his mightier brother.

II.

The second period is that of perfection in comic and historic style. The
final heights and depths of tragedy, with all its reach of thought and
all its pulse of passion, are yet to be scaled and sounded; but to this
stage belongs the special quality of faultless, joyous, facile command
upon each faculty required of the presiding genius for service or for
sport. It is in the middle period of his work that the language of
Shakespeare is most limpid in its fullness, the style most pure, the
thought most transparent through the close and luminous raiment of
perfect expression. The conceits and crudities of the first stage are
outgrown and cast aside; the harshness and obscurity which at times may
strike us as among the notes of his third manner have as yet no place in
the flawless work of this second stage. That which has to be said is not
yet too great for perfection of utterance; passion has not yet grappled
with thought in so close and fierce an embrace as to strain and rend the
garment of words, though stronger and subtler than ever was woven of
human speech. Neither in his first nor in his last stage would the style
of Shakespeare, even were it possible by study to reproduce it, be of
itself a perfect and blameless model; but his middle style, that in which
the typical plays of his second period are written, would be, if it were
possible to imitate, the most absolute pattern that could be set before
man. I do not speak of mere copyist's work, the parasitic knack of
retailing cast phrases, tricks and turns of accent, cadences and
catchwords proper only to the natural manner of the man who first came by
instinct upon them, and by instinct put them to use; I speak of that
faithful and fruitful discipleship of love with which the highest among
poets and the most original among workmen have naturally been always the
first to study and the most earnest to follow the footsteps of their
greatest precursors in that kind. And this only high and profitable form
of study and discipleship can set before itself, even in the work of
Shakespeare, no pattern so perfect, no model so absolute, as is afforded
by the style or manner of his second period.

To this stage belong by spiritual right if not by material, by rule of
poetic order if not by date of actual succession, the greatest of his
English histories and four of his greatest and most perfect comedies; the
four greatest we might properl