exist-or, not TO BE, that is, to cease Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer tune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles Here the inquiry is, whether it is nobler to continue to be and endure the ills of life, or cease to be and get rid of them?-the consideration goes no further than to ascertain whether 'tis nobler to suffer ills than to end them by an act of violence. Now it is a very curious fact, that Hamlet, instead of debating the question which he has taken so much pains to explain, drops it altogether, and proceeds to consider a perfectly distinct question-not whether it is nobler to suffer than to end the ills, but whether it is possible to end them,-a problem which could only be solved by Hamlet's belief, but of which that belief would furnish an immediate solution. If Hamlet did not believe in a future state, he could not doubt that death would terminate the ills of life, for if there were no future state, there could be no future ills; and, putting religion out of the argument, there could be no question on the propriety of terminating evils rather than enduring them. If Hamlet did believe in the truth of revealed religion, and that The Everlasting had fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter, he must have felt assured that he could not terminate his sufferings by an act of suicide. In neither event, therefore, could any advantage be derived from reasoning; as the want of a belief in a future state would have prevented a doubt in the one case, and the revelation would have satisfied doubt in the other. Thus the only point on which Hamlet seems to have debated, namely, whether in death he should rest from his misery? could not be settled or explained by reasoning or discussion; and the question originally proposed stands altogether unanswered, and unconsidered. But, to endeavour to make a chain of reasoning in Hamlet's own way,-"To die" is "no more" than "to sleep," "and by a sleep to say we end the heartache,— ca consummation devoutly to be wish ed." Now Hamlet knew well enough "THERE'S the respect," he adds, "that makes calamity of so long life. For who, he asks, would bear the whips and scorns of time, if it were so easy to get rid of them that even a bare bodkin would effect the object? who would bear the burdens of life, if it were not for the dread of something after death-if ignorance of the future-the undiscovered country, did not puzzle the will? Thus, so far from weighing whether it was nobler to suffer or to take arms against calamities, he asks who would be so silly as to endure them if it were possible to oppose them successfully? All religion is quite kicked out of doors in the debate, but philosophy rejects his conclusion as unsound, when he declares that "it is better to suffer the ills we have, than fly to OTHERS that we know not of." To pursue Hamlet's own metaphor,suppose a man suffering under extreme pain, on being advised to go to sleep, should say, "No, although it is probable that sleep would give me dream of other pains, I think it is ease, yet, as it is possible that I might better by remaining awake, to make certain of torments that are almost insupportable, than take the chance of dreaming in sleep of other torments of which I have at present no conception. I admit that in coming to this determination, I am unswayed by any belief that I shall ever dream at all, and am altogether ignorant whether dreams would cause me pain or pleasure." Would a man in his senses argue thus? or would his hearers believe in his sanity if he should add, "Thus conscience makes cowards of US ALL," and "thus the natural colour of my courage (a singular instance of courage certainly to be frightened with the fear of a dream) is sicklied o'er by the pale cast of my thought," and thus "enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard (that is, with this contemplation of the fear of a dream) their currents turn awry and lose the name of action." It certainly would be extremely difficult to paint as a metaphor on canvass -- -Enterprises of pith, taking regard of the fear of a dream, and turning their currents awry. This is merely trying the force of Hamlet's reasoning by ordinary rules; for as he turns religion out of doors, it would be unfair to try the merits of his soliloquy by Christian tenets. Christians do not doubt as to their existence in a future state (nay philosophers, since the days of Plato, have not doubted). Christians have a higher motive than the fear of other evils to make them suffer their afflictions with patience. They do not consider the future as an undiscovered country, nor talk of conscience making cowards of us all; on the contrary, they believe that a good conscience will make a man brave. Indeed it is difficult to find out what conscience has to do with the matter. Sane Christians do not use such arguments, nor did Hamlet himself when he was sane, as is clearly shown by his first soliloquy. It would be tedious to pursue this consideration further, Thus it remains and the remainder thus. Hamlet in the first act describes all the uses of this world as "stale, flat, and unprofitable;" and, fancying that he has nothing to do in life, wishes for death, but is fully impressed with a belief in a future state, and in the punishments awarded against selfmurderers. At this period he is studious, religious, and virtuous. The appearance of his father's spirit unsettles his reason. "His dead corse in complete steel," makes a communication which "shakes his disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul." Thenceforth his mind takes "a more horrid hent;" but in the third act he endeavours to recover his original train of thought-and to be, if possible, his former self. THIS IS A VERY COMMON EFFORT WITH THOSE WHO HAVE SUFFERED MENTAL ABERRA TIONS; and the result is the same in most cases, the sufferer either reasons correctly on false premises, or makes erroneous deductions from correct premises-so IT WAS WITH HAMLET. Forgetting at the moment the object he had promised to accomplish, he starts for debate a question which, immediately before he was told his father's spirit was in arms, and when he was in the state of mind he wishes to resume, he had fully considered. Scarcely however has he proposed the question before he