stranger into our knowledge. But how tell in words, so pure, so fine, so ideal an abstraction as HAMLET? We can indeed figure to ourselves generally his princely form, that outshone all other manly beauty, and adorn it with the consummation of all liberal accomplishment. We can behold in every look, every gesture, every motion, the future king,

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword:
Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,

Th' observ'd of all observers !

But when we would penetrate into his spirit,meditate on those things on which he meditates,-accompany him even unto the brink of eternity, fluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, soar with him into the purest and serenest regions of human thought,-feel with him the curse of beholding iniquity, and the troubled delight of thinking on innocence, and gentleness, and beauty, come with him, from all the glorious dreams cherished by a noble spirit in the halls of wisdom and philosophy, of a sudden into the gloomy courts of sin, and incest, and murder,shudder with him over the broken and shattered fragments of all the fairest creation of his fancy,be borne with him at once from calm, and lofty, and delighted speculations, into the very heart of fear, and horror, and tribulation,-have the agonies and the guilt of our mortal world brought into immediate contact with the world beyond the grave,

and the influence of an awful shadow hanging for ever on our thoughts,-be present at a fearful combat between all the stirred-up passions of humanity in the soul of one man,—a combat in which one and all of those passions are alternately victorious and overcome,-I say, that when we are thus placed and thus acted upon, how is it possible to draw a character of this sublime drama, or of the mysterious being who is its moving spirit? In him, his character and his situation, there is a concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity. There is scarcely a trait of frailty or of grandeur, which may have endeared to us our most beloved friends in real life, that is not to be found in Hamlet. Undoubtedly Shakspeare loved him beyond all his other creations. Soon as he appears on the

stage, we are satisfied. When absent, we long for his return. This is the only play which exists almost altogether in the character of one single person. Who ever knew a Hamlet in real life? Yet who, ideal as the character is, feels not its reality? This is the wonder. We love him not, we think of him not, because he was witty,-because he was melancholy,-because he was filial; but we love him because he existed, and was himself. This is the grand sum-total of the impression. I believe that of every other character, either in tragic or epic poetry, the story makes a part of the conception; but of Hamlet, the deep and permanent interest is the conception of himself. This seems to belong, not to the character being more

perfectly drawn, but to there being a more intense conception of individual human life than perhaps in any other human composition; that is, a being with springs of thought, and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search. These springs rise from an unknown depth, and in that depth there seems to be a oneness of being which we cannot distinctly behold, but which we believe to be there; and thus irreconcileable circumstances, floating on the surface of his actions, have not the effect of making us doubt the truth of the general picture..

A good play is an imitation of life, in as far as the actions, and events, and passions of a few hours can represent those of a whole lifetime. Yet, after all, it is but a segment of a circle that we can behold. Were the dramatist to confine himself to that narrow limit, how little could he achieve! He takes, therefore, for granted, a knowledge, and a sympathy, and a passion in his spectators, that extends to, and permeates the existence of his characters long anterior to the short period which his art can embrace. He expects, and he expects reasonably, that we are not to look upon every thing acted and said before us absolutely as it is said or acted. It is his business to make us comprehend the whole man from

I would particularly point out this attempt to develope the peculiar nature of the interest derived from the exhibition or study of the character of Hamlet, as singularly just and pro

found.

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.