That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger

To sound what stop she please."

This feature mainly results, no doubt, from the Poet's aptness or

endeavour to make his style of as highly symbolical a character as

possible without smothering the sense. And by _symbolical_ I here mean

the taking a representative part of a thing, and using it in such a

way as to convey the sense and virtue of the whole. Metaphors are the

strongest and surest mode of doing this; and so keen was the Poet's

quest of this, that his similes, in the very act of forming, often

become half-metaphors, as from a sort of instinct. Thus, instead of

fully forming a simile, he merely _suggests_ it; throwing in just

enough of it to start the thoughts on that track, and then condensing

the whole into a semi-metaphorical shape. Which seems to explain why

it is that these suggestions of similes, notwithstanding the

stereotyped censures of a too formal criticism, seldom trouble any

reader who is so unsophisticated as to care little for the form, so he

be sure of the substance.

* * * * *

The thoughtful student can hardly choose but feel that there is

something peculiar in Shakespeare's metaphors. And so indeed there is.

But the peculiarity is rather in degree than kind. Now the Metaphor,

as before remarked, proceeds upon a likeness in the relations of

things; whereas the Simile proceeds upon a likeness in the things

themselves, which is a very different matter. And so surpassing was

Shakespeare's quickness and acuteness of eye to discern the most

hidden resemblances in the former kind, that he outdoes all other

writers in the exceeding fineness of the threads upon which his

metaphors are often built. In other words, he beats all other poets,

ancient and modern, in constructing metaphors upon the most subtile,

delicate, and unobvious analogies.

Among the English poets, Wordsworth probably stands next to

Shakespeare in the frequency, felicity, originality, and strength of

his metaphorical language. I will therefore quote a few of his most

characteristic specimens, as this seems the fairest way for bringing

out the unequalled virtue of Shakespeare's poetry in this kind.

"With heart as calm as lakes that sleep,

In frosty moonlight glistening;

Or mountain rivers, where they creep

Along a channel smooth and deep,

To their own far-off murmurs listening."

_Memory_.

"Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine."

_To a Skylark_.

"And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,

I love to see the look with which it braves--

Cas'd in th' unfeeling armour of old time--

The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves."

_Peele Castle_.

"Bright gem instinct with music, vocal spark;

The happiest bird that sprang out of the Ark!"

_A Morning Exercise_.

"One who was suffering tumult in his soul,

Yet fail'd to seek the sure relief of prayer,

Went forth,--his course surrendering to the care

Of the fierce wind, while midday lightnings prowl

Insidiously, untimely thunders growl;

While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers tear

The lingering remnants of their yellow hair."

_Mis. Son., Pt. ii_. 15.

"So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense

These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof

Self-pois'd, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells,

Where light and shade repose, where music dwells

Lingering,--and wandering on as loth to die."

"But, from the arms of silence,--list, O list!--

The music bursteth into second life;

The notes luxuriate, every stone is kiss'd

By sound, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife."

_Eccle. Son., Pt. iii_. 43, 44.

"The towering headlands, crown'd with mist,

Their feet among the billows, know

That Ocean is a mighty harmonist."

_Power of Sound_.

"Whate'er

I saw, or heard, or felt, was but a stream

That flow'd into a kindred stream; a gale

Confederate with the current of the soul,

To speed my voyage."

"Past and Future are the wings

On whose support harmoniously conjoin'd

Moves the great spirit of human knowledge."

_Prelude, Book vi_.

"Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream

Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest

Is come, and thou art silent in thy age."

"What art thou, from care

Cast off,--abandon'd by thy rugged Sire,

Nor by soft Peace adopted?"

"Shade of departed Power,

Skeleton of unflesh'd humanity,

The chronicle were welcome that should call

Into the compass of distinct regard

The toils and struggles of thy infant years!"

_Kilchurn Castle_.

"Advance,--come forth from thy Tyrolean ground,

Dear Liberty! stern Nymph of soul untam'd;

Sweet Nymph, O rightly of the mountains nam'd!

Through the long chain of Alps from mound to mound,

And o'er th' eternal snows, like Echo, bound;

Like Echo, when the hunter-train at dawn

Have rous'd her from her sleep; and forest-lawn,

Cliffs, woods, and caves her viewless steps resound,

And babble of her pastime!"

"Ye Storms, resound the praises of your King!

And ye mild Seasons--in a sunny clime,

Midway on some high hill, while father Time

Looks on delighted--meet in festal ring,

And long and loud of Winter's triumph sing!

Sing ye, with blossoms crown'd, and fruits, and flowers,

Of Winter's breath surcharg'd with sleety showers,

And the dire flapping of his hoary wing!

