bear her up to his spiritual level, but even that she too has joined the general league of evil which is arraying itself against his righteous vengeance. At the grave of the hapless girl his old affection breaks forth once more with something of its former generous fire. The literally tremendous reply to Laertes has that ring of sincerity and mark of power which proceed from a soul, racked maybe, life-sick, and pardonably hysterical, but still well in all essential respects : "'Swounds, show me what thou❜lt do : Woul't weep? woul't fight? woul't fast? woul't tear thyself? To the Queen this may seem mere madness." It is the madness of that higher sanity which accompanies superb genius. IV. Pessimism unconsciously overcome. The form finally taken by Hamlet's hesitation is distinctively ethical. He is caught between the upper millstone of a duty which imposes an imperative ought," and the nether millstone of murder, a most heinous crime. Is it better to obey the call of duty, and do murder, or to disregard conscience and let 1 Act v. sc. 1, line 264. 2 Cf. Act iii. sc. 3, lines 73 foll., and Act iv. sc. 4, lines 32 foll. successful sin flourish in high places? Hamlet's ideal -that which he would build into actual life for its reformation—was to prove the King's guilt, and then have stern justice done upon the criminal. Murder could but shift right from his own side to that of his victim. Notwithstanding, circumstances are such that he cannot bring the desired consummation to pass. The world arrays itself against him, and effectually hinders the morally ideal vengeance of which he was the designated instrument. To his uncle he would have meted out strict justice and a felon's death. He could not serve him with anything but assassination. Society might, and, according to Hamlet's notion, ought to, have visited the King with well-merited doom. He himself could only wrong him by illegally depriving him of life. Yet this, the worse plan, is rendered inevitable by mere stress of events. In this way evil rushes in upon Hamlet, working havoc with his whole being. He is a prey to the discord, most natural yet most distressing, between contemplated ideal and attainable reality. Nevertheless, he cannot be altogether overcome. His capacity for calm reflection still remains to him. To the gross world, as to Guildenstern, he could still say, "Though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me." Action may be inevitably baulked of manifestation in a perfect deed, but freedom to ruminate on all the best that might one day be is not thus affected. The difficulty in which Hamlet was placed by this antagonism none of his fellows comprehended. So the tragedy of his career gains intensity. But want of ability to sympathise—which the unsympathetic never seek in their own defect, nor perceive in their ludicrous judgment—is by its very REESE LIBRARY OF THY UNIVERSHY DF CALIFORNIA nature a whimsically insufficient account of the socalled madman. The hastily conceived deliverance is nothing but an opaque veil which hides away the truth. Hamlet's ideal-the unseen-remains his real strength, the essence of his nobility. His despair, because blameless vengeance cannot be executed, is his infirmity. The curious fact that strength and weakness alike originate in the same spiritual source, constitutes at once the riddle of his life and the cause of his tragic death. He has a blurred vision of some other state—attainable even now--where are neither sin nor sorrow. "O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space." But then he is checked by the irremovable reality, "Denmark is a prison," for "thinking makes it so." And at the last, still hesitating and troubled concerning the "cursed spite" of his mission, though his revenge be compassed, he straight hurries himself to another sphere, where doubt may be dispelled, and where the need to "report me and my cause aright" may have no existence. Finally, despite all his darkling purpose, and his self-wrought death, Hamlet's vindication of the right is artistically complete. Claudius goes to his dread account as did his victim, "Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled,” 1 "With all his crimes broad blown, as fresh as May." Beyond what he even imagined,2 Hamlet takes his uncle "about some act That has no relish of salvation in't," 1 Act i. sc. 5, line 77. Compare the whole passage. 2 Cf. Act iii. sc. 4, lines 88 foll. and in the midst so trips him that, of a surety, "his heels may kick at heaven ; And that his soul may be as damn'd, and black Poetic justice this may be; it is more. It is the fit solution of Hamlet's lifelong torment, the anodyne for his pain, the end of his dismay. In perfect sanity, his work well done, he meets death. His ideal righteousness has been actually realised in Denmark, although he wot not of it. His mind, sure of itself and of its own judgment, even amid the heaped-up horrors, dictates to Horatio all that is needed for self-justification; and the Hamlet of the play passes into the unseen, carrying with him the unsearchable mystery of his double nature. Yet, though dead, he remains for ever in the perfection of his revenge, to tell that the wounds of life can be cured in living, that the battle with adverse circumstances is but a condition of advance to higher excellence, that, in his own peculiarly pregnant phrase, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 1 Act v. sc. 2, line 10. THE PESSIMISTIC ELEMENT IN GOETHE. I. Introductory. EXCEPTIONALLY great men are, from the nature of the case, often unfortunate in their critics. Looming large upon the field of intellect and morals, they afford a tolerably attractive target-one easily hit, if not easily pierced. Yet, when the shot strikes, the damage is sometimes more apparent than real; the mark is scarcely affected. Genius, in other words, presents a liberal outline, but the value attaching to the various spaces within it is not determined by hard and fast law. Accordingly, many criticisms of Goethe, as of Browning and Tennyson, while not without aim, are liable to be discounted on close inspection. They reckon for less than had been thought at first sight. One has heard it reiterated to weariness, for example, that Goethe's plays are failures; "his situations are often dramatic, his characters are seldom so." The judgment is doubtless as obvious as that Dante and Balzac did not write comedies. Yet the stern seer of the Divina Commedia' and the lusty humourist of the |