the _multitudinous_ seas
_incarnadine_,' etc.? of the guttural emphasis, expressive of
detestation, in the speech of Coriolanus to the rabble?--'You _c_ommon
_c_ry of _c_urs! whose breath I _h_ate as _r_eek o' the _r_otten fens,'
etc.

An interesting compilation might be made from the Plays, of passages
expressive of strong passion of various kinds, the several vocabularies
of which testify to Shakespeare's having imaginatively or actually
voiced what he wrote. The speech of the Bastard to Hubert, in King John
(A. iv. S. 3), is a signal example:

_Bastard._ Here's a good world!--Knew you of this fair work?
Beyond the infinite and boundless reach
Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,
Art thou damn'd, Hubert.

_Hubert._ Do but hear me, sir.

_Bastard._ Ha! I'll tell thee what;
Thou'rt damn'd as black--nay, nothing is so black;
Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer:
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell
As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.

I fancy that Shakespeare had a fine voice. If he had not, it is quite
certain that he had the highest estimate and appreciation of the voice
as the organ of the soul. His creative spirit, too, attracted to itself
the most effective vocabulary for the vocal expression of every kind of
passion--the most effective by reason of their monosyllabic or their
polysyllabic character, of their vowel or their consonantal elements. To
him, language was for the ear, not for the eye. The written word was to
him what it was to Socrates, 'the mere image or phantom of the living
and animated word.' (Note 8.)

The art of printing has caused language to be overmuch transferred from
its true domain, the sense of hearing, to the sense of sight. The lofty
idealized language of poetry is known, in these days, chiefly through
the eye, and its true power is consequently quiescent for the generality
of silent readers. In silent reading, an appreciation of matter and
form must be largely due to an imaginative transference to the ear of
what is taken in by the eye.

The impression seems to be getting stronger and stronger, in these days
of excessive teaching and excessive learning, that no one can do
anything or learn anything without being taught,--without 'taking a
regular course,' as the phrase is. This seems to be especially true in
the matter of vocal cultivation. People go to schools of oratory with
nothing within themselve