life. In one, the thinker is seen looking down upon the doings of men as affairs with which he has no personal concern, excepting so far as he may be able to derive from them some new suggestion for his trains of thought. In the other, the actor is contemplated entering into close relation with those doings, and taking part in the evolution of their results. In the first condition, the ordinary pursuits and objects of society are held to be "stale and unprofitable" in themselves; in the second, they are deemed ends worthy of all effort and sacrifice. No examples will be needed to illustrate this distinction;----illustrations will occur at once to all. Everyone will remember that he has seen, in his own sphere of observation, some pigmy Napoleon, dashing boldly into the rushing currents of events, and making it bear him on towards the accomplishment of his desires. Everyone will be able to recal to mind some speculative Lamartine sitting triumphantly for a passing moment upon the crest of a swelling wave of accidents, and then settling back into the trough, as the wave rolls on, with some ejaculated maxim of philosophy. The distinguished of the earth naturally and involuntarily arrange themselves in separate groups; and it rarely happens that any one individual qualifies for entrance into both. In practice, either the activity of the will arrests the growth of the reflective faculties, or excessive indulgence in the enjoyments of abstract thought reduces to paralysis the strength of the will. Active energy and reflective power are so mingled together in the ordinary ranks of life, that individual characters are rarely marked by any great preponderance of one over the other. It is only in cases of unusual strength that the one or the other attains excessive development. Shakespeare, in his plays, has constantly marked his recognition of these distinctions. He has sketched the motley crowd in the mixed and subordinate phases of intellectual manifestation again and again. In Richard the Third, and in lago, he has painted the apotheosis of the dominant will. In Hamlet he has pourtrayed the fresh and purest type of the reflective and abstract mind.

Hamlet is Shakespeare's idea of the speculative and philosophic man who is indifferent to the usual pursuits of life, and who seeks the purpose of his existence in the higher operations of mind. When he is first introduced into the drama, he appears bowed down with grief, on account of the sudden death of his father, and the subsequent marriage of his mother with the brother of her dead husband"ere even the shoes were old with which she

had followed his body to the grave." But these sad experiences come to him, less as surprises, than as expected and ordinary features in the arrangements of human life. They suggest no new thoughts; they merely confirm views formed already and long before. This is marked by the exclamation-"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, seem to me all the uses of this world." It is not simply the incidents connected with his father's death, and his mother's frailty, that he finds to be stale and unprofitable; but it is "All the uses of this world." The tone of this complaint issues from a cord that was strung before his parent died. Long ere a shadow of a doubt regarding his mother's truthfulness had crossed his thought, he had styled himself, in a letter to Ophelia, "One who had no heart to reckon his groans;" and one who was "evermore hers, while the machine of his body was Hamlet to himself." It is clear that this letter must be viewed in the light of one written before Hamlet, the father's, death; for Polonius distinctly states that Ophelia had for some time taken the fruits of his advice, admitting no messengers, and receiving no letters from the prince. These expressions are evidently intended to be the language of a man who finds himself constrained to reject the world's solution of the problem of existence, and who desires to reach a more satisfactory conclusion for himself.

