a part of his existence; but we are not to be passive spectators. It is our business to fill up and supply. It is our business to bring to the contemplation of an imaginary drama a knowledge of real life, and no more to cry out against apparent inconsistencies and violations of character as we

behold them in poetry, than as we every day behold them exemplified by living men. The pageants that move before us on the stage, however deeply they may interest us, are, after all, mere strangers. It is Shakspeare alone who can give to fleeting phantoms the definite interest of real personages. But we ought not to turn this glorious power against himself. We ought not to demand inexorably the same perfect, and universal, and embracing truth of character in an existence brought before us in a few hurried scenes (which is all a play can be) that we sometimes may think we find in a real being, after long years of intimate knowledge, and which, did we know more, would perhaps seem to us to be truth no longer, but a chaos of the wildest and darkest inconsistencies.*

A tragedy is a leaf torn from the book of fate. Shakspeare's story is like nature in this, that you do not see the links of action, but you see powers

'Notwithstanding the popularity of Shakspeare, how seldom is it that a spectator or reader of his plays is furnished with a knowledge of life and character adequate to the full comprehension of the depth, and accuracy, and extensive range of his draughts from nature!

manifesting themselves with intervals of obscurity. To improve the plots of his plays, with all their apparent faults, would be something like improving the history of England. We feel that the things have happened in nature, and for whatever has happened, I presume there is a good reason. Shakspeare's soul is like Intellect, descending into the world, and putting on human life, faculties, and sense, whereby to know the world. It thus sees all things in their beauty and power, and in their true relation to man and to each other; but not shaken by them, like man. He sees beauty in external nature,-in men's souls,-in children,in Ariel,-in Imogen,-in thought,-in fancy,-in feeling,-in passion,-in moral being,-in melody, not in one thing; but wherever it is, he has the discernment of it. So also of power, and of all other relations and properties of being which the human spirit can comprehend. I think that what his character wanted is purity and loftiness of will, and that almost all the faults of his plays, and, above all, his exceedingly bad jokes belong to this defect. In these he yielded from his nature, though we cannot doubt that his nature had pure delight in all things great and good, lofty, pure, and beautiful. If this be not the truth, where is the solution of the difficulty to be found? Not, surely, in his yielding in base subservience to the spirit of the age. He was above that, as Milton was above it, and as all the noblest spirits of earth have been before and since.

I feel that I should be guilty of presumption, were I, after all that has been said of Hamlet's character, to attempt giving a regular delineation of it. Surely there is in his nature all that exalted and potent spirit, entered into union with bodily life, can produce, from the ethereal breathings of his mind down to the exquisite delicacy of his senses. If there be any thing disproportioned in his mind, it seems to be this only,—that intellect is in excess. It is even ungovernable, and too subtle. His own description of perfect man ending with "In apprehension how like a god!" appears to me consonant with this character, and spoken in the high and over-wrought consciousness of intellect. Much that requires explanation in the play, may perhaps be explained by this predominance and consciousness of great intellectual power. Is it not possible that the instantaneous idea of feigning himself mad belongs to this? It is the power most present to his mind, and therefore in that, though in the denial of it, is his first thought to place his defence. So might we suppose a brave man of gigantic bodily strength counterfeiting cowardice and imbecility till there came a moment for the rousing up of vengeance; so Brutus, the lover of freedom, assumed the manners of an ideot-slave, till the destined call was heard that brought him out to the deliverance of his country. I scarcely think that moral sensibility was the chief characteristic of his mind, as Richardson has said in his excellent essay, and still less morbid sensibility, as

many others have affirmed; but I should say that the spiritual nature is strong in his mind, and perfect, that therefore he is moral and just in all his affections, complete in all his faculties. He is a being of power by high and clear intuition, and not by violence of will. In him will seems an exceedingly inferior faculty, only arising at times in obedience to higher faculties, and always waiting the termination of their conflict.

If there be truth in these very imperfect notions, I do not see why we should wonder greatly at Hamlet's extreme perplexity, depression, and irresolution. All at once there was imposed upon him a greater duty than he knew how to execute. Had his soul been unshaken, and in possession of all its clearness of power, perhaps even then such duty had been too great. It was his business to kill his uncle, without decidedly endangering his own life, and also justifiably to the country. For a mind, which till then had lived only in speculative thought, to find, upon entering the world, such a fearful work to be done in it, was perplexing and appalling. He comes at once into contention with the great powers of the world, he is to preserve himself among them, and to employ them for the destruction of another. To a high intellectual mind, there is perhaps something repugnant at all times in meddling with such powers; for there is something blind and violent in their motion, and an intellectual mind would desire in action the clearness of thought. Hamlet therefore never gets

farther, I believe, than one step-that of self-protection in feigning himself mad. He sees no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding; and with all due deference to those critics in conduct who seem disposed to censure his dilatoriness, I should be glad if any body would point out one. He is therefore by necessity irresolute; but he feels that he is letting time pass; and the consciousness of duty undone weighs down his soul. He thus comes to dread the clear knowledge of his own situation, and of the duties arising from it. He dreads the light of the necessities that are upon him; and when the hour to act comes, he hides himself from it. Sometimes he sets illusions between himself and truth, and sometimes he merely passes, by simple transition, from the painful faculties of his mind to those he likes better.

We are not justified in asserting that Hamlet had not faculties for action, and that he was purely a meditative spirit. The most actively heroic would have paused in a situation of such overwhelming exigences, and with such an unhinging shock of feelings. When he does act, he acts with great energy, decision, directness, skill, and felicity of event. Nothing undertaken against him succeeds, except murder, which will succeed against any man; and, perhaps, more ostentatious heroes, after they had received their own death-wound, would, unlike Hamlet, have allowed the incestuous king to escape their vengeance.

It has been much canvassed by critics, whether