Page:Moral Obligation to be Intelligent.djvu/109



In these felicities, however, Shakspere surpassed but little the other poets of his time, who improved their vocabulary and style, as we nowadays would do, by taking thought. Any one with an ordinary ear for word-music could effect some such happy combinations of sound. If he should occasionally miss the mark, so also did Shakspere; immediately before and after these quoted lines occur others far less happy. That he excelled at all in the practice of Euphuism, that he had a higher average of happy lines to his credit than others in that fashion, is proof only of his delight in language for its own sake—a delight that is common in some degree to all poets.

Even in the highly Euphuistic