But the idea which Shakespeare has placed at the foundation of Hamlet's philosophy was by no means a new one, even in his age. The exclamation that "the world was out of joint," had been echoed again and again. The complaint had been made by men who, having groped beneath the visible film of events in search of a hidden meaning, had failed to find what they sought. It had been made by sanguine theorists, who had unsuccessfully tried to reduce the universe within the dimensions of the artificial standards of measurement they had themselves prepared. It had been made by all who had not been able to learn the difficult lesson of distrusting themselves, and who, like blind men, maintaining that there is no such thing as light because they cannot see it, had tried to cast their own imperfections upon the face of nature. In Hamlet, however, this notion of a discordant world assumes a form of peculiar interest. It takes the aspect of intellectual scepticism in its highest and purest type. It speaks everywhere the language of doubt, but it nowhere utters one syllable of denial. There is an immensely wide difference between the habit of mind which makes an inquirer slow to believe, and that which makes him quick to deny. The first belongs to the earnest votary of truth, who travels laboriously by the rough path of inductive process, and who therefore cannot possibly get along quicker than his convictions. The second characterises the impatient and petulant aspirant, who declines to burthen himself with convictions, and chooses the smoothest-looking road, with the determination that he will get along it rapidly. Doubt and denial are never confounded together, unless in the weak and the vain. In the strong, doubt is ever the preliminary exercise that leads to belief, for in them it implies such a rigorous investigation of fundamental principles as precludes the likelihood of subsequent change. This clearly is the part it plays in the mind of Hamlet. He, of necessity, disbelieves whatever his reason cannot accept as proved. He is unable, for instance, to assent to the commonly-received proposition, that the acquisition of wealth and temporal influence, and the enjoyment of sensual gratifications, are worth the pains their pursuit entails; for has he not himself seen that the craft of the politician who would circumvent God, is nevertheless unable to keep its master's head from being o'er-officered by an ass? Has he not seen that the smooth tongue of the courtier cannot preserve the courtly skull from the worms? Has he not seen that the skill and cunning of the lawyer do not avail to exclude fine dust from the quibbling man's finc pate? With such examples before him, he cannot hold that the wages of life are sufficient for its toils. He could not himself wish to bear the load for such a measure of reward. He would rather lay the burthen down, and rest in the quiet sleep that any one may win by the point of a bare bodkin.

But the doubts of Hamlet end in the mazy paths of speculative thought; they round themselves with a may be, instead of pointing themselves with is nots. "Within that sleep there may be dreams that it were hard to bear. "Tis better therefore to meet familiar ills than try uncertain ones; and thus the sense of some unproved reality makes cowards of mankind-the native hue of resolution gets sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought-and enterprises of great pith and moment their currents turn away, and lose the name of action." Nay, once even the gleam of dawning faith is seen resting calm and clear beyond the clouds of the horizon. This happens when Hamlet furnishes his own commentary to the doleful text" the world is out of joint."

"Let us know," he says, "our indiscretion

sometimes serves us well when our dear plots do pall; and that should teach us there's a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."

In this lucid gleam there is to us a suggestion of surpassing interest. We believe that it completely identifies the poet with the philosophy of his creation. To us the light wears the unmistakeable Shakespearean hue. The genius that modulated whatever else it touched could not entertain even doubt as a discord. It saw that beneath the dazzling and perplexing surface of human affairs, there were unruffled depths where purpose dwelt unseen, from which its own harmonious intuition enabled it to draw the conviction, that whatever is, is best.

The fundamental conception around which the action of the play of Hamlet is gathered, is that of a powerful and finely-strung intellect dissatisfied with the aims and usages of the world, and trying to escape from the thraldom of their influences, by shrinking back into communion with itself. The great dramatist seizes, perhaps unconsciously, upon the opportunity this central idea affords to express incidentally his own views of the philosophy of human life; but the chief movement of the play has altogether a different aim from this. It is evidently designed to show how dreamy and reflective intellects demean themselves, and make shipwreck of their high promise, when they are driven from the repose that forms their native element, and are thrust into the boiling whirlpool of worldly activity. To confine the man of ready deeds to a life of inaction, is like suffocating some strong-winged and lightplumed bird beneath the waters of the sea; but to ask the abstract dreamer to concern himself with the busy schemes of worldly activity, is like trying to make the finny fish support itself upon the whirlwinds of the air. The island of St. Helena once saw the result of the first experiment; the tragedy of Hamlet tells what must happen whenever and wherever the second is essayed.

