the moral and social virtues, one whom nature had formed to be, « The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, The observed of all observers," placed in a situation, in which even the amiable qualities of his mind serve but to aggravate his distress, and to perplex his conduct. Our compassion for the first, and our anxiety for the latter, are excited in the strongest manner; and hence arises that indescribable charm in Hamlet, which attracts every reader and every spectator, which the more perfect characters of other tragedies never dispose us to feel. The Orestes of the Greek poet, who, at his first appearance, lays down a plan of vengeance which he resolutely pursues, interests us for the accomplishment of his purpose; but of him, we think only as the instrument of that justice which we wish to overtake the murderers of Aga 4 memnon. We feel with Orestes, (or rather with Sophocles, for in such passages we always hear the poet in his hero,) that "it is fit that such gross infringements of the moral law should be punished with death, in order to render wickedness less frequent;" but when Horatio exclaims on the death of his friend, "Now cracks a noble heart!" we forget the murder of the king, the villainy of Claudius, the guilt of Gertrude; our recollection dwells only on the memory of that" sweet prince," the delicacy of whose feelings a milder planet should have ruled, whose gentle virtues should have bloomed through a life of felicity and usefulness. Hamlet, from the very opening of the piece, is delineated as one under the dominion of melancholy, whose spirits were overborne by his feelings. Grief for his father's death, and displeasure at his mother's marriage, prey on his mind; and he seems, with the weakness natural to such a disposition, to yield to their controul. He does not attempt to resist or combat these impressions, but is willing to fly from the contest, though it were into the grave: "Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt," &c. Even after his father's ghost has informed him of his murder, and commissioned him to avenge it, we find him complaining of that situation in which his fate had placed him: "The time is out of joint; oh! cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!" And afterwards, in the perplexity of his condition, meditating on the expediency of suicide: "To be, or not to be, that is the question." The account he gives of his own feelings to Rosincrantz and Guildenstern, which is evidently spoken in earnest, though somewhat covered with the mist of his affected distraction, is exactly descriptive of a mind full of that weariness of life which is characteristic of low spirits: "This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory," &c. And, indeed, he expressly delineates his own character as of the kind above-mentioned, when, hesitating on the evidence of his uncle's villainy, he says, "The spirit that I have seen May be the Devil, and the Devil hath power Abuses me to damn me." This doubt of the grounds on which our purpose is founded, is as often the effect, as the cause, of irresolution, which first hesitates, and then seeks out an excuse for its hesitation. It may, perhaps, be doing Shakespeare no injustice to suppose, that he sometimes began a play, without having fixed in his mind, in any determined manner, the plan or conduct of his piece. The character of some principal person of the drama might strike his imagination strongly in the opening scenes; as he went on, this character would continue to impress itself on the conduct, as well as the discourse, of that person, and, it is possible, might affect the situations and incidents, especially in those romantic or legendary subjects, where history did not confine him to certain unchangeable events. the story of Amleth, the son of Horwondil, told by Saxo-Grammaticus, from which the tragedy of Hamlet is taken, the young prince, who is to revenge the death of his father, murdered by his uncle Fengo, In |