m of the Elizabethan age--that pride of dainty
language and curious expression, which it is very easy to ridicule,
which often made itself ridiculous, but which had below it a real sense
of fitness and nicety; and which, as we see in this very play, and
still more clearly in the Sonnets, had some fascination for the young
Shakespeare himself. It is this foppery of delicate language, this
fashionable plaything of his time, with which Shakespeare is occupied
in Love's Labours Lost. He shows us the manner in all its stages;
passing from the grotesque and vulgar pedantry of Holofernes, through
the extravagant but polished caricature of Armado, to become the
peculiar characteristic of a real though still quaint poetry in Biron
himself, who is still chargeable even at his best with just a little
affectation. As Shakespeare laughs broadly at it in Holofernes or
Armado, so he [166] is the analyst of its curious charm in Biron; and
this analysis involves a delicate raillery by Shakespeare himself at
his own chosen manner.

This "foppery" of Shakespeare's day had, then, its really delightful
side, a quality in no sense "affected," by which it satisfies a real
instinct in our minds--the fancy so many of us have for an exquisite
and curious skill in the use of words. Biron is the perfect flower of
this manner:

A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight:

--as he describes Armado, in terms which are really applicable to
himself. In him this manner blends with a true gallantry of nature,
and an affectionate complaisance and grace. He has at times some of
its extravagance or caricature also, but the shades of expression by
which he passes from this to the "golden cadence" of Shakespeare's own
most characteristic verse, are so fine, that it is sometimes difficult
to trace them. What is a vulgarity in Holofernes, and a caricature in
Armado, refines itself with him into the expression of a nature truly
and inwardly bent upon a form of delicate perfection, and is
accompanied by a real insight into the laws which determine what is
exquisite in language, and their root in the nature of things. He can
appreciate quite the opposite style--

In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes;

he knows the first law of pathos, that

Honest plain words best suit the ear of grief.

[167] He delights in his own rapidity of intuition; and, in harmony
with the half-sensuous philosophy of the Sonnets, exalts, a little
scornfully, in m