Afterwards, in the scene with his mother, (Act iii., sc. 4,) when he has again seen his father's ghost, she calling his behaviour upon the occasion, "ecstacy, the coinage of his brain," he replies:

"Ecstacy!

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,

And I the matter will re-word; which madness.
Would gambol from."

And at the close of the same scene, he counsels his mother not to allow the king to worm from her his secret :

"Let him not

Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft."

But the strongest proof of all that his insanity is assumed is, that in his soliloquies he never utters an incoherent phrase. When he is alone, he reasons clearly and consistently;-it may be inconclusively, because he seeks in sophism an excuse for deferring the task of revenge imposed upon him ;-but it is always coherently. At the close of the celebrated soliloquy,-"To be, or not to be," than which nothing more grandly reflective and heart-absorbing was ever penned by poet, he is surprised at finding that he has been overheard in his rationality by Ophelia, who is at the back of the scene; and he then immediately begins to wander, in order that he may maintain his scheme of delusion; his language to her being the naturally conceived expression of an over-heated and excited brain, and not the disjointed incoherency of the incurable maniac.

Especially fine, too, is he in that soliloquy of the 4th scene, Act iv., after meeting with the forces of Fortinbras; and

which speech Schlegel justly describes as being the key to the character of the prince. Hamlet says, sedately reflect

ing:

"Rightly to be great,

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,

When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? While, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds."

This greatly reasoning scene is never represented on the stage; and, by the way, it has not unfrequently been the practice to argue on a question in Shakespeare's plays, from what is known of them through the actors; yet the theatrical copies are so notoriously abridged, that it is impossible to judge fairly of the poet's delineation of character, who never wrote a line that did not harmonise with, and tend to define the portrait he was limning.

In the scenes, too, with his heart-friend, Horatio, Hamlet is uniformly rational:-with one exception only; and that is immediately after the play-scene, and the discovery of the king's appalled conscience, when the wild words he utters may be fairly imputed to the result of his excitement, consequent upon the confirmation of the Ghost's murder-tale.

With the players, too, and the grave-digger, where it is unnecessary to maintain the consistency of the part he had assumed, he is perfectly collected, and even utters sound criticism and profound philosophy. His apology to Laertes, wherein he decidedly imputes his former misconduct to mental aberration, is the nearest approach to a confirmation of the idea that he has been really insane: but this scene takes place in the presence of the whole court, whom he has all

along intended to deceive, his revenge, moreover, being still left unaccomplished. I therefore conclude, and I think reasonably, that they have read the whole play with very little reflection who conceive that Shakespeare intended to portray real, and not feigned madness in the conduct of Hamlet.

I should suppose that there never was a more artistical piece of dramatic event achieved (at all events, my own reading cannot quote its rival) than the arrangement of the machinery in the first scene of this play, for the introduction of the Ghost. How gradual, how solemn, and withal how serene, are its approaches;-the opening eyelids of the dawn not more impressive. We first behold the soldier, Francisco, on his watch. The stillness of the scene is broken by the password of his comrade, Bernardo, who comes to relieve guard, and take Francisco's post. His natural question to his predecessor," Have you had quiet guard?" for Bernardo knows of the spirit's appearance, and wishes to discover whether Francisco have seen it also. To him, however, "not a mouse has been stirring." And here I would draw attention to one of the most signal examples of the far-sightedness and comprehension of his subject on the part of the poet, which occurs in the first two sentences of this play; the purport of which is so subtle, that it must escape the casual and light reader. Francisco is the guard on duty; and Bernardo, coming in to relieve him, calls out, "Who's there?"-which challenge the other naturally retorts, with, "Nay, answer me; stand, and unfold yourself." Bernardo being full of the apparition that he and Marcellus had witnessed the night before, in his perturbation questions everything he encounters in the night gloom. And when he is about to be left alone on the platform,-midnight close at hand,—the awful point of time for the visitation, he anxiously commissions Francisco, "If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, the

rivals of my watch, bid them make haste."* Immediately upon this, the two in question enter: Horatio having come to prove the truth of what had been reported to him by the other two, he doubting the fact. Marcellus, who had been a witness of the apparition, calls it, "This dreaded sight twice seen of us." Now, all this appears to me the perfection of forethought, with contrivance. Horatio, still doubtful, says: "Tush, tush, 'twill not appear." Then Bernardo adds circumstance to the testimony of his companion :

"Last night of all,

When yond' same star that's westward from the pole,
Had made his course t' illume that part of heav'n
Where now it burns; Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one,

"Peace! break thee off," exclaims Marcellus, "look where it comes again."

How thrillingly grand is all this! and how natural! Still, the dignity of the event is to be sustained; and Horatio being the "scholar," also the bosom-friend of Hamlet, is urged to address the spirit:—and here again, it is noticeable, that though all three are officers and gentlemen, yet the language of Horatio is cast in a more classical mould than that of the others, and this unvaryingly so throughout. How solemn and how deprecatory is his abjuration !—

"What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form,

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march ?-By heaven I charge thee, speak!"

The spirit stalks away, deigning no reply; the consummation of its errand is yet to be fulfilled: it is yet to speak; and

This lecture was written some years before a zealous and clever article appeared in the Quarterly Review, upon "Hamlet,"-in which this prevision of his plan by the poet was noticed.

to no ears but those of Hamlet. Marcellus now exclaims to his doubting comrade:

"How now, Horatio! you tremble, and look pale. Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on't?

"Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe, Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes."

In the midst of a conversation of conjecture and surmise that ensues upon this event, Horatio again brings forward his classical accomplishments; and, what is remarkable, Shakespeare has put into his mouth a complete anticipation of the Newtonian theory of the tides. All this bye-play is to add dignity to Horatio, the friend and companion of the hero. After speaking of the prodigies that are said to have appeared in Rome previously to the assassination of the "mightiest Julius ;"

"The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; "-

he concludes:

"And the moist star [the moon]

Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse."

Then follows that sweetly solemn winding up of the scene, after the second vanishing, at the crowing of the cock, with the remembrance of that pious superstition as recorded by Marcellus ;—and what an exquisitely poetical term to use!

"It faded at the crowing of the cock."

Let any one try to find a more apt phrase than that to describe the dissolving of a shade into the elements, and he will be lucky if he succeed. Macbeth presents an even more