xuberance of its vigor. We may
still perceive traces of awkwardness, but nowhere of a labored and
spiritless display of art. In general, Shakespeare's style yet remains
the very best model, both in the vigorous and sublime, and the
pleasing and tender. In his sphere he has exhausted all the means and
appliances of language. On all he has impressed the stamp of his
mighty spirit. His images and figures, in their unsought, nay,
uncapricious singularity, have often a sweetness altogether peculiar.
He becomes occasionally obscure from too great fondness for compressed
brevity; but still, the labor of poring over Shakespeare's lines will
invariably meet an ample requital.

The verse in all his plays is generally the rhymeless iambic of ten or
eleven syllables, only occasionally intermixed with rhymes, but more
frequently alternating with prose. No one piece is written entirely in
prose; for even in those which approach the most to the pure Comedy,
there is always something added which gives them a more poetical hue
than usually belongs to this species. Many scenes are wholly in prose,
in others verse and prose succeed each other alternately. This can
appear an impropriety only in the eyes of those who are accustomed to
consider the lines of a drama like so many soldiers drawn up rank and
file on a parade, with the same uniform, arms, and accoutrements, so
that when we see one or two we may represent to ourselves thousands as
being every way like them.

In the use of verse and prose Shakespeare observes very nice
distinctions according to the ranks of the speakers, but still more
according to their characters and disposition of mind. A noble
language, elevated above the usual tone, is suitable only to a certain
decorum of manners, which is thrown over both vices and virtues and
which does not even wholly disappear amidst the violence of passion.
If this is not exclusively possessed by the higher ranks, it still,
however, belongs naturally more to them than to the lower; and
therefore, in Shakespeare, dignity and familiarity of language,
poetry, and prose, are in this manner distributed among the
characters. Hence his tradesmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors,
servants, but more especially his fools and clowns, speak, almost
without exception, in the tone of their actual life. However, inward
dignity of sentiment, wherever it is possessed, invariably displays
itself with a nobleness of its own, and stands not in need, for that