1 42 Shakspeare 



Mindful how surely conduct bespeaks character, 

 and how precise and careful his character showed 

 itself in affairs of business, it is no unreasonable 

 surmise that he bestowed an equally diligent care 

 on his best poetic work, howbeit little enough on 

 some passages of bombastic rhetoric which he 

 poured out hastily for present use, and would have 

 done well, as Ben Jonson thought, to have blotted 

 out. He probably accumulated and laid by a rich 

 store of observations, reflections and similes as 

 systematically as he accumulated material riches, 

 and he certainly was no less keenly vigilant to 

 gather scenes, plots and ideas for his dramatic use 

 than to gather and lay by the profits of his skill and 

 industry in business. The ideas of other writers, 

 their felicities of style, even whole passages from 

 their writings, were appropriated without scruple 

 when it suited him, and gloriously translated by his 

 matchless powers of varied and melodious expres- 

 sion. Nor did he allow the reflections and similes, 

 the wise saws and modern instances which he had 

 stored, to go to waste, but took care to place them, 

 fitting or unfitting, in the mouth of one or another 

 of his characters, perhaps introducing scene or 

 person into a play, without regard to dramatic 

 unity and with no regard to artistic proportion, in 

 order to make use of them. Of all persons in the 

 world the speakers of them would sometimes have 

 been the most surprised at their own wit and 

 eloquence if they had heard themselves utter them. 



As everything suitable was thus absorbed by his 



