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IMAGINATION AND FANCY.--And this brings us to notice, in the third place,
his rare gifts of imagination and of fancy; those instruments of the
representative faculty by which objects of sense and of mind are held up
to view in new, varied, and vivid lights. Many of his tragedies abound in
imaginative pictures, while there are not in the realm of Fancy's fairy
frostwork more exquisite representations than those found in the _Tempest_
and the _Midsummer Night's Dream_.
POWER OF EXPRESSION.--Fourth, Shakspeare is remarkable for the power and
felicity of his expression. He adapts his language to the persons who use
it, and thus we pass from the pompous grandiloquence of king and herald to
the common English and coarse conceits of clown and nurse and
grave-digger; from the bombastic speech of Glendower and the rhapsodies of
Hotspur to the slang and jests of Falstaff.
But something more is meant by felicity of expression than this. It
applies to the apt words which present pithy bits of household philosophy,
and to the beautiful words which convey the higher sentiments and flights
of fancy; to the simple words couching grand thoughts with such exquisite
aptness that they seem made for each other, so that no other words would
do as well, and to the dainty songs, like those of birds, which fill his
forests and gardens with melody.
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