hath been said, all will. We are apt to estimate men's force of will according to what they do; but we ought often to estimate it according to what they do not do ; for to hold still often require smuch greater strength of will, than to go ahead; and the peculiarity of this representation consists in the hero's being so placed, that his will has its proper exercise not so much in acting as in thinking. In this way the working of his whole mind is rendered as anomalous as his situation; and this is just what the subject demands. Moreover, in the perfect harmony of the will and the reason, force of will would naturally disappear altogether; for in that case, the will being entirely subject to the law, nothing but the law would be visible in our conduct. And yet, to preserve or restore this harmony of will and reason, is undoubtedly the greatest achievement in human power. Thus the highest possible exercise of will is in renouncing itself, and taking the law instead; so that, paradoxical as it may seem, he may be justly said to have most strength of will, who has, or rather shows, none at all. Hamlet is equal to the performance of any duty, but not to the reconciliation of incompatible duties; and he cannot act for the simple reason, that he has equal "respect unto all" the duties of his situation. In a word, his inability is purely of a moral, not of a complexional kind; and this inability is only another name for the highest sort of power. Hence, doubtless, as some one has remarked, Hamlet would seem greater, were he not so great. In his thoughts, and feelings, and principles, he soars so far above our ordinary standards of greatness, as to dwarf himself by the distance. He who ruleth his spirit is greater than he who taketh a city, but he who taketh a city seems greater than he who ruleth his spirit. We, in our littleness, estimate greatness by the noise it makes: true greatness moves in harmony, false greatness in conflict, with the moral order of things; the conflict is loud, but the harmony is still. Why, Christianity, when first published, made infinitely less noise than the last French novel: the former came from heaven, the latter came from nowhere, or from a worse place; that has revolutionized the world, this has done and can do nothing but kill time, or rather, kill mind awhile, and then die itself. Who strives only to do what he ought, is silent even in his achievements; he whose only strife is to do what he can, is noisy even in his failures: his noise indeed is a sign he is failing; if he were going to succeed, he would be sure to keep still about it, because, in order to succeed, he must work in depths where the ear cannot penetrate. It is what acts on the surface that makes a noise; it is what works in the centre that does something. Who has ever heard the sun shine? who has not heard a straw-fire blaze? "Rightly to be great, Is, not to stir without great argument; But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honor's at the stake." Such, it seems to us, is Hamlet's greatness, and not the less truly his, because he disclaims it. Hamlet, indeed, is emphatically greater than he knows. The man that is not greater than he knows is a very small affair! Hamlet, it is true, is continually charging the fault of his situation on himself. Herein is involved one of the finest strokes in the whole delineation. True virtue never publishes itself; it does not even know itself. Radiating from the heart through all the functions of life, its transpirations are so free, and smooth, and deep, as to escape the ear of consciousness. Hence people are generally aware of their virtue in proportion as they have it not. We are apt to estimate the merit of our good deeds according to the struggles we make in doing them; whereas, the greater our virtue, the less we shall have to struggle in order to do them, and it is purely the weakness and imperfection of our virtue that makes it so hard for us to do well. Accordingly we find that he who does no duty without being goaded up to it, is conscious of much more virtue than he has ; while he who does every duty as a thing of course and a matter of delight, is unconscious of his virtue simply because he has so much of it. Moreover, in his conflict of duties, Hamlet naturally thinks he is taking the wrong one; for the calls of the claim he meets are hushed by satisfaction, while the calls of the claim he neglects are increased by disappointment. Thus the motives which he resists out-tongue those which he obeys, so that he hears nothing but the voice of the duty he omits. We are of course insensible of the current with which we move; but we are made sensible of the current against which we move by the very struggle it costs. In this way Hamlet comes to mistake his scruples of conscience for want of conscience, and from his very sensitiveness of principle, tries to reason himself into a conviction of guilt. If, however, he were really guilty of what he accuses himself, he would be trying to find or make excuses wherewith to opiate his conscience. For the bad naturally try to hide their badness, the good their goodness, from themselves; for which cause the former seek narcotics, the latter stimulants, for their consciences. The good man is apt to think he has not conscience enough, because it does not trouble him; the bad man naturally thinks he has more conscience than he needs, because it troubles him all the while; which accounts for the well-known readiness of bad men to supply their neighbors with conscience. Of this sort were those men we read of, whose tenderness of conscience