and the whole of this beautiful speech to Guildenstern is full of dark sublimity :

"I have of late (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air-look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire-why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man!—how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world-the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman neither;"

and again the soliloquy, profaned by the mouthing of every whining school-boy,

"Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!"

Such was

The whole play is craped with the gloom of his nature, Hamlet, a compound in physical temperament: the dispositions of his nature were antagonists; one not easily moved, but being so is

moved in the extreme."

66

Without going into an explanation of what is meant by the spiritual nature or mind of Hamlet, and however the physical is implicated in the moral character, we are content to distinguish by this term the habitual characteristic of Hamlet's mind. We speak of Hamlet as a being always existing; we look upon him as a monad set aside for our interpretation and profit. The mental peculiarity of Hamlet was reflection, deep, searching, profound thought; from his earliest recognitions comparisons were held; he looked upon every event, upon every action, as implying the past and future in their causes and consequences. He had beheld human nature in its most subtle and occult appearances, when vice becomes more baneful because more concealed. The evil which vice loses with its

grossness is made up in its permanency and insidiousness; and thus Hamlet disdained the polished hypocrisy of the court, and chose his friend in the sane and firm-minded Horatio.

Reflection with him is a moral excess; his mind is a profound of thought; he analyzes every thing, dissects the conduct of mankind, and refers every act to some imperfection, either of weakness or wickedness. The complexion of his ideas was always gloomy;

his wit severe and sarcastic. He is a human Mephostophiles without sin, before whom the circumstances of existence are laid bare, the original cause of intent and action is defined, and goodness itself exhibited as the deceitful cloak of selfishness. Thought is ceaseless; it is a monomania that admits of no pause. The actions of men seem frivolous, and life itself, by a dark comparison with itself, is beheld with indifference, as but a painful suspense. Hamlet was a man to become sick of the uses of the world, scorning what he despised. The ambition of the soldier, the phrenzy of the lover, the policy of the courtier-he had tried them all, and left them as a madman's labour. Hamlet, though sceptical as to creeds, was firmly religious. But

" that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter,"

he would have sought in the grave repose from the oppressive tediousness of life.

Hamlet educationally was a scholar and a gentleman; the fellowstudent of Horatio at Wittenberg, where congregated all the learned men of the day. A metaphysical complexion marks the learning of that time; the mind was for ever wrestling in the Palestra of abstract reasoning. The quiddits of the Aristotelian school occupied the place of experimental philosophy, oppressing the intellect with infinite and intangible ideas. We perceive Hamlet complains to Rosencrantz that he could not reason, though he is continually touching upon his favourite logic:

"Ham.-O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams.

"Guil. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

"Ham.-A dream itself is but a shadow.

“ Ros.—Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow.

"Ham.-Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs and outstretch'd heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason."

Yet the genius or reflective faculties of Hamlet made him an experimental philosopher; he not only idealised, but he observed, and derived no little of his learning from the visible world. His knowledge of natural philosophy is evidently the result of observation. That he was a diligent student at Wittenberg there is no doubt, and he most probably aspired to attainments of the highest possible

order. His soliloquy, after the apparition of the Ghost, displays his literary practises :—

"Remember thee!

Yea, from the table of my memory

I'll wipe away all trival fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter."

Hamlet was an accomplished gentleman; he would not bate a jot of excellence he went so far as to copy the extravagancies of good breeding, and, like our modern gentleman-but here the comparison drops-to write unintelligibly :

"I once did hold it, as our statists do,

A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
How to forget that learning."

Hamlet should ever be " the glass of fashion ;" but, in the comparison, how odious we become !*

Such is Hamlet in his physical, moral, and intellectual conjunction; perhaps the most perfect character within possibility—acting without any express and definite purpose of ambition to regulate and direct his conduct.