The various incidents of the drama are the especial artifices by means of which the poet works out his plan. While Hamlet is busied with his own reflections, and living upon his philosophy, the ghost of his father comes to him from the realms of purgatory, to tell him that that father was murdered by a brother's hand, to implicate his own mother in the guilt of the horrid deed, and to lay upon him the duty of revenge. The appeal goes home at once to the warm affections of the gentlehearted prince. He accepts the commission

tendered by the ghost, and pledges himself to be swift in its performance "as meditation or the thoughts of love." Many have fancied that this supernatural apparition was designed by Shakespeare as a convenient instrument for unhinging the wits of an over-excitable nature, already shaken by grief; and have been led to attribute much of what follows to the madness thus produced. It is, however, clear that the dramatist never entertained any such purpose. At the first sight of his ghostly visitor, Hamlet is startled into the exclamation, "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" But immediately afterwards pathetic tenderness and thoughtful wonder, not the dread that could overturn reason, present themselves in his words. "Remember thee," he says, in answer to the parting appeal of the apparition, ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a place in this distracted globe;" and subsequently, when recurring to the subject in conversation with Horatio, he remarks, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy." These are not the words of suddenly-produced madness; they are expressions of the clearest thought and soundest reason. The ghost is a contrivance, not for turning the gentle prince into an extemporaneous madman, but for finding a plausible excuse to make him struggle to get from his dreamy reveries into the action that he so deeply abhors. Nothing short of some such influence could give a semblance of probability to the effort that strove to "wipe from the table" of so soft a memory "all trivial fond records," in order that only revengeful purpose might live within the book and volume of the brain. The ghost in Hamlet performs a double function. In the first place, it makes out a good and sufficient reason for the singular and improbable incidents that follow its apparition; and, in the second place, it does what the old Greek dramatists did through the instrumentality of their chorus-it reveals to the audience certain important facts, which the interest of the drama renders it essential they should know, but which it would have been inconvenient to make matters of scenic representation. It is worthy of remark, that in Macbeth, where the murder of Banquo is scenically represented, the ghost appears only to the murderer, and addresses his conscience alone; while in Hamlet, where the murder of the king is conceived to have taken place before the commencement of the action of the play, the ghost is seen by other persons in the drama besides the prince, and tells its tale out to the general ear.

When Hamlet has heard the narration of the ghost, he devotes himself to the duty of avenging his father's cruel fate, and sets to work methodically to accomplish his task. His first step is to assume the guise and bearing of madness. That this assumption must be taken to be a designed and voluntary act, appears from the caution he gives his friends, never to reveal the cause of his strange behaviour, when they shall see him put on an antic disposition. But the feigned incoherency is not intended simply as a cloak to hide his further plans, for the ordinary and indifferent manners of every-day life would have answered this purpose far more naturally and surely. It is, in fact, seen that his singular bearing awakens, rather than allays, suspicion. His mother directly ascribes it to her own "too hasty marriage." Hamlet dons the garb of insanity that he may wear with it the privilege of irresponsibility; he wishes to be free to say what he pleases, without having to render an account of his words. As a sane man he could not have "wrung the withers" of the king, without at once making an end of his work. That this is his principal purpose, is proved by the admirable way in which he uses the attribute he has chosen for his badge. With the players, with Horatio, in communion with himself, he is always rational and clear; but the instant prying impertinence comes near, his thoughts and purposes are shielded behind the impenetrable armour of mingled wit and incoherency. He is only "mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, he knows a hawk from a handsaw." With Polonius, "the foolish prating councillor," whom he believes to be the tool of Claudius, his lucid intervals are few. With Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his "wit becomes diseased, and he lacks advancement," so soon as he discovers that they are set to pluck the heart out of his mystery. Towards Ophelia the madness is altogether a different concern: but more of this anon.

