The Cabalists had a notion, that whoever found out the mystic word for anything attained to absolute mastery over that thing. The reverse of this is certainly true of poetic expression; for he who is thoroughly possessed of his thought, who imaginatively conceives an idea or image, becomes master of the word that shall most amply and fitly utter it. Heminge and Condell tell us, accordingly, that there was scarce a blot in the manuscripts they received from Shakspeare; and this is the natural corollary from the fact that such an imagination as his is as unparalleled as the force, variety, and beauty of the phrase in which it embodied itself.[4] We believe that Shakspeare, like all other great poets, instinctively used the dialect which he found current, and that his words are not more wrested from their ordinary meaning than followed necessarily from the unwonted weight of thought or stress of passion they were called on to support. He needed not to mask familiar thoughts in the weeds of unfamiliar phraseology; for the life that was in his mind could transfuse the language of every day with an intelligent vivacity, that makes it seem lambent with fiery purpose, and at each new reading a new creation. He could say with Dante, that "no word had ever forced him to say what he would not, though he had forced many a word to say what _it_ would not,"--but only in the sense, that the mighty magic of his imagination had conjured out of it its uttermost secret of power or pathos. He himself says, in one of his sonnets,--
"Why is my verse so barren of new pride, So far from alteration and quick change? Why, with the time, do I not glance aside To new-found methods and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed That every word doth almost tell my name?"
When we say that Shakspeare used the current language of his day, we mean only that he habitually employed such language as was universally comprehensible,--that he was not run away with by the hobby of any theory as to the fitness of this or that component of English for expressing certain thoughts or feelings. That the artistic value of a choice and noble diction was quite as well understood in his day as in ours is evident from the praises bestowed by his contemporaries on Drayton, and by the epithet "well-languaged" applied to Daniel, whose poetic style is as modern as that of Tennyson; but the endless absurdities about the comparative merits of Saxon and Norman-French, vented by persons incapable of distinguishing one tongue from the other, were as yet unheard of. The influence of the Normans in Romanizing our language has been vastly overrated. We find a principle of _caste_ established in certain cases by the relation of producer and consumer,--in others by the superior social standing of the conquering race. Thus, _ox_, _sheep_, _calf_, _swine_, indicate the thing produced; _beef_, _mutton_, _veal_, _pork_, the thing consumed.[5] It is the same with the names of the various grains, and the product of the cheaper kinds when ground,--as _oat-meal_, _barley-meal_, _rye-meal_; while the generic term for the crop becomes _grain_, and the meal of the variety used by the higher classes is turned into _flour_. To _bury_ remains Saxon, because both high and low must be hidden under ground at last; but as only the rich and noble could afford any pomp in that sad office, we get the word _funeral_ from the Norman. So also the serf went into a Saxon _grave_, the lord into a Norman _tomb_. All the parts of armor are naturally named from the French; the weapons of the people, as _sword_, _bow_, and the like, continued Saxon. So _feather_ is Saxon; but as soon as it changes into a _plume_ for the knight, it turns Norman,--and Latin when it is cut into a _pen_ for the _clerk_. _Book_ is Saxon; but a number of books collected together, as could be done only by the rich, makes a _library_. _Darling_ would be murmured over many a _cradle_ in Saxon _huts_; but _minion_ came into the language down the back stairs of the Norman _palace_. In the same way, terms of law are Norman, and of the Church, Latin. These are familiar examples. But hasty generalizers are apt to overlook the fact, that the Saxon was never, to any great extent, a literary language. Accordingly, it held its own very well in the names of common things, but failed to answer the demands of complex ideas derived from them. The author of "Piers Ploughman" wrote for the people, Chaucer for the court. We open at random and count the Latin[6] words in ten verses of the "Vision" and ten of Chaucer's "Romaunt of the Rose," (a translation from the French,) and find the proportion to be seven in the former and five in the latter.