_mammering_,
hesitating; _mountant_, raised up; _mered_, only; _man-entered_, grown
up.

About one-tenth of the remaining _apa? ?e?? mue?a_ with initial _m_ are
descriptive compounds. Among them are the following adjectives:
_Maiden-tongued, maiden-widowed, man-entered_ (before noted as
obsolete), _many-headed, marble-breasted, marble-constant,
marble-hearted, marrow-eating, mean-apparelled, merchant-marring,
mercy-lacking, mirth-moving, moving-delicate, mock-water, more-having,
mortal-breathing, mortal-living, mortal-staring, motley-minded,
mouse-eaten, moss-grown, mouth-filling, mouth-made, muddy-mettled,
momentary-swift, maid-pale_. From this list, which is nearly complete,
it is evident that such compounds as may be multiplied at will form but
a small fraction of the words that are used _once only_ by Shakespeare.

The words used _once only_ by Shakespeare are often so beautiful and
poetical that we wonder how they could fail to be his favorites again
and again. They are jewels that might hang twenty years before our eyes,
yet never lose their lustre. Why were they never shown but once? They
remind me of the exquisite crystal bowl from which I saw a Jewess and
her bridegroom drink in Prague, and which was then dashed in pieces on
the floor of the synagogue, or of the Chigi porcelain painted by
Raphael, which as soon as it had been once removed from the Farnesina
table was thrown into the Tiber. To what purpose was this waste? Why
should they be used up with once using? Specimens of this sort, which
all poets but Shakespeare would have paraded as pets many a time, are
multifarious. Among a hundred others never used but once, we have
_magical, mirthful, mightful, mirth-moving, moonbeams, moss-grown,
mundane, motto, matin, mural, multipotent, mourningly, majestically,
marbled, martyred, mellifluous, mountainous, meander, magnificence,
magnanimity, mockable, merriness, masterdom, masterpiece, monarchize,
menaces, marrowless_.

Again, a majority of Shakespearian _apa? ?e?? mue?a_ being familiar to us
as household words, it seems impossible that he who had tried them once
should have need of them no more. Instances--all with initial _m_--are
as follows: _mechanics, machine, maxim, mission, mode, monastic, marsh,
magnify, malcontent, majority, manly, malleable, malignancy, maritime,
manna, manslaughter, masterly, market-day-folks, maid-price, mealy,
meekly, mercifully, merchant-like, memorial, mercenary, mention,
memor