Hamlet's insanity must not, however, be taken to be so entirely an artifice that it is at all times subject alike to the control of his judgment; there are times when the assumed irresponsibility treads very closely indeed upon the simulated reality: on several occasions unpremeditated and ungovernable impulse bursts forth under the sting of galled susceptibilities, and overturns the barriers reason erects to stop its course. All this is wonderfully natural and true. In finely-strung and impulsive minds, such fits of passionate frenzy most frequently occur. That Hamlet was

mad in this sense, and to this extent, his own graceful admission to Laertes proves. When he is about to play the fencing match, he says, "I have done you wrong; but pardon't, as you are a gentleman: this presence knows, and you must needs have heard, how I am punished with a sore distraction. What I have done that might your nature, honour, and exception roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness." Shakespeare clearly must have meant that the "sovereign reason" that had of its own accord selected madness for its role, should sometimes be heard from beneath the disguise in its own reality, "like sweet bells jangling harsh and out of tune." He never placed a deliberate falsehood in the mouth of the expectancy of the fair state, in the midst of such high chivalrous sentiment.

One of the earliest uses the self-constituted performer makes of his assumed insanity, turns out a very unsatisfactory affair. He intrudes himself, with disordered dress, into the presence of Ophelia, with the intention of saying what breaks from him on another occasion, when the proffered return of his love-gifts wrenches asunder his lips; his purpose is obviously to make his madness a means of weaning her affections from one whose destiny no longer lies among the amenities of life. It is his first attempt to redeem the pledge that he will wipe away "all trivial fond records" from the table of his memory. He has, however, miscalculated his powers; the situation proves to be too much for him. He gazes rudely upon Ophelia, but dares not trust himself with words. One piteous sigh" alone escapes, and then the discomfited actor retires from the scene, his head turned over his shoulder, and "the light of his eyes," as Ophelia pathetically relates, "to the last bent

on her."

When action really comes, with men of Hamlet's temperament, it is the result of some uncontrollable, instantaneous impulse, and not of deliberately weighed design. The design evaporates in thoughts and words. The impulse only becomes a deed when no oppornity for intermediate reflection chances to fall between, and then more often overshoots its aim than hits it, leaving disappointment and repentance in the place of triumph and success. How finely the dramatist has availed himself of this peculiar trait of the impulsive temperament in his construction of the play! When Hamlet does thrust forward his sword for the life of the king, he makes the hit on the instant when he hears the unexpected cry behind the arras, and pierces the breast of

Ophelia's father instead of that of the victim of his desire. When he does attempt by words to cure Ophelia of her love, he manages to make her mad, instead of making her forgetful. The actions of Hamlet, when they do occur, are invariably rash and impulsive, taking their impress from the accident of the moment. If the impelling power flags for an instant, "the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment, with its regards, their currents turn away, and lose the name of action." In this passage, indeed, the one grand secret of Hamlet's life is revealed. Its words afford a clue that never fails to guide aright amidst all the intricacies of the mazy play; everywhere the vacillating habit of the abstractedly reflective mind is seen struggling with the sense of dire necessity, and losing its purpose almost as soon as formed. Thus, when Hamlet has mastered the full particulars of the strange position in which he stands, he falls to dreaming of what he means to do. The arrival of the players breaks in upon his reverie. The accident sharpens his purpose, for shall he, "the son of the dear murthered, prompted to his revenge by heaven and hell, unpack his heart in words," and rest in futile cursing, when these mere players, but in a fiction, a dream of passion, can force their souls so to their whole conceits, that tears burst from their eyes, and distraction from their aspect? By no means. What, then, shall he do under the stimulus of this new incitement? Why, he will "use the players as a trap, to catch the conscience of the king."

Having prepared his bait, and instructed the players in the part they are to take, he calls in the aid of his friend Horatio, makes him the confidant of his purpose and his doubts, and then, in his companionship, awaits the proof that is to establish the trustworthiness of the ghost. The snare succeeds to admiration, the conscience is caught, the king is unable to bear the test that is applied, and retires in confusion. And what does the successful, and now convinced, contriver of the snare? He pauses to moralise, and so the current of his enterprise is turned away.

Soon afterwards, however, fortune seems to have brought the noble-hearted prince to bay, and to have placed him face to face with destiny, for we find him standing with his naked sword behind the figure of the prostrate king. Now surely might he do the deed that can alone give satisfaction to his murdered parent's shade. His determination is,

"Now will he do it." And what is that he does? He makes the discovery that to kill the king at his prayers, would be to send his soul to heaven; and so the thing must be scanned-and scanned it is. The sword returns to its scabbard; the pale cast of thought once more has sicklied o'er the hue of resolution.

