e a failure, we may the better
understand that his greatest power consisted in revealing the moral
victories possible for this rough-hewn human life.

Shakespeare made a mistake about the seacoast of Bohemia and the
location of Milan with reference to the sea, but he was always sure of
the relative position of right and wrong and of the ultimate failure
of evil. In his greatest plays, for instance, in _Macbeth_, he sought
to impress the incalculable danger of meddling with evil, the
impossibility of forecasting the tragedy that might thereby result,
the certainty that retribution would follow, either here or beyond
"this bank and shoal of time."

Mastery of his Mother Tongue.--His wealth of expression is another
striking characteristic. In a poem on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson wrote:--

"Thou had'st small Latin and less Greek."

Shakespeare is, however, the mightiest master of the English tongue.
He uses 15,000 different words, while the second greatest writer in
our language employs only 7000. A great novelist like Thackeray has a
vocabulary of about 5000 words, while many uneducated laborers do not
use over 600 words. The combinations that Shakespeare has made with
these 15,000 words are far more striking than their mere number.

Variety of Style.--The style of Milton, Addison, Dr. Johnson, and
Macaulay has some definite peculiarities, which can easily be
classified. Shakespeare, on the contrary, in holding the mirror up to
nature, has different styles for his sailors, soldiers, courtiers,
kings, and shepherds,--for Juliet, the lover; for Mistress Quickly,
the alewife; for Hamlet, the philosopher; and for Bottom, the weaver.
To employ so many styles requires genius of a peculiar kind. In the
case of most of us, our style would soon betray our individuality.
When Dr. Samuel Johnson tried to write a drama, he made all his little
fishes talk like whales, as Goldsmith wittily remarked.

In the same play Shakespeare's style varies from the dainty lyric
touch of Ariel's song about the cowslip's bell and the blossoming
bough, to a style unsurpassed for grandeur:--

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

In the same passage his note immediately changes to the soft _vox
humana_ of--

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and