rewithal the language was then
in just its freshest state of maturity; flexible to all the turns of
philosophical and poetical discourse; full of vital sap and flavour;
its cheeks plump and rosy, its step light and graceful, with health:
pedants and grammarians had not starched and ironed it into
self-conscious dignity and primness: it had not learnt the vice of
putting on literary airs, and of practising before a looking-glass.
Our translation of the Bible is enough of itself to prove all this,
even if we had no other monuments of the fact. And the Elizabethan
English was a right joyous and jolly tongue also, as became the heart
of brave, honest, merry old England; yet it was earnest and candid
withal, and had in no sort caught the French disease of vanity and
persiflage: it was all alive, too, with virgin sensibility and
imaginative delicacy; to say nothing of how Spenser found or made it
as melodious and musical as Apollo's lute.

Shakespeare has many passages, some of them running to considerable
length, made up almost wholly of Saxon words. Again, he has not a few
wherein the Latin largely shares. Yet I can hardly see that in either
case any thing of vigour and spirit is lost. On the other hand, I can
often see a decided increase of strength and grasp resulting in part
from a judicious mixing and placing of the two elements. I cite a few
passages in illustration; the first two being from _King Lear_, the
third from _Antony and Cleopatra_:

"Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,
To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw?"

"We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgivness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of Court news; and we'll talk with them too,--
Who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out;--
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by th' Moon."

"Henceforth
The white hand of a lady fever thee,
Shake thou to look on't. Get thee back to Caesar,
Tell him thy entertainment: look thou say