loses the connection, is unmindful of all his former impressions and religious persuasions, doubts every thing which he had previously believed, and takes up another and distinct consideration on which his reasoning and his deduction are alike defective. Nay, he even doubts whether there is an hereafter, and whether there may not be some ugly dreams in the undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns, although the ghost (whose word he admits may be taken for a thousand pounds") had returned from that bourne on purpose to tell him that there is an hereafter in which he may be "doomed for the day to fast in fires," and of which a tale could be told Whose lightest word Would harrow up his soul-freeze his young blood, Make his two eyes like stars start from their spheres, His knotted and combined locks to part, Shakspeare has been praised for the correctness of metaphor, closeness of reasoning, and soundness of deduction, displayed in this soliloquy he is held in the highest veneration by the author of these remarks for a very different reason for the consummate art with which he has given the appearance of rationality to the impertinence of insanity. He has proved himself a perfect master of the human mind both in its sound and morbid conditions. A less skilful poet would have thrown an extravagance into the soliloquy foreign to the disease under which Hamlet laboured; whereas the great master with pathological correctness and with exquisite judgment, has given to Hamlet" a happiness of reply that often madness hits on.' It is difficult to imagine how the poet's intention could ever have been mistaken; as, from the first scene of the play to the last, he seizes every 1. That the object of the elder Free-masons was not to build Lord Bacon's imaginary Temple of Solo mon: salem, upon which a society, composed on his model, had existed for a thousand years under the name of Solomon's house; for the law-giver This was one of the hypotheses ad- of this island, who was also the vanced by Nicolai : the House of founder of the society, had been inSolomon, which Lord Bacon had debted to Solomon for his wisdom, sketched in his romantic fiction of The object of this society was the the island of Bensalem (New Atlan- extension of physical science; on tis), Nicolai supposed that the elder which account it was called the ColFree-masons had sought to realise; lege of the Work of Six Days. Roand that forty years afterwards they mance as all this was, it led to very had changed the Baconian house of beneficial results; for it occasioned Solomon into the scriptural type of in the end the establishment of the Solomon's Temple. Whoever has Royal Society of London, which for read the New Atlantis of Bacon, and nearly two centuries has continued to is otherwise acquainted with the re- merit immortal honor in the departlations in which this great man stood ment of physics. Allegory, however, to the literature of his own times, it contains none, except in its idea will discover in this romance a gigan- and name. The house of Solomon tic sketch from the hand of a mighty is neither more nor less than a great scientific intellect, that had soared academy of learned men, authorised far above his age, and sometimes on and supported by the state, and enthe heights to which he had attained, dowed with a liberality approaching indulged in a dream of what might to profusion for all purposes of expebe accomplished by a rich state under riment and research. Beneficence, a wise governor for the advancement education of the young, support of of the arts and sciences. This sketch, the sick, cosmopolitism, are not the agreeably to the taste of his century, objects of this institution. The sohe delivered in the form of an alle-ciety is divided into classes accordgory, and feigned an island of Ben- ing to the different objects of their studies but it has no higher and lower degrees. None but learned men can be members; not, as in the masonic societies, every decent work man who is sui juris. Only the exoteric knowledge of nature, not the esoteric, is pursued by the house of Solomon. The book of the Six Days is studied as a book that lies open before every man's eyes; by the Freemasons it was studied as a mystery which was to be illuminated by the light out of the East. Had the Freemasons designed to represent or to imitate the house of Solomon in their society, they would certainly have adopted the forms, constitution, costune, and attributes of that house as described by Bacon. They would have exerted themselves to produce or to procure a philosophical apparatus such as that house is represented as possessing; or would at least have delineated this apparatus upon their carpets by way of symbols. But nothing of all this was ever done. No mile-deep cellars, no mile-high towers, no lakes, marshes, or fountains, no botanic or kitchen gardens, no modelling - houses, perspectivehouses, collections of minerals and jewels, &c. were ever formed by them either literal or figurative. Universally the eldest Free-masonry was indifferent with respect to all profane sciences and all exoteric knowledge of nature. Its business was with a secret wisdom in which learned and unlearned were alike capable of initiation. And in fact the exoterici, at whose head Bacon stood, and who afterwards composed the Royal Society of London, were the antagonist party of the Theosophists, Cabbalists, and Alchemists, at the head of whom stood Fludd, and from whom Freemasonry took its rise.