166 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters. 



Again, a majority of Shaksperian '^Arca^ Izjofj-zva. being familiar 

 to us as household words, and needful to us as daily food, it seems 

 impossible that he who had cared to use them once should have 

 need of them no more. 



Some specimens^ all with initial M, are the words, mechanics, 

 machine, maxim, mission, monastic, mode, marsh, magnify, ma- 

 jority, malcontent, malignancy, manly (as an adverb), malleable, 

 manna, maratime, manslaughter, market-day, -folks,-maid,-price, 

 masterly, mealy, meekly, miserably, mercifully, mindful, memo- 

 rial, mention, merchant-like, mercenary, memorandums, mercurial, 

 meridian, medal, metropolis, mimic, metaphysics, ministration, to 

 moderate, misapply, misconstruction, misgovernment, misquote, 

 monster-like, monstrously, monstrosity, moneyed, monopoly, mu- 

 table, monised, mortise, muniments, mother-wit. 



The letter J/., which has been the staple of the present paper, 

 is probably a fair representative of Shakspere's diction in regard to 

 words which he would term "seld shown." The subject, how- 

 ever, deserves to be treated more exhaustively. Every letter 

 ought to be investigated as a single one has now been, and more 

 abundantly. Nor would the labor be arduous, if the task were 

 assumed by any Shaksperian club and divided among a score of 

 its fellows, as the work of lexicography was among the forty 

 members of thie French academy. Such an examination would 

 conclusively confirm, or confute, the conclusions to which the 

 facts now set forth have led. It would also suggest others, and 

 those of still greater interest. 



In drawing up catalogues of once-used words, if such a set 

 of co-laborers would append to each word the name of the play in 

 which it occurs, the Shaksperian dramas could be easily compared 

 in a manner which has never hitherto been possible. The " Ano.^ 

 Iz.jbiizva in each particular play would be readily drawn out in a 

 table. Then it would at once become manifest how far the num- 

 ber of such words varied in different works, and whether it was 

 greatest in the early, or middle, or latest period of Shaksperian 

 productivity. 



In a casual reading of Cymbeline and Henry YIIL, more than 

 three score words in each that are elsewhere unfound have struck 



