It may be reckoned one of the rarest
pieces of good-luck that ever fell to the share of a race, that (as was
true of Shakspeare) its most rhythmic genius, its acutest intellect,
its profoundest imagination, and its healthiest understanding should
have been combined in one man, and that he should have arrived at the
full development of his powers at the moment when the material in which
he was to work--that wonderful composite called English, the best
result of the confusion of tongues--was in its freshest perfection. The
English-speaking nations should build a monument to the misguided
enthusiasts of the Plain of Shinar; for, as the mixture of many bloods
seems to have made them the most vigorous of modern races, so has the
mingling of divers speeches given them a language which is perhaps the
noblest vehicle of poetic thought that ever existed.
Had Shakspeare been born fifty years earlier, he would have been
cramped by a book-language, not yet flexible enough for the demands of
rhythmic emotion, not yet sufficiently popularized for the natural and
familiar expression of supreme thought, not yet so rich in metaphysical
phrase as to render possible that ideal representation of the great
passions which is the aim and end of Art, not yet subdued by practice
and general consent to a definiteness of accentuation essential to ease
and congruity of metrical arrangement.
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