* II. That the object of the elder Freemasons and the origin of the master's degree had no connexion with the restoration of Charles II.:This is another of the hypotheses advanced by Nicolai, and not more happy than that which we have just examined. He postulates that the elder Free-masons pretended to no mystery; and the more so, because very soon after their first origin they were really engaged in a secret transaction, which made it in the highest degree necessary that their assemblies should wear no appearance of concealment, but should seem to be a plain and undisguised club of inquirers into natural philosophy. What was this secret transaction according to Mr. Nicolai? Nothing less than the restoration of the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Charles II., to the throne of England. The members of the Masonic union, says he, were hostile to the parliament and to Cromwell, and friendly to the Royal family. After the death of Charles 1. (1649) several people of rank united themselves with the Free-masons, because under this mask they could assemble and determine on their future measures. They found means to establish within this society a "secret conclave" which held meetings apart from the general meetings. This conclave adopted secret signs expressive of its grief for its murdered master, of its hopes to revenge him on his murderers, and of its search for the lost word or logos (the son), and its design to reestablish him on his father's throne. As faithful adherents of the Royal family, whose head the Queen had now become, they called themselves sons of the widow. In this way a secret connexion was established amongst all persons attached to the Royal family, as well in Great Britain and Ireland as in France and the Netherlands, which subsisted until after the death of Cromwell, and had the well-known issue for the royal cause. The analogies alleged by Nicolai between the historical events in the first period of Free-masonry and the symbols and mythi of the masonic degree of master are cer tainly very extraordinary; and one might easily be led to suppose that the higher object of masonry had * There is besides in this hypothesis of Nicolai's a complete confusion of the end of the society with the persons composing it. The Free-masons wished to build the Temple of Solomon. But Lord Bacon's House of Solomon did not typify the object of his society it was simply the name of it, and means no more than what is understood at present by an academy, i. e. a circle of learned men united for a common purpose. It would be just as absurd to say of the Academicians of Berlin—not that they composed or formed an Academy-but that they proposed, as their secret object, to build one. : passed into a political object, and that the present master's degree was nothing more than a figurative memorial of this event. Meantime the weightiest historical reasons are so entirely opposed to this hypothesis, that it must evidently be pronounced a mere conceit of Mr. Nicolai's: 1. History mentions nothing at all of any participation of the Free-masons in the transactions of those times. We have the most accurate and minute accounts of all the other political parties-the Presbyterians, the Independents, the Levellers, &c. &c.: but no historian of this period has so much as mentioned the Free-masons. Is it credible that a society, which is represented as the centre of the counter-revolutionary faction, should have escaped the jealous eyes of Cromwell, who had brought the system of espionage to perfection, and who carried his vigilance so far as to seize the Oceana of Harrington at the press? He must have been well assured that Free-masonry was harmless; or he would not have wanted means to destroy it with all its pretensions and mysteries. Moreover it is a pure fancy of Nicolai's that the elder Free-masons were all favourably disposed to the royal cause. English clubs, I admit, are accustomed to harmonize in their political principles: but the society of Freemasons, whose true object abstracted from all politics, must have made an exception to this rule then, as certainly as they do now. 2. The masonic degree of master, and indeed Free-masonry in general, is in direct contradiction to this hypothesis of Nicolai. It must be granted to me by those who maintain this hypothesis that the order of the Freemasons had attained some consistence in 1646 (in which year Ashmole was admitted a member), consequently about three years before the execution of Charles I. It follows therefore upon this hypothesis that it must have existed for some years without any ground or object of its existence. It pretended as yet to no mystery, according to Nicolai (though I have shown that at its very earliest formation it made such a preten sion): it pursued neither science, art, nor trade: social pleasure was not its object: it "masoned" mysteriously with closed doors in its hall at London; and no man can guess at what it "masoned." It constituted a "mystery" (a guild)—with this contradiction in adjecto, that it consisted not of masters, journeymen, and apprentices; for the master's degree, according to Nicolai, was first devised by the conclave after the execution of Charles I. Thus far the inconsistencies of this hypothesis are palpable: but in what follows it will appear that there are still more striking ones. For, if the master's degree arose first after the execution of Charles I. and symbolically imported vengeance on the murderers of their master and restoration of his son to the royal dignity, in that case during the two Protectorates and for a long time after the abdication of Richard, the mythus connected with that degree might indeed have spoken of a murdered master, but not also (as it does) of a master risen again, living, and triumphant: for as yet matters had not been brought thus far. If to this it be replied that perhaps in fact the case was really so, and that the my, thus of the restored master might have been added to that of the slain master after the restoration,-there will still be this difficulty-that in the masonic mythus the two masters are one and the same person who is first slain and then restored to life; yet Charles I. who was slain, did not arise again from the dead; and Charles II. though he was restored to his throne, was yet never slain,and therefore could not even metaphorically be said to rise again.* Suiting therefore to neither of these kings, the mythus of the masonic master's degree does not adapt itself to this part of history. Besides, as Begging Professor Buhle's pardon, he is wrong in this particular argument-though no doubt right in the main point he is urging against Nicolai: the mere passion of the case would very naturally express the identity of interest in any father and son by attri buting identity to their persons, as though the father lived again and triumphed in the triumph of his son. But in the case of an English King, who never dies quoad his office, there is not only a pathos but a philosophic accuracy and fidelity to the constitutional doctrine in this way of symbolizing the story. |