None seem wholly dead words except the following eighteen: To _mammock_, tear; _mell_, meddle; _mose_, mourn; _micher_, truant; _mome_, fool; _mallecho_, mischief; _maund_, basket; _marcantant_, merchant; _mun_, sound of wind; _mure_, wall; _meacock_, henpecked; _mop_, grin; _militarist_, soldier; _murrion_, affected with murrain; _mammering_, hesitating; _mountant_, raised up; _mered_, only; _man-entered_, grown up.
About one-tenth of the remaining _apa? ?e??µe?a_ with initial _m_ are descriptive compounds. Among them are the following adjectives: _Maiden-tongued, maiden-widowed, man-entered_ (before noted as obsolete), _many-headed, marble-breasted, marble-constant, marble-hearted, marrow-eating, mean-apparelled, merchant-marring, mercy-lacking, mirth-moving, moving-delicate, mock-water, more-having, mortal-breathing, mortal-living, mortal-staring, motley-minded, mouse-eaten, moss-grown, mouth-filling, mouth-made, muddy-mettled, momentary-swift, maid-pale_. From this list, which is nearly complete, it is evident that such compounds as may be multiplied at will form but a small fraction of the words that are used _once only_ by Shakespeare.
The words used _once only_ by Shakespeare are often so beautiful and poetical that we wonder how they could fail to be his favorites again and again. They are jewels that might hang twenty years before our eyes, yet never lose their lustre. Why were they never shown but once? They remind me of the exquisite crystal bowl from which I saw a Jewess and her bridegroom drink in Prague, and which was then dashed in pieces on the floor of the synagogue, or of the Chigi porcelain painted by Raphael, which as soon as it had been once removed from the Farnesina table was thrown into the Tiber. To what purpose was this waste? Why should they be used up with once using? Specimens of this sort, which all poets but Shakespeare would have paraded as pets many a time, are multifarious. Among a hundred others never used but once, we have _magical, mirthful, mightful, mirth-moving, moonbeams, moss-grown, mundane, motto, matin, mural, multipotent, mourningly, majestically, marbled, martyred, mellifluous, mountainous, meander, magnificence, magnanimity, mockable, merriness, masterdom, masterpiece, monarchize, menaces, marrowless_.