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: