There are hundreds of naked, vulgar-looking dwellings, scattered up and down our country highroads, which only need a little deft and adroit adaptation of the hospitable feature which I have made the subject of this paper, to assume an air of modest grace, in place of the present indecorous exposure of a wanton.

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=_Richard Grant White,[56] 1822-._=

From “Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare.”

=_240._= THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE’S STYLE.

Writing for the general public, he used such language as would convey his meaning to his auditors,—­the common phraseology of his period.  But what a language was that!  In its capacity for the varied and exact expression of all moods of mind, all forms of thought, all kinds of emotion, a tongue unequaled by any other known to literature!  A language of exhaustless variety; strong without ruggedness, and flexible without effeminacy.  A manly tongue; yet bending itself gracefully and lovingly to the tenderest and the daintiest needs of woman, and capable of giving utterance to the most awful and impressive thoughts, in homely words that come from the lips, and go to the heart, of childhood.  It would seem as if this language had been preparing itself for centuries to be the fit medium of utterance for the world’s greatest poet.  Hardly more than a generation had passed since the English tongue had reached its perfect maturity; just time enough to have it well worked into the unconscious usage of the people, when Shakespeare appeared, to lay upon it a burden of thought which would test its extremest capability.  He found it fully formed and developed, but not yet uniformed and cramped and disciplined by the lexicographers and rhetoricians,—­those martinets of language, who seem to have lost for us in force and flexibility as much as they have gained for us in precision.  The phraseology of that day was notably large and simple among ordinary writers and speakers.  Among the college-bred writers and their imitators, there was too great a fondness for little conceits; but even with them this was an extraneous blemish, like that sometimes found in the ornament upon a noble building.  Shakespeare seized this instrument to whose tones all ears were open, and with the touch of a master he brought out all its harmonies.  It lay ready to any hand; but his was the first to use it with absolute control; and among all its successors, great as some are, he has had, even in this single respect, no rival.  No unimportant condition of his supreme mastery over expression was his entire freedom from restraint—­it may almost be said from consciousness—­in the choice of language.  He was no precisian, no etymologist, no purist.  He was not purposely writing literature.  The only criticism that he feared was that of his audience, which represented the English people of all grades above the peasantry.  These he wished should not find his writing incomprehensible or dull:  no more.  If we except the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare wrote the best English that has yet been written.