Knit the blithe dance upon the soft green grass;

With feet, hands, eyes, looks, lips, report your gain;

Whisper it to the billows of the main,

And to th' aerial Zephyrs as they pass,

That old decrepit Winter--_He_ hath slain

That Host which render'd all your bounties vain."

_Son. to Lib., Pt. ii_. 10, 35.

In the foregoing passages, the imagery of course loses more or less

of its force and beauty from being cut out of its proper surroundings;

for Wordsworth's poetry, too, is far from being mere gatherings of

finely-carved chips: as a general thing, the several parts of a poem

all rightly know each other as co-members of an organic whole. Far

more must this needs be the case in the passages that follow, inasmuch

as these are from the most dramatic of all writing; so that the virtue

of the imagery is inextricably bound up with the characters and

occasions of the speakers:

"Look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."

_Rom. and Jul., iii_. 5.

"Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:

Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

And death's pale flag is not advancèd there."

"Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe

That unsubstantial Death is amorous;

And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps

Thee here in dark to be his paramour?"

_Ibid., v_. 3.

"My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember'st

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civil at her song;

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid's music."

_Midsum. Night's D., ii_. 1.

"Rush on his host, as doth the melted snow

Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat

The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon."

_King Henry V., iii_. 5.

"His face is all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames of

fire; and his lips plows at his nose, and it is like a coal of

fire, sometimes plue, and sometimes red; but his nose is

executed, and his fire is out." _Ibid., iii_. 6.

"O, then th' Earth shook to see the heavens on fire,

And not in fear of your nativity.

Diseasèd Nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions; oft the teeming Earth

Is with a kind of cholic pinch'd and vex'd

By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,

Shakes the old beldame Earth, and topples down

Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth,

Our grandam Earth, having this distemperature,

In passion shook."

1 _King Henry IV., iii_. 1.

"Let heaven kiss earth! now let not Nature's hand

Keep the wild flood-confin'd! let order die!

And let this world no longer be a stage

To feed contention in a lingering act;

But let one spirit of the first-born Cain

Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set

On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,

And darkness be the burier of the dead!"

2 _King Henry IV., i_. 1.

"An habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

O thou fond many! with what loud applause

Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,

Before he was what thou would'st have him be!

And being now trimm'd in thine own desires,

Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,

That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up.

So, so, thou common dog, did'st thou disgorge

Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;

And now thou would'st eat thy dead vomit up,

And howl'st to find it."

_Ibid., i_. 3.

"But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."

_Hamlet, i_. 1.

"So, haply slander--

Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,

As level as the cannon to his blank,

Transports his poison'd shot--may miss our name,

And hit the woundless air."

_Ibid., iv_. 1.

"Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

The very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it."

_Macbeth, ii_. 1.

"O thou day o' the world,

Chain mine arm'd neck; leap thou, attire and all,

Through proof of harness to my heart, and there

Ride on the pants triúmphing!"

_Ant. and Cleo., iv_. 8.

"For his bounty,

There was no Winter in't; an Autumn 'twas

That grew the more by reaping: his delights

Were dolphin-like; they show'd his back above

The element they liv'd in: in his livery

Walk'd crowns and crownets."

_Ibid., v_. 2.

"The ample proposition that hope makes

In all designs begun on earth below

Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and disasters

Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd."

"Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,

Puffing at all, winnows the light away."

_Troil. and Cres., i_. 3.

"Be as a planetary plague, when Jove

Will o'er some high-vie'd city hang his poison

In the sick air."

"Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes;

Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,

Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,

Shall pierce a jot."

"Common mother, thou,

Whose womb unmeasurable, and infinite breast,

Teems, and feeds all; whose self-same mettle,

Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff'd.

Engenders the black toad and adder blue,

The gilded newt and eyeless venom'd worm;

Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate,

From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root!"

"What, think'st

That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,

Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss'd trees,

That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip where thou point'st out? will the cold brook.

Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,

To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit?"

"O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce

'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler

Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars!

Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer,

Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow

That lies on Dian's lap! thou visible god,

That solder'st close impossibilities,

And mak'st them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue,

To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!

Think, thy slave man rebels; and by thy virtue

Set them into confounding odds, that beasts

May have the world in empire!"

_Timon of Athens, iv_. 3.

Shakespeare's boldness in metaphors is pretty strongly exemplified in

some of the forecited passages; but he has instances of still greater

boldness. Among these may be named Lady Macbeth's--

"Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry _Hold, hold_!"

Here "blanket of the dark" runs to so high a pitch, that divers

critics, Coleridge among them, have been staggered by it, and have

been fain to set it down as a corruption of the text. In this they are

no doubt mistaken: the metaphor is in the right style of Shakespeare,

and, with all its daring, runs in too fair keeping to be ruled out of

the family. Hardly less bold is this of Macbeth's--

"Heaven's cherubin, hors'd

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind."