was such that they could not bear to take civil oaths, though they did not scruple to break those they had already taken. And yet Hamlet "thinks meet to put an antic disposition on." This, if, indeed, it be not rather the anticipation of a real than the pre-announcement of a feigned insanity, seems to us a profound artifice of honesty. Hamlet cannot kill his uncle, and disdains to conciliate him; and apparent madness is the only practicable outlet of thoughts and feelings which he scorns to hide. Towards the king as a fratricide, a regicide, and a usurper, as the thief of his father's life, and crown, and queen, he feels the deepest abhorrence. The Lord Chamberlain, as a skillful but unprincipled tool of sovereignty, reckless whom, and caring only for what, he serves, Hamlet regards with the contempt which a man of noble qualities naturally feels for a man of merely useful qualities. To express his sentiments to these in his real character, would be but to defeat his purpose and endanger his life. Since, therefore, in his true character he can only express false feelings, he assumes a false character to express his true feelings. Thus his apparent mental insanity becomes the triumph of his moral sanity. Such, then, appears the true moral aspect and explanation of Hamlet's madness. It is the spontaneous effort of his mind to be true to itself. He resorts to formal hypocrisy as the only available refuge from essential hypocrisy. Moreover, Hamlet sees that in this way he can tent the king's conscience to the quick with impunity. Accordingly it is not till pierced by the shaft, that the king discovers Hamlet's aim; and this discovery is a perfect demonstration of his own guilt. Thus Hamlet turns the very disturbance with which his soul is struggling into a means at once of safety to himself and of punishment to the king. In the uneasy suspicions and remorses which his antics awaken in the king, Hamlet has at the same time proof of his guilt and revenge for his crime; and the setting a wicked man's conscience to biting and stinging him, is always a lawful and even a laudable kind of revenge. Herein Hamlet shows his profound cunning, when he will stoop to cunning. He so lays his plan, that the king cannot possibly detect him, without betraying himself. From the nature of the case, the moment the king shows that he suspects what Hamlet is about, that moment Hamlet knows infallibly what the king has been about. Of all the perplexities, however, involved in this play, the question of Hamlet's madness is perhaps the hardest of solution. Whether his insanity be real or feigned, or whether it be a species of intermittent insanity, or whether it be sometimes real, sometimes feigned, are questions which, like many that arise on similar points in actual life, can never be fully and finally settled one way or the other. Aside from the ordinary impossibility of deciding precisely where sanity ends and insanity begins, there are, as there naturally must be, peculiarities in Hamlet's character and conduct, resulting from the minglings of the preternatural in his situation, which, as they lie beyond the compass of our common experience, so they can never be reduced to anything more than probable conjecture. If sanity consists in a certain harmony and sympathy between a man's actions and his circumstances, it must be difficult indeed to say what would be insanity in a man so circumstanced as Hamlet. Of course our own view in this matter will pass for just what it is worth. bendings and swayings of his faculties beneath an overload of thought, to keep them from breaking. Amid overpowering excitements of his reason and his blood, his intellect is neither crippled by disease nor enthralled by illusion, but distracted with conflicting duties, and hurried away into antics and eccentricities. His mind being deeply disturbed, agitated to its centre, but not disorganized, those irregularities are rather a throwing off of that disturb celebrated illustration, therefore, though almost too beautiful not to be true, seems entirely irrelevant and inadmissible. "Here," says he, "is an oak planted in a china vase, proper to receive only the most delicate flowers; the roots strike out, and the vessel flies to pieces." If Hamlet's mind were really disorganized, broken in fragments, as this expression implies, we do not see how it could alternate, as it unquestionably does, between integrity and unsoundness; between the most exquisite harmony and the most jarring dissonance. Many of us, no doubt, have experienced in ourselves or observed in others an almost irrepressible tendency, in times of great depression, to fly off into extravagant humors and eccentricities. We have our selves known people, in hours of extreme despondency, to throw their most intimate friends into consternation by their pro-ance than a giving way to it. Goethe's digious extravagances; their minds being in a very paroxysm of frolic, when they almost felt like hanging themselves. Such symptoms of wildness and insanity are often but the natural, though perhaps spasmodic, reaction of the mind against the weight that oppresses it. The mind thus spontaneously becomes eccentric, in order to recover or preserve its centre; voluntarily departs from its orbit, to escape what might else throw it from its orbit. This is especially apt to be the case with minds which, like Hamlet's, unite great intellectual power with exceeding fineness and fullness of sensibility. The truth is, almost Now the expressions of mirth which all extreme emotions naturally express come from extreme depression, are obvithemselves