In the following scene, however, the baffled prince appears upon a theatre more suited to the bent of his character; in this his business lies with words, not deeds, for the express command of the paternal shade was, "Let thy soul contrive nothing against thy mother; leave her to heaven, and to the thorns that in her bosom lodge." Accordingly, when his mother forces an interview, he merely acquaints her with his knowledge of her guilt, and barbs the thorns by the reproaches he heaps upon her infamy. In this surprising scene, no vacillation or hesitation appears; for once the current, being of words, runs home, until the eyes of the wretched listener are "turned into her very soul," and "her heart is cleft in twain." During the momentous interview, however, the ghost again presents himself, and chides the tardy waverer, who, "laps'd in time and passion, lets go by the important acting of its dread command."

The immediate result of Hamlet's conference with the Queen, is the hastening of his departure for England, under the pretence of getting him out of the way, to save him from the consequences of the death of Polonius. Almost as soon as he starts, he meets with the forces of Fortinbras, and notes how "all occasions do inform against him, and spur his dull revenge;" for here he, who "has a father killed and mother stained," and yet allows the agent of the infamy to sleep, finds "twenty thousand men, who go to their graves like beds, for a fantasy and trick of fame." Again his spirit rises beneath this reflection, and beats itself against the bars; henceforth "his thoughts shall be of blood, or else of nothing worth." Nevertheless his bloody thoughts by some means manage to get embarked, and sail for exile in England.

During his voyage, Hamlet peruses the commission, under the hand of Claudius, that destines him to speedy death; now, therefore, his catalogue of injuries is full. To the memories of a royal father killed, a mother stained, a youthful promise blasted, he has to add the discovery of the guile that would spoil him of life itself by basest treachery. With these accumulated incitements to bring the dastardly king to a final reckoning, he

once again sets foot upon the Danish shore; not in consequence, be it observed, of any exercise of a will of his own, but because his vessel has chanced to fall in with pirates on the sea. Having landed in Denmark, he takes his way towards Elsinore, and there, on his first arrival, encounters by accident the funeral of Ophelia. Under the uncontrollable impulse of the instant, he leaps into the grave with Laertes, and offers to prove, by any extravagance, that "forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity, make up his sum of love." His wager with the incensed brother is doomed, however, to take a deadlier form. The king, informed by his own letter, of his speedy return, has already persuaded Laertes to fence with him, using a pointed and poisoned foil. Hamlet at once accedes, when the match is proposed; he feels that he was wanting in courtesy when he bearded Laertes in the grave, and now desires to make amends by showing his readiness to meet him in the trial of skill. He has, indeed, his own forebodings; all is not well about his heart. But this matters little: "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet will it come: the readiness is all."

This, then, is the final issue of Hamlet's great and long-cherished purpose of revenge. He walks unresistingly into a plot against his own life, of almost transparent obviousness, and seems only too glad to be allowed to lay his burthensome existence down. It is true that the guilty king is involved in the fate of the willing victim; but this result is accidental to the end, and not the end; it comes to pass because Hamlet learns at the last moment that poisoned drinks and poisoned swords have been in use. The indignant impulse of his noble nature then achieves, on the spur of the instant, what the long formed resolution of the will had failed to consummate. current of the last great enterprise runs true to its purposed end, because its course is favoured by a breeze of accident; the woodcock "is caught in its own springe," not snared by the sportsman. If Claudius had not set this springe, Hamlet, no doubt, would have died as he had lived, persuaded that he was going to do the dreadful deed from which cach fibre in his nature shrunk with instinctive loathing, and wondering that so sacred an action yet remained waiting accomplishment.

The

There is an exceeding charm in the last appearance of the gentle-hearted, philosophic prince upon the scene. In the final passage of his life, all trace of angry excitement has