With these I suspect may be fitly classed, notwithstanding its

delicacy, the following from Iachimo's description of Imogen, when he

comes out of the trunk in her chamber:

"The flame o' the taper

Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids,

To see th' enclosèd lights, now canopied

Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd

With blue of heaven's own tinct."

Also this, from the soliloquy of Posthumus in repentance for the

supposed death of Imogen by his order:

"My conscience, thou art fetter'd

More than my shanks and wrists: you good gods give me

The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,

Then free for ever!"

I add still another example; from one of old Nestor's speeches on the

selection of a champion to fight with the Trojan hero:

"It is suppos'd,

He that meets Hector issues from our choice:

And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,

Makes merit her election; and doth boil,

As 'twere from forth us all, a man distill'd

Out of our virtues."

All these--and I could quote a hundred such--are, to my thinking,

instances of happy and, I will add, even wise audacity: at least, if

there be any overstraining of imagery, I can easily shrive the fault,

for the subtile felicity involved in them. They are certainly quite at

home in the millennium of poetry which Shakespeare created for us;

albeit I can well remember the time when such transcendent raptures

were to me as

"Some joy too fine,

Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness,

For the capacity of my ruder powers."

It would be strange indeed if a man so exceedingly daring did not now

and then overdare. And so I think the Poet's boldness in metaphor

sometimes makes him overbold, or at least betrays him into

infelicities of boldness. Here are two instances, from _The Tempest_,

v. 1:

"The charm dissolves apace;

And as the morning steals upon the night,

Melting the darkness, so their rising senses

Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle

Their clearer reason."

"Their understanding

Begins to swell; and the approaching tide

Will shortly fill the reasonable shore

That now lies foul and muddy."

And here is another, of perhaps still more questionable character,

from _Macbeth_, i. 7:

"His two chamberlains

Will I with wine and wassail so convince,

That memory, the warder of the brain,

Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason

A limbeck only."

What, again, shall be said of the two following, where Coriolanus

snaps off his fierce scorn of the multitude?--

"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,

That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,

Make yourselves scabs?"

"So shall my lungs

Coin words till their decay against those measles,

Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought

The very way to catch them."

Either from overboldness in the metaphors, or from some unaptness in

the material of them, I have to confess that my mind rather rebels

against these stretches of poetical prerogative. Still more so,

perhaps, in the well-known passage of _King Henry the Fifth_, iv. 3;

though I am not sure but, in this case, the thing rightly belongs to

the speaker's character:

"And those that leave their valiant bones in France,

Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,

They shall be fam'd; for there the Sun shall greet them,

And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;

Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,

The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.

Mark, then, abounding valour in our English;

That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,

Break out into a second course of mischief,

Killing in rélapse of mortality."

But, whatever be the right mark to set upon these and some other

instances, I find but few occasions of such revolt; and my only wonder

is, how any mere human genius could be so gloriously audacious, and

yet be so seldom chargeable with passing the just bounds of poetical

privilege.

Metaphors are themselves the aptest and clearest mode of expressing

much in little. No other form of speech will convey so much thought in

so few words. They often compress into a few words what would else

require as many sentences. But even such condensations of meaning did

not--so it appears--always answer Shakespeare's purpose: he sometimes

does hardly more than _suggest_ metaphors, throwing off several of

them in quick succession. We have an odd instance of this in one of

Falstaff's speeches, Second Part of _King Henry the Fourth_, i. 2:

"Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance,

and the lightness of his wife shines through it: and yet cannot he

see, though he have his own lantern to light him." Here we have a

thick-coming series of punning metaphors, all merely suggested. So

Brutus, when hunting after reasons for killing Cæsar: "It is the

bright day that brings forth the adder." Here the metaphor suggested

is, that the sunshine of kingly power will develop a venomous serpent

in the hitherto noble Julius. So, again, Cleopatra, when Antony dies:

"O, see, my women, the crown o' the earth doth melt";--"O, wither'd is

the garland of the war, the soldier's pole is fall'n";--"Look, our

lamp is spent, it's out." And so in Macbeth's,--"The wine of life is

drawn, and the mere lees is left this vault to brag of";--"Better be

with the dead than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless

ecstasy";--"Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful

day." Also one of the Thanes, when they are about to make their

ultimate set-to against Macbeth:

"Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal;

And with him pour we in our country's purge

Each drop of us."

_Macbeth_ indeed has more of this character than any other of the

Poet's dramas; he having judged, apparently, that such a style of

suggested images was the best way of _symbolizing_ such a wild-rushing

torrent of crimes, remorses, and retributions as that tragedy consists

of.

Near akin to these is a number of passages like the following from one

of Antony's speeches:

"The hearts

That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave

Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets

On blossoming Cæsar; and this pine is bark'd,

That overtopp'd them all."

