172 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



returned in after years to enlarge it, remodel it and enrich it with 

 the matured fruits of years of observation and reflection. Loves 

 Labor Lost first appeared in print with the annunciation that it 

 was "newly ievi?ed and augmented." It is now very generally 

 regarded as a revision of a play which Shakspere had produced 

 ten years before and named Love's Labor Won. Cymbeline was 

 an entire rlfacwiento of an early dramatic attempt, showing not 

 only matured fulness of thought but laboring intensity of com- 

 pressed expression." This being the fact, it is clear that Shaks- 

 pere treated hi^ dramas as Gruido did his Cleopatra which he 

 would not let leave his studio till ten years after the non-artistic 

 world had deemed that portrait finished. 



Meantime the painter was penciling his canvas with curious 

 touches, each approximating some fraction nearer his ideal. So 

 the poet sought to find out acceptable words, or what he terms 

 "an army of good words." He poured his new wine into new 

 bottles, and never was at rest till he had arrayed his ideas in that 

 fitness of phrase which comes only by fits. 



Had he survived fifty years longer I suppose he would to the 

 last have been, like Plato, perfecting his phrases. One couplet 

 which as he left it reads : 



" Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in stones, and good in everything," 



he might possibly have corrected and improved, as some commen- 

 tator has done for him, so as to express more truth, if less poetry^ 

 making the words to stand : 



" Find leaves on trees, stones in the running brooks, 

 Sermons in books, and gain in everything." 



To speak seriously, "His manner in diction was progressive, and 

 this progress has been deemed so clearly traceable in his plays 

 that it can enable us to determine their chronological order." 

 This view would have been accepted by Dryden, who treating of 

 Caliban remarks: " His language is as hobgoblin as his person. 

 In him Shakspere not only found out a new character, but devised 

 and adapted a new manner of language for that character." 



On first thought it may seem beneath Shaksperian dignity to 

 be careful and troubled about verbal niceties. But no one will 



