The list of apa? ?e?? mue?a—­that is, words used once and only once—­in Shakespeare is surprisingly long.  It embraces a greater multitude than any man can easily number.  Nevertheless, I have counted those beginning with two letters.  The result is that the apa? ?e?? mue?a with initial a are 364, and those with initial m are 310.  There is no reason, that I know of, to suppose the census with these initials to be proportionally larger than that with other letters.  If it is not, then the words occurring only once in all Shakespeare cannot be less than five thousand, and they are probably a still greater legion.

The number I have culled from one hundred and forty-six pages of Schmidt is 674.  At this rate the total on the fourteen hundred and nine pages of the entire Lexicon would foot up 6504.  It is possible, then, that Shakespeare discarded, after once trying them, more different words than fill and enrich the whole English Bible.  The old grammarians tell us that a certain part of speech was called supine, because it was very seldom needed, and therefore almost always lying on its back—­i.e. in Latin, supinus.  The supines of Shakespeare outnumber the employes of most authors.

The array of Shakespearian apa? ?e?? mue?a appears still vaster if we compare it with expressions of the same nature in the Scriptures and in Homer.  In the English Bible words with the initials a and m used once only are 132 to 674 with the same initials in Shakespeare.  The scriptural once-onlys would be more than twice as many as we find them were they as frequent in proportion to their total vocabulary as his are.

The Homeric apa? ?e?? mue?a with initial m are 78, but were they as numerous in proportion to Homer’s whole world of words as Shakespeare’s are, they would run up to 186; that is, to more than twice as many as their actual number.

In the Greek New Testament I have enumerated 63 apa? ?e?? mue?a beginning with the letter m—­a larger number than you would expect, for it is as large as that in both English Testaments beginning with that same letter, which is also exactly 63.  It indicates a wider range of expression in the authors of the Greek original than in their English translators.

The 310 Shakespearian words with initial m used once only I have also compared with the whole verbal inventory of our language so far as it begins with that letter.  They make up one-fifth almost of that entire stock, which musters in Webster only 1641 words.  You will at once inquire, “What is the nature of these rejected Shakespearian vocables, which he seems to have viewed as milk that would bear no more than one skimming?”