do full justice to their
parts:[27] on the other hand, reason, with all its conceit of itself,
has become too timid to tolerate such bold irony; it is always careful
lest the mantle of its gravity should be disturbed in any of its
folds; and rather than allow a privileged place to folly beside
itself, it has unconsciously assumed the part of the ridiculous; but,
alas! a heavy and cheerless ridicule.[28] It would be easy to make a
collection of the excellent sallies and biting sarcasms which have
been preserved of celebrated court fools. It is well known that they
frequently told such truths to princes as are never now told to
them.[29] Shakespeare's fools, along with somewhat of an overstraining
for wit, which cannot altogether be avoided when wit becomes a
separate profession, have for the most part an incomparable humor and
an infinite abundance of intellect, enough indeed to supply a whole
host of ordinary wise men.

I have still a few observations to make on the diction and
versification of our poet. The language is here and there somewhat
obsolete, but on the whole much less so than in most of the
contemporary writers--a sufficient proof of the goodness of his
choice. Prose had as yet been but little cultivated, as the learned
generally wrote in Latin--a favorable circumstance for the dramatic
poet; for what has he to do with the scientific language of books? He
had not only read, but studied, the earlier English poets; but he drew
his language immediately from life itself, and he possessed a masterly
skill in blending the dialogical element with the highest poetical
elevation. I know not what certain critics mean, when they say that
Shakespeare is frequently ungrammatical. To make good their assertion,
they must prove that similar constructions never occur in his
contemporaries, the direct contrary of which can, however, be easily
shown. In no language is everything determined on principle; much is
always left to the caprice of custom, and if this has since changed,
is the poet to be made answerable for it? The English language had not
then attained to that correct insipidity which has been introduced
into the more recent literature of the country, to the prejudice,
perhaps, of its originality. As a field when first brought under the
plough produces, along with the fruitful shoots, many luxuriant weeds,
so the poetical diction of the day ran occasionally into extravagance,
but an extravagance originating in the e