music borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken 110 place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It would have been interesting enough 116 to have been admitted as a bystander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and witnessed something of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have 120 not only 'the outward pageants and the signs of grief;' but 'we have that within which passes show.' We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living as they rise. Other 125 dramatic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature; but Shakspere, together with his own comments, gives us the original text, that we may judge for our130 selves. This is a very great ad

vantage.

The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of 135 passion, but by refinement of thought

and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well be: but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick 140 sensibility the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his 145 situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he 150 kills Polonius, and again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrans and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he is 155 most bound to act, he remains puzzled,

| undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his purposes, till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses 160 to kill the King when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more 165 fatal opportunity, when he shall be engaged in some act 'that has no relish of salvation in it.' (Cp. Act III, sc. 3, 11. 73-89.)

He is the prince of philosophical 170 speculators; and because he cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea his wish can form, he declines it altogether. So he scruples to trust the suggestions 175 of the ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have surer proof of his uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this confirmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment, 180 instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it. (See Act IV, sc. 4.) Still he does nothing; and this very 185 speculation on his own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not from any want of attachment to his father or of abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet 190 is thus dilatory; but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into 195 immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act: and any vague pretext that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him from his previous purposes.

The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting

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205 than according to rules; amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineations of 'that noble and liberal casuist' (as Shakspere has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-col210 oured quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from the 'Whole Duty of Man,' or from "The Academy of Compliments!' We confess we are a little shocked at the 215 want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his behaviour either partakes of the 'licence of the time,' or 220 else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be 225 amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences 230 of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed 235 severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him! Amidst the natural and preter240 natural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When 'his father's spirit was in arms,' it was not a time for the son to make 245 love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think of. It would have taken 250 him years to have come to a direct explanation on the point. In the harassed state of his mind, he could not have done much otherwise than

he did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees 255 her funeral,

'I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not with all their quantity of love Make up my sum.'

Nothing can be more affecting or 260 beautiful than the Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia on throwing the flowers into the grave.

'Sweets to the sweet; farewell! [Scattering flowers. I hop'd thou should'st have been my Ham- 265 let's wife;

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy grave.'

Shakspere was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of human character, and he here shows us the 270 Queen, who was so criminal in some respects, not without sensibility and affection in other relations of life. Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. 275 Oh rose of May, oh flower too soon faded! Her love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which nobody but 280 Shakspere could have drawn in the way that he has done, and to the conception of which there is not even the smallest approach, except in some of the old romantic ballads. Her 285 brother, Laertes, is a character we do not like so well: he is too hot and choleric, and somewhat rodomontade. Polonius is a perfect character in its kind nor is there any 290 foundation for the objections which have been made to the consistency of this part. It is said that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no inconsistency in 295 that. Again, that he talks wisely at one time and foolishly at another; that his advice to Laertes is very excellent, and his advice to the King

300 and Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness very ridiculous. But he gives ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it; he gives the other as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is accord305 ingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In short, Shakspere has been accused of inconsistency in this and other characters, only because

th

he has kept up the distinction which there is in nature, between the under- 310 standings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in 315 his actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety of intention.

TH

HOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) was the son of a Scotch stone-mason at the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