, severe,
copious, sententious_, can be rightly applied to him, at least not as
characteristic of him. His style is all of them by turns, and much
more besides; but no one of the traits signified by those terms is so
continuous or prominent as to render the term in any sort fairly
discriminative or descriptive of his diction.

Under this head, then, I am to remark, first, that Shakespeare's
language is as far as possible from being of a constant and uniform
grain. His style seems to have been always in a sort of fluid and
formative state. Except in two or three of his earliest plays, there
is indeed a certain common basis, for which we have no word but
_Shakespearian_, running through his several periods of writing; but
upon this basis more or less of change is continually supervening. So
that he has various distinct styles, corresponding to his different
stages of ripeness in his work. These variations, to be sure, are
nowise abrupt: the transition from one to another is gradual and
insensible, proceeding by growth, not by leaps: but still, after an
interval of six or seven years, the difference becomes clearly marked.
It will suffice for my purpose to speak of them all under the
threefold distinction of earlier, middle, and later styles. And I
probably cannot do better than to take _King Richard the Second, As
You Like It_, and _Coriolanus_, as representing, severally, those
three divisions.

Shakespeare began by imitating the prevailing theatrical style of the
time. He wrote in much the same way as those before and about him did,
till by experience and practice he found out a better way of his own.
It is even doubtful whether his first imitations surpassed his models.
In _Titus Andronicus_, the First Part of _King Henry the Sixth_, and
_The Comedy of Errors_, if there be any thing of the right
Shakespearian idiom, it is so overlaid by what he had caught from
others as to be hardly discoverable. Accordingly those pieces seem to
me little better than worthless, save as specimens of his
apprentice-work. In _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, also, _Loves
Labour's Lost_, and _The Taming of the Shrew_, imitation has decidedly
the upper hand; though in these plays, especially the latter, we have
clear prognostics of the forthcoming dramatic divinity. From thence
onward his style kept growing less imitative and more idiomatic till
not the least taste or relish of the former remained. So that in this
respect his course was in