by their opposites: extreme ously neither the reality nor the affectation sorrow often utters itself in laughter; ex- of mirth. People, when overwhelmed by treme joy, in tears; utter despair sometimes despair, certainly are not in a condition to breaks out in a voice of mirth; a wounded feel merry, and they are as little in a conspirit, in gushes of humor. Hence Shak-dition to feign mirth; yet, though neither speare, with a depth of nature which has often puzzled both readers and critics, has heightened the effect of some of his awfullest catastrophes by making the persons indulge in flashes of merriment: for there is nothing so appalling as a person laughing in distress; it shows that the spirit is loaded to the utmost extent of its endurance. And the same thing often occurs in actual life. Sir Thomas More's wit upon the scaffold, "than the bare axe more luminous and keen," is an instance of this kind, familiar perhaps to us all. It is not to be presumed, we take it, that More's playfulness on this awful occasion sprung from merry feelings; on the contrary, it must have sprung, one would think, from the other extreme of feeling a man smiling and playing from excess of anguish and terror. In like manner Hamlet's mental aberrations seem to spring, not from deficiency, but from excess of intellectual strength; the conscious, half-voluntary feeling nor feigning it, they do, nevertheless, sometimes express it. The truth is, such extremes naturally and spontaneously express themselves by their opposites; the very contradiction between the passion and expression best revealing the unutterable intensity of the passion. In like manner Hamlet's madness, paradoxical and contradictory as the statement may appear, is, it seems to us, neither real nor affected, but a sort of natural and spontaneous imitation of madness, resulting from the successful, though convulsive, efforts of an overburdened mind to brace and stay itself under the burden. The triumphs of his reason over his passion naturally express themselves in the tokens of insanity, just as the agonies of despair naturally vent themselves in flashes of merriment. It is not so correct, therefore, to say that Hamlet puts an antic on, as that he lets it on; and his pre-announcement of it seems to spring rather from foresight of a contingency, than from an intention to deceive. He foresees, apparently, that such eccentricities and aberrations will be the natural result of his condition; that, though he can avoid them if he will, it will require an effort to do so; that though repressible, it will not be easy, perhaps not safe, to repress them. Foreseeing, moreover, that by giving nature free course and indulging these aberrations as they rise, he can turn them to a useful purpose, he therefore determines neither to seek nor shun them, but to let them come when they will, and use them when they come. The character of Hamlet seems designed to exemplify, among other things, the rare but not unnatural contradiction between the inward and the outward, the real and the apparent, whereby men come to seem precisely the reverse of what they are. For, as bad men are generally compelled to appear good, notwithstanding and even because they are bad, so good men are sometimes compelled to appear bad, even because they are good. Thus in Hamlet we have apparent weakness springing from real strength; apparent badness, from real goodness; apparent insanity, from real sanity. In like manner, his unkind treatment of Ophelia, in the famous eaves-dropping scene, appears to spring from his exceed ing tenderness of feeling. An arrangement has been made whereby Hamlet and Ophelia are to have an interview, the king and Polonius being behind the curtains meanwhile to overhear what passes between them, with a view to ascertain, if possible, the cause of his supposed insanity; which cause Polonius thinks, and the king hopes, to be disappointed love. Hamlet encounters her there: "Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered;" perfectly kind and gentle towards her. Presently, however, his deportment changes, and becomes exceedingly harsh and rude. The question is, why this so sudden and violent change? Now Ophelia is here thrown into a position where she is forced to tell, or act, a falsehood. In her perfect innocence and artlessness, having probably never told, much less acted, a lie in her life, she is of course unable to go smoothly through the part assigned her; she falters, hesitates, becomes embarrassed, and thus betrays by her manner the very secret she is trying to hide. From this involuntary embarrassment Hamlet doubtless instantaneously perceives that something is wrong, and suspects himself to be watched; and his subsequent remarks, though addressed to Ophelia, are rather intended for those who are watching him. To clear up this difficulty on the stage, the king and Polonius are sometimes made to come forward where Hamlet can see them. This, we beg leave to say with all due deference, precludes the chief beauty of the scene, which is, that Ophelia should be so innocent as to betray by her manner, and Hamlet so quick-sighted as to detect, precisely what is going on. But, though Hamlet's uncivil speeches on this occasion be rather intended for the eaves-droppers than for Ophelia, still he cannot but know she will take them as meant for herself, and accordingly be hurt by them; so that, without other grounds than this, we cannot reconcile his conduct with the assurance, that "Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all this quantity of love, Make up his sum." The discovery of