He is great for other reasons than these.

First because of the extraordinary smoothness and melody of his verse and the richness of his language--a golden diction that he drew from every source--new words, old words, obsolete words--such a mixture that the purist Ben Jonson remarked acidly that he wrote no language at all.

Secondly because of the profusion of his imagery, and the extraordinarily keen sense for beauty and sweetness that went to its making.

In an age of golden language and gallant imagery his was the most golden and the most gallant.

And the language of poetry in England is richer and more varied than that in any other country in Europe to-day, because of what he did.
(3) Elizabethan prose brings us face to face with a difficulty which has to be met by every student of literature.