showing why he cannot be explained; nor to reduce the variety of opinions touching him, but rather to suggest whence that variety proceeds, and why.

One man considers Hamlet great, but wicked; another, good, but weak; a third, that he lacks courage, and dare not act; a fourth, that he has too much intellect for his will, and so thinks away the time of action: some conclude him honestly mad; others, that his madness is wholly feigned. Yet, notwithstanding this diversity of conclusions, all agree in thinking and speaking of him as an actual person. It is easy to invest with plausibility almost any theory regarding him, but very hard to make any theory comprehend the whole subject; and, while all are impressed with the truth of the character, no one is satisfied with another's view of it. The question is, why such unanimity as to his being a man, and at the same time such diversity as to what sort of a man he is?

Now, in reasoning about facts, we are apt to forget what complex and many-sided things they are. We often speak of them as very simple and intelligible; and in some respects they are so; but, in others, they are inscrutably mysterious. For they present manifold elements and qualities in unity and consistency, and so carry a manifoldness of meaning which cannot be gathered up into logical expression. Even if we seize and draw out severally all the properties of a fact, still we are as far as ever from producing the effect of their combination. Thus there is somewhat in facts that still eludes the cunningest analysis; like the vital principle, which no subtlety of dissection can grasp or overtake. It is this mysteriousness of facts that begets our respect for them: could we master them, we should naturally lose our regard for them. For, to see round and through a thing, implies a sort of conquest over it; and when we seem to have conquered a thing, we are apt to put off that humility towards it, which is both the better part of wisdom, and also our key to the remainder.

This complexity of facts supposes the material of in

numerable theories: for, in such a multitude of properties belonging to one and the same thing, every man's mind may take hold of some special consideration above the rest; and when we look at facts through a given theory they naturally seem to prove but that one, though they would really afford equal proof of fifty others. Hence, there come to be divers opinions respecting the same thing; and men arrive at opposite conclusions, forgetting, that of a given fact many things may be true in their place and degree, yet none of them true in such sort as to impair the truth of others.

Now, Hamlet is all varieties of character in one; he is continually turning up a new side, appearing under a new phase, undergoing some new development; so that he touches us at all points, and, as it were, surrounds us. This complexity and versatility of character are often mistaken for inconsistency: hence the contradictory opinions respecting him, different minds taking very different impressions of him, and even the same mind, at different times. In short, like other facts, he is many-sided, so that many men of many minds may see themselves in different sides of him; but, when they compare notes, and find him agreeing with them all, they are perplexed, and are apt to think him inconsistent: in so great a diversity of elements, they lose the perception of identity, and cannot see how he can be so many, and still be but one. Doubtless he seems the more real for this very cause; our inability to see through him, or to discern the source and manner of his impression upon us, brings him closer to nature, makes him appear the more like a fact, and so strengthens his hold on our thoughts. For, where there is life, there must needs be more or less of change, the very law of life being identity in mutability; and in Hamlet the variety and rapidity of changes are so managed as only to infer the more intense, active, and prolific vitality; though, in so great a multitude of changes, it is extremely difficult to seize the constant principle.

Coleridge's view of Hamlet is much celebrated, and the

In

currency it has attained shows there must be something of truth in it. "In the healthy processes of the mind," says he, “a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect: for, if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now, one of Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakespeare, thus mutilated or diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our minds, an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed: his thoughts and the images of his fancy are far more vivid than his actual perceptions; and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and color not naturally their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action, consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character Shakespeare places in circumstances, under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment:-Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve./

"The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world without; giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all common-place actualities. It is the nature of thought to be indefinite-definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is that the sense of sublimity arises, not

from the sight of an outward object, but from the beholder's reflection upon it; not from the sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment: it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, and brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feels this; his senses are in a trance, and he looks upon external things as hieroglyphics.'

This is certainly very noble criticism; and our main ground of doubt as to the view thus given is, that Hamlet seems bold, energetic, and prompt enough in action, when his course is free of moral impediments; as, for instance, in his conduct on shipboard, touching the commission, where his powers of thought all range themselves under the leading of a most vigorous and steady will. Our own belief is, though we are far from absolute in it, that the Poet's design was, to conceive a man great, perhaps equally so, in all the elements of character, mental, moral, and practical; and then to place him in such circumstances, bring such motives to bear upon him, and open to him such sources of influence and reflection, that all his greatness should be morally forced to display itself in the form of thought, even his strength of will having no practicable outlet but through the energies of the intellect. A brief review of the delineation will, if we mistake not, discover some reason for this belief.

Up to the time of his father's death, Hamlet's mind, busied in developing its innate riches, had found room for no sentiments towards others but generous trust and confidence. Delighted with the appearances of good, and shielded by his rank from the naked approaches of evil, he had no motive to pry through the semblance into the reality of surrounding characters. The ideas of princely elevation and moral rectitude, springing up simultaneously in his mind, had intertwisted their fibers closely together. While the chaste forms of young imagination had kept his own heart pure, he had framed his conceptions of oth

ers according to the model within himself. To the feelings of the son, the prince, the gentleman, the friend, the scholar, had lately been joined those of the lover; and his heart, oppressed with its own hopes and joys, had breathed forth its fulness in "almost all the holy vows of heaven." In his father he had realized the ideal of character which he aspired to exemplify. Whatsoever noble images and ideas he had gathered from the fields of poetry and philosophy, he had learned to associate with that venerated name. To the throne he looked forward with hope and fear, as an elevation for diffusing the blessings of a wise sovereignty, and receiving the homage of a grateful submission. As the crown was elective, he regarded his prospects of attaining it as suspended on the continuance of his father's life, till he could discover in himself such virtues as would secure him the succession. In his father's death, therefore, he lost the mainstay of both his affections and his pretensions.

Notwithstanding, the foundations of his peace and happiness were yet unshaken. The prospects of the man were perhaps all the brighter, that those of the prince had faded. The fireside and the student's bower were still open to him; truth and beauty, thought and affection, had not hidden their faces from him: with a mind saddened, but not diseased, his bereavement served to deepen and chasten his sensibilities, without untuning their music. Cunning and quick of heart to discover and appropriate the remunerations of life, he could compensate the loss of some objects with a more free and tranquil enjoyment of such as remained. In the absence of his father, he could concentrate upon his mother the feelings hitherto shared between them; and, in cases like this, religion towards the dead comes in to heighten and sanctify an affection for the living. Even if his mother too had died, the loss, however bitter, would not have been baleful to him; for, though separated from the chief objects of love and trust and reverence, he would still have retained those sentiments themselves unimpaired. It is not his mother, how