on proposing the
hero for Consul, in _Coriolanus_, ii. 2:

"At sixteen years,
When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought
Beyond the mark of others: our then Dictator,
Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight,
When with his Amazonian chin he drove
The bristled lips before him: he bestrid
An o'erpress'd Roman, and i' the Consul's view
Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met,
And struck him on his knee: in that day's feats,
When he might act the woman in the scene,
He prov'd best man i' the field, and for his meed
Was brow-bound with the oak."

The following is from the history of Posthumus given by one of the
Gentlemen in _Cymbeline_, i. 1:

"The King he takes the babe
To his protection; calls him Posthumus Leonatus;
Breeds him, and makes him of his bed-chamber;
Puts to him all the learnings that his time
Could make him the receiver of; which he took,
As we do air, fast as 't was minister'd,
And in his spring became a harvest; liv'd in Court--
Which rare it is to do--most prais'd, most lov'd;
A sample to the youngest; to the more mature
A glass that feated them; and to the graver
A child that guided dotards: to his mistress,
For whom he now is banish'd,--her own price
Proclaims how she esteem'd him and his virtue;
By her election may be truly read
What kind of man he is."

In all these three passages, the structure shapes itself from step to
step as it goes on, one idea starting another, and each clause being
born of the momentary impulse of the under-working vital current;
which is indeed the natural way of unpremeditated, self-forgetting
discourse. There is no care about verbal felicities; none for rounded
adjustment of parts, or nice balancing of members, or for exactness of
pauses and cadences, so as to make the language run smooth on the ear;
or, if there be any care about these things, it is rather a care to
avoid them. This it is that gives to Shakespeare's style such a truly
organic character, in contradistinction to mere pieces of
nicely-adjusted verbal joinery or cabinet-work; so that, as we
proceed, the lingual form seems budding and sprouting at the moving of
the inner mental life; the thought unfolding and branching as the
expression grows, and the expression growing with the growth of the
thought. In short, language with him is not the d