It is justly said that Hamlet is the most Shakspearean of all Shakspeare's plays. It is, in fact, the embodying of the poet's genius; exhibiting the most sublime historical picture. Like the Orestes of Eschylus, Hamlet is impelled by a necessity to become the avenger of blood, self-devoted by their own internal consciousness to the perpetration of a penalty that suffers no palliation. There is no arrangement, no decree, no customary process of condemnation; but, sitting on the judgment-seat of the secret soul, the fate of Orestes or the genius of Hamlet holds the immutable decree. But the position of Hamlet is infinitely the more dreadful. Orestes was the minister of the gods: the maternal bond with the Grecians was slavish; hence there are few pauses in the purpose of

*The learning of Shakspeare is so various, that he baffles all his commentators: many suppose him, reasonably enough, to have been a student in physic or how could he have become so acute a physiologist; while, in the Legal Observer, his studies in the law are seriously treated of and proved, from the use of terms which, they say, none but a lawyer could have known.

Orestes. He was the predestinated avenger of the Deity; Hamlet, on the contrary, is, by his nature, at variance with himself. He revolts from an act that has no other warranty than a supernatural apparition, and which, reasoning upon, becomes itself an object of suspicion :

"The spirit that I have seen,

May be a devil: and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape."

While from his philosophy, that ever-busy, capable understanding, he doubts even the reality of the apparition; that it is a delirium of the heat-oppressed brain, directed by the enemy of souls;

"Yea, and, perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy
(As he is very potent with such spirits),
Abuses me to damn me."

The old question of Hamlet's madness is at once answerable from this very reason, that he is even reasoning against what may possibly be a delusion. He is too wise to err, and yet not wise enough to be resolved. That Hamlet is not mad is self-evident; his seeming insanity is predetermined from the first appearance of the Ghost, before which, though we perceive the same dark, meditative, melancholy disposition, yet withal he is composed, and even affectionate in his reply to the Queen,

"I shall in all my best obey you, madam."

But directly after the exposition of his father's murder he resolves on his conduct, as if the circumstances rendered it essential :

:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The wicked speed with which his mother wedded to his uncle soured his temper, and seems to have inspired him with a presentiment that "it could not come to good." The hatred which he bore to his uncle was natural: altogether different from Hamlet, a crafty, fawning sensualist, he could feel nothing but aversion for

VOL. VI.-NO. XX.

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the delicate-minded and meditative Hamlet. There was no resemblance between them, and hence his cozenage appears so offensive. The repugnance which Hamlet had to Polonius, his conduct to Ophelia, his retaliation upon Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have been made the subject of much censure; and, without thinking on the whole bearing of the play, the reader is glad to find an excuse in the supposed madness of Hamlet for the want of common humanity. Let us reconcile this discrepancy. Hamlet never tolerated Polonius; though he was a wise, he was too wily a courtier to please Hamlet, who saw right through the disintegrity of his conduct. Polonius was no bad resemblance to the crafty Metternich, with less talent but more wisdom. Polonius cared not how he played the fool so that he was not a fool to himself. To fancy Polonius the friend of Hamlet is to couple Thersites with Ulysses. Hamlet would have listened to the ribaldry of a jester, but he could not endure the compliments of a courtier. He always despised Polonius; but the gentle flower born to this old sycophant, the loved and loving Ophelia! Hamlet was her worshipper, but in that was he peculiar. Hamlet did not love like the rest of the world; his love was full of elegance and truth; no jealousy, no caprice, but tenderly severe, he would teach a woman to reverence herself. But the current of his thoughts was turned awry, he suspected Ophelia of espionage, he found in his love an excuse for his pretended insanity, and, without thinking on the consequences, he spoke as no man should have spoken to a chaste, fond-hearted maiden. Yet he loved her

"forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum."

His school-fellows, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, deserved their penalty: they would have played upon him, would pluck out the heart of his mystery, "delve to the bottom of his soul," and then lend their aid to the bloody villain for the destruction of Hamlet. His conduct was justified by their own. But let us remember his friendship for the healthy-minded Horatio-that shadow of himself -one degree lower than Hamlet, with less passion, constant, brave, and honourable. There is no higher eulogium conceivable, than that which Hamlet passes on his friend; it is a beautiful outbreak of admiration, love, and truth:

"Ham.-Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man

As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.

“Hor. O my dear lord,———