But we may look long in vain for the like of this passage, taken from the
crudest and feeblest work of Marlowe, in the wide and wordy expanse of
_King Edward III_.
{247} A pre-Shakespearean word of single occurrence in a single play of
Shakespeare's, and proper to the academic school of playwrights.
{248} _The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great_, Act v. Sc. ii.
{252} It may be worth a remark that the word _power_ is constantly used
as a dissyllable; another note of archaic debility or insufficiency in
metre.
{255} Yet another essentially non-Shakespearean word, though doubtless
once used by Shakespeare; this time a most ungraceful Gallicism.
{256} It may obviate any chance of mistake if I observe that here as
elsewhere, when I mention the name that is above every name in English
literature, I refer to the old Shakespeare, and not to "the new
Shakspere"; a _novus homo_ with whom I have no acquaintance, and with
whom (if we may judge of a great--or a little--unknown after the
appearance and the bearing of those who select him as a social sponsor
for themselves and their literary catechumens) I can most sincerely
assert that I desire to have none.
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