One always fancies
Shakespeare _in_ his best verses, and Milton at the key-board of his
organ. Shakespeare's language is no longer the mere vehicle of thought,
it has become part of it, its very flesh and blood. The pleasure it gives
us is unmixed, direct, like that from the smell of a flower or the flavor
of a fruit. Milton sets everywhere his little pitfalls of bookish
association for the memory. I know that Milton's manner is very grand. It
is slow, it is stately, moving as in triumphal procession, with music,
with historic banners, with spoils from every time and every region, and
captive epithets, like huge Sicambrians, thrust their broad shoulders
between us and the thought whose pomp they decorate. But it is manner,
nevertheless, as is proved by the ease with which it is parodied, by the
danger it is in of degenerating into mannerism whenever it forgets
itself. Fancy a parody of Shakespeare,--I do not mean of his words, but
of his _tone_, for that is what distinguishes the master. You might as
well try it with the Venus of Melos. In Shakespeare it is always the
higher thing, the thought, the fancy, that is pre-eminent; it is Caesar
that draws all eyes, and not the chariot in which he rides, or the throng
which is but the reverberation of his supremacy.
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