THE MIND OF SHAKESPERE
sages, however, with alliteration and balance and the other artifices of style, some magic word often lives with the Shaksperian vitality. Among the "w's" and the "l's" and the "k" sounds of the following most familiar lines, the verb which gives the picture has an eerie detonation, a charm that it never wore in any other employment—
"On such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea bank, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage."
The distinction of Shakspere's language at its best is its extraordinary vitality. Words to most men are listless things, to be combined into stationary forms of thought or color. But in the Shaksperian word there is always a certain astonishment, a new approach, whether or not the word has been familiar before—
[98]