Here we have several distinct images merely suggested, and coming so

thick withal, that our powers might be swamped but for the prodigious

momentum or gale of thought that carries us through. I am aware that

several such passages have often been censured as mere jumbles of

incongruous metaphors; but they do not so strike any reader who is so

unconscientious of rhetorical formalities as to care only for the

meaning of what he reads; though I admit that perhaps no mental

current less deep and mighty than Shakespeare's would waft us clean

over such thought-foundering passages.

* * * * *

There is one other trait of the Poet's style which I must briefly

notice. It is the effect of some one leading thought or predominant

feeling in silently modifying the language, and drawing in sympathetic

words and phrases by unmarked threads of association. Thus in the

hero's description of Valeria, in _Coriolanus_, v. 3:

"The noble sister of Publicola,

The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,

That's curded by the frost from purest snow,

And hangs on Dian's temple."

Here, of course, the leading thought is chastity; and observe how, as

by a kind of silent sympathy, all the words and images are selected

and toned in perfect unison with that thought, so that the whole may

be said literally to relish of nothing else. Something of the same,

though in a manner perhaps still better, because less pronounced,

occurs in _As You Like It_, ii. 1, where, the exiled Duke having

expressed his pain that the deer, "poor dappled fools, being native

burghers of this desert city," should on their own grounds "have their

round haunches gor'd," one of the attendant lords responds:

"Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that.

To-day, my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under an oak whose antique root peeps out

Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;

To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,

That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,

Did come to languish: and indeed, my lord,

The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,

That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat

Almost to bursting; and the big round tears

Cours'd one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,

Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,

Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,

Augmenting it with tears."

Here the predominant feeling of the speaker is that of kindred or

half-brotherhood with the deer; and such words as _languish, groans,

coat, tears, innocent_, and _hairy fool_, dropping along so quietly,

impart a sort of semi-humanizing tinge to the language, so that the

very pulse of his feeling seems beating in its veins.

The Poet has a great many passages from which this feature might be

illustrated. And it often imparts a very peculiar charm to his

poetry;--a charm the more winning, and the more wholesome too, for

being, I will not say unobtrusive, but hardly perceptible; acting like

a soft undertone accompaniment of music, which we are kept from

noticing by the delicate concert of thought and feeling it insensibly

kindles and feeds within us. Thus the Poet touches and rallies all our

most hidden springs of delight to his purpose, and makes them

unconsciously tributary to the refreshment of the hour; stealing fine

inspirations into us, which work their effect upon the soul without

prating of their presence, and not unlike the virtue that lets not the

left hand know what the right hand doeth. And all this, let me tell

you, is a very different thing from merely making "the sound an echo

to the sense,"--as much better too as it is different.

* * * * *

Everybody conversant with the subject knows that an author's style, if

genuine, (and it is not properly a style, but a mannerism, if

ungenuine,) is a just measure of his mind, and an authentic

registration of all his faculties and forces. It has indeed passed

into a proverb, that "the style is the man." And there is no other

English writing, probably no uninspired writing in the world, of which

this is so unreservedly true as of Shakespeare's; and this, because

his is the most profoundly genuine: here the style--I mean in his

characteristic pieces--is all his own,--rooted perfectly in and

growing entirely from the man himself,--and has no borrowed sap or

flavour whatever. And as he surpasses all others alike in breadth and

delicacy of perception, in sweep and subtilty of thought, in vastness

of grasp and minuteness of touch, in fineness of fibre and length and

strength of line; so all these are faithfully reflected in his use of

language. There is none other so overwhelming in its power, none so

irresistible in its sweetness. If his intellect could crush the

biggest and toughest problems into food, his tongue was no less able

to voice in all fitting accents the results of that tremendous

digestion. Coleridge, the profoundest of critics, calls him "an

oceanic mind," and this language, as expressing the idea of

multitudinous unity, is none too big for him; Hallam, the severest of

critics, describes him as "thousand-souled," and this has grown into

common use as no more than just; another writer makes his peculiarity

to consist in "an infinite delicacy of mind"; and whatsoever of truth

and fitness there may be in any or all of these expression's has a

just exponent in his style.

All which may suffice to explain why it is that Shakespeare's style

has no imitators. He were indeed a very hardy or else a very imbecile

man, who should undertake to imitate it. All the other great English

poets, however, have been imitated in this respect, and some of them

with no little success. Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_, for example,

is an avowed imitation of Spenser; and that, I think, is Thomson's

best poem. Beattie's _Minstrel_, too, is another happy imitation of

the same great original. I cannot say so much for any of Milton's or

Wordsworth's imitators, though both have had many of them. But no one,

apparently, ever thinks of trying to tilt in Shakespeare's Titanic

armour.