"THE spirit I have seen May be a devil; and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape, yea, and, perhaps, Out of my weakness and my melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits,) Abuses me, to damn me.”

Thus the hope that the ghost's tale may be false, and the fear that it may be true, unite to send him in quest of other proofs. The probability seems at once too strong justify the abandonment, and too weak justify the execution of the deed. The uth is, the ghost develops Hamlet, and e development it works within him is war with the injunction it lays upon m. Its supernatural revelations bring rth into clearer apprehension some moral eas which before were but dim presentients within him; and its requisitions are warted by the very truths which it sugsts and unfolds to him, and by the train reflections which it sets a-going in his ad. Under the disclosures made to him m beyond the grave, his mind attains a d or degree of development not ordiily vouchsafed to our earthly being. It s if he were born into the other world ore dying out of this. But the words n that other world must be confirmed by is from this, before he can bring himto trust in them; and therefore

"The play's the thing Wherein he'll catch the conscience of the king."

When, however, he has caught the king's conscience; when, by holding the mirror up to his soul, he has forced "his occulted quilt" to "unkennel itself;" along with certainty of the crime, he gains food for still further reflection. The demonstration of his uncle's guilt arrests the very purpose for which that demonstration was sought. His own conscience is but startled into a dread of the retribution he has disclosed in the conscience of another. He has sought grounds of punishment in the manifestations of remorse; and the very proofs which, to his mind, justify the in

VOL. I. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

9

flicting of death, themselves spring from a worse death than he has power to inflict. It is thus that Hamlet is distracted with a purpose which he is at once too good a son to dismiss, and too good a man to perform. Under an injunction with which he knows not what to do, he casts about, now for excuses, now for censures, of his non-performance; and religion prevents him from doing what filial piety reproves him for omitting. While he dare not abandon the design of killing the king, he is at the same time morally incapable of forming any plan for doing it. He can only do it, and he does only attempt it, under a sudden frenzy of excitement, caused by some immediate provocation; not so much acting as being acted upon; as an instrument of Providence, rather than as a self-determining agent.

And this view of Hamlet is rather confirmed than otherwise by the motives which he assigns for sparing the king, when he finds him praying. That these motives, too horrible even for a fiend to entertain, are not his real motives, is evident from their extravagance; for if such motives would keep him from doing the deed then, assuredly no motives could have kept him from doing it before. These motives are but the excuses wherewith he quiets his filial feelings without violating his conscience. He thus effects a compromise between his religion and his affection, by adjourning a purpose which the one will not suffer him to execute, nor the other to abandon. The question, "Is it not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm?" which he afterwards puts to Horatio, while relating the king's plot against his own life, proves that he had not even then overcome his moral repugnance to the deed.

Properly speaking, therefore, Hamlet lacks not force of will, as some have argued, but only force of self-will; that is, his will is strictly subjected to his reason and conscience, and is of course powerless when it comes in conflict with them; where they impede not his volitions, he seems, as

"THE spirit I have seen May be a devil; and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape, yea, and, perhaps, Out of my weakness and my melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits,) Abuses me, to damn me."

Thus the hope that the ghost's tale may be false, and the fear that it may be true, unite to send him in quest of other proofs. The probability seems at once too strong to justify the abandonment, and too weak to justify the execution of the deed. The truth is, the ghost develops Hamlet, and the development it works within him is at war with the injunction it lays upon him. Its supernatural revelations bring forth into clearer apprehension some moral ideas which before were but dim presentiments within him; and its requisitions are thwarted by the very truths which it suggests and unfolds to him, and by the train of reflections which it sets a-going in his nind. Under the disclosures made to him rom beyond the grave, his mind attains a and or degree of development not ordiarily vouchsafed to our earthly being. It as if he were born into the other world efore dying out of this. But the words om that other world must be confirmed by acts from this, before he can bring him elf to trust in them; and therefore

"The play's the thing Wherein he'll catch the conscience of the king."

66

When, however, he has caught the king's conscience ; when, by holding the mirror up to his soul, he has forced his occulted guilt" to "unkennel itself;" along with certainty of the crime, he gains food for still further reflection. The demonstration of his uncle's guilt arrests the very purpose for which that demonstration was sought. His own conscience is but startled into a dread of the retribution he has disclosed in the conscience of another. He has sought grounds of punishment in the manifestations of remorse; and the very proofs which, to his mind, justify the in

VOL. I. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

9

flicting of death, themselves spring from a worse death than he has power to inflict. It is thus that Hamlet is distracted with a purpose which he is at once too good a son to dismiss, and too good a man to perform. Under an injunction with which he knows not what to do, he casts about, now for excuses, now for censures, of his non-performance; and religion prevents him from doing what filial piety reproves him for omitting. While he dare not abandon the design of killing the king, he is at the same time morally incapable of forming any plan for doing it. He can only do it, and he does only attempt it, under a sudden frenzy of excitement, caused by some immediate provocation; not so much acting as being acted upon; as an instrument of Providence, rather than as a self-determining agent.

And this view of Hamlet is rather confirmed than otherwise by the motives which he assigns for sparing the king, when he finds him praying. That these motives, too horrible even for a fiend to entertain, are not his real motives, is evident from their extravagance; for if such motives would keep him from doing the deed then, assuredly no motives could have kept him from doing it before. These motives are but the excuses wherewith he quiets his filial feelings without violating his conscience. He thus effects a compromise between his religion and his affection, by adjourning a purpose which the one will not suffer him to execute, nor the other to abandon. The question, "Is it not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm?" which he afterwards puts to Horatio, while relating the king's plot against his own life, proves that he had not even then overcome his moral repugnance to the deed.

Properly speaking, therefore, Hamlet lacks not force of will, as some have argued, but only force of self-will; that is, his will is strictly subjected to his reason and conscience, and is of course powerless when it comes in conflict with them; where they impede not his volitions, he seems, as

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 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 purel 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