file on a parade, with the same uniform, arms, and accoutrements, so
that when we see one or two we may represent to ourselves thousands as
being every way like them.

In the use of verse and prose Shakespeare observes very nice
distinctions according to the ranks of the speakers, but still more
according to their characters and disposition of mind. A noble
language, elevated above the usual tone, is suitable only to a certain
decorum of manners, which is thrown over both vices and virtues and
which does not even wholly disappear amidst the violence of passion.
If this is not exclusively possessed by the higher ranks, it still,
however, belongs naturally more to them than to the lower; and
therefore, in Shakespeare, dignity and familiarity of language,
poetry, and prose, are in this manner distributed among the
characters. Hence his tradesmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors,
servants, but more especially his fools and clowns, speak, almost
without exception, in the tone of their actual life. However, inward
dignity of sentiment, wherever it is possessed, invariably displays
itself with a nobleness of its own, and stands not in need, for that
end, of the artificial elegancies of education and custom; it is a
universal right of man, of the highest as well as the lowest; and
hence also, in Shakespeare, the nobility of nature and morality is
ennobled above the artificial nobility of society. Not infrequently
also he makes the very same persons express themselves at times in the
sublimest language, and at others in the lowest; and this inequality
is in like manner founded in truth. Extraordinary situations, which
intensely occupy the head and throw mighty passions into play, give
elevation and tension to the soul: it collects all its powers and
exhibits an unusual energy, both in its operations and in its
communications by language. On the other hand, even the greatest men