There is evidence in the Plays that, in the process of composition, he must either have heard imaginatively what he was writing, or have actually voiced his language as he went along. He did not write for the eye, but for the ear. And the high vocal capabilities of his language may be somewhat attributable to his hearing of what he wrote. Must he not have heard the effect of monosyllabic words, uttered with the tremor and semi-tone of old age, when he wrote King Lear's speeches?--'You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age,' etc., and 'When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools,' etc. And must he not have heard the effect of polysyllabic words as expressive of Macbeth's sense of the vastness of his guilt, when he wrote, 'this my hand will rather the _multitudinous_ seas _incarnadine_,' etc.? of the guttural emphasis, expressive of detestation, in the speech of Coriolanus to the rabble?--'You _c_ommon _c_ry of _c_urs! whose breath I _h_ate as _r_eek o' the _r_otten fens,' etc. An interesting compilation might be made from the Plays, of passages expressive of strong passion of various kinds, the several vocabularies of which testify to Shakespeare's having imaginatively or actually voiced what he wrote. The speech of the Bastard to Hubert, in King John (A. iv. S. 3), is a signal example: _Bastard._ Here's a good world!--Knew you of this fair work? Beyond the infinite and boundless reach Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, Art thou damn'd, Hubert. _Hubert._ Do but hear me, sir. _Bastard._ Ha! I'll tell thee what; Thou'rt damn'd as black--nay, nothing is so black; Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer: There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child. I fancy that Shakespeare had a fine voice. If he had not, it is quite certain that he had the highest estimate and appreciation of the voice as the organ of the soul. His creative spirit, too, attracted to itself the most effective vocabulary for the vocal expression of every kind of passion--the most effective by reason of their monosyllabic or their polysyllabic character, of their vowel or their consonantal elements. To him, language was for the ear, not for the eye. The written word was to him what it was to Socrates, 'the mere image or phantom of the living and animated word.' (Note 8.) The art of printing has caused language to be overmuch transferred from its true domain, the sense of hearing, to the sense of sight. The lofty idealized language of poetry is known, in these days, chiefly through the eye, and its true power is consequently quiescent for the generality of silent readers. In silent reading, an appreciation of matter and form must be largely due to an imaginative transference to the ear of what is taken in by the eye.