the trick attempted upon him may be a sufficient reason for resuming his antic disposition, but not for using unkind and uncourteous expressions to her. What, then, can be Hamlet's moFew circumstances tive in using them? in the play have been so perplexing to critics as this. It seems never to have occurred to them, to seek for the motives of Hamlet's conduct in the result. Now Ophelia comes out of the interview fully convinced that his mind is hopelessly wrecked. Is it not fair to presume, then, that this result is precisely what he intended? Knowing that her heart is entirely his own, and fearing the effects of his unexplainable desertion of her, he therefore wishes to detach and alienate her feelings gradually, and so prevent the danger of a too sudden and violent rupture. In a word, he treats her rudely and unkindly in order to save her. Thus we have apparent harshness springing from real tenderness; and Hamlet's conduct becomes reconcilable with his professions, on the ground of its being, in the words of Lamb, "an ingenious device of love, gradually to prepare her mind, by affected discour tesies under the guise of insanity, for the breaking up of an attachment which he knows can never be consummated." After all, however, it must be confessed, as was intimated in the outset, that there is a mystery about Hamlet, which baffles the utmost efforts of criticism. The deepest and subtilest analysis has hitherto proved unable to clear up the apparent inconsistencies of his character. The central principle, from which these inconsistencies radiate, and in which they are reconciled, lies perhaps beyond any insight less piercing than Shakspeare's. We cannot see, Hamlet himself cannot see, the why and wherefore of his being and doing thus and So. He is subject to impulses below our penetration, and even below his own consciousness. We feel the truth and consistency of the character, but the grounds of this feeling reach beyond our depth; for in such matters the heart always feels much deeper than the head sees. In the words of another," Hamlet is a being with springs of thought, and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search. These springs rise up from an unknown depth; a depth in which we feel and know there is a unity of being, though we cannot distinctly perceive it; so that the superficial contradictions of his character have no power to make us doubt its perfect truth." And the character undoubtedly cleaves to us the closer for that, while it includes much of our own consciousness, it also reflects the mystery of our own being. We can neither see through Hamlet nor yet away from him, and the same is the case with ourselves; indeed, this is about all that we know of ourselves. The idea of Hamlet, which we have been trying to unfold, is, conscious plenitude of intellect, united with exceeding fineness and fullness of sensibility, and guided by a predominant sentiment of moral rectitude. In spite of himself his mind is a perennial spring of "thoughts that wander through eternity" he is perpetually losing the present in the eternal, the particular in the universal, as genius is apt to do; for genius is, in some sort, intuition of universal truth. His mind, however, is by no means in a healthy state; indeed, no healthy mind could well retain its health in his circumstances. When all was joyous and promising before him, he had sufficient resources without, and his faculties were genially occupied with external objects; but amid his later trials and perplexities, he is forced to seek within himself resources which the world cannot furnish, and his faculties are thrown back upon themselves. Thus his great genius becomes intensely self-conscious, and introspection settles into a sort of chronic disease. "By abstruse research to steal From his own nature all the natural man— This was his sole resource, his only plan; Till that which suits a part infects the whole, And now is grown the very habit of his soul." It is in this morbid consciousness of his own powers, that he exclaims: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties! in form and motion how express and admirable! in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!" Haunted with a sense of the supernatural in his experience; persecuted with duties which he can neither forget nor perform; with all the natural issues of his being closed up, so that he can neither act nor let it alone; and mistaking his outward difficulties for inward deficiency; his mind of course becomes abstracted from surrounding objects, and absorbed in itself; he can do nothing but think, and think, and "eat his own heart;" his self-contemplation causing him to marvel the more at his inactivity, and his inactivity plunging him still deeper in self-contemplation. And perhaps his consciousness of "genius given and knowledge won in vain," is one source of his overwrought distress. Educated with the noble prospect, and inspired with the noble ambition of blessing others, everything he now meets but stings him with remembrance of the precious opportunity whereof another's crimes have deprived him. In his calmer moments, when his energies are not engrossed in controlling his emotions, he revels amid the very regalities of poetry and philosophy; his mind, rich with the spoils of nature and of art, smiles forth its treasures with the gentleness of a child and the composure of a god; unbending itself in the labors of a giant! In the happiness of youthful confidence, his genius has plucked the flowers which carpet the fields of antiquity, to enwreath the brows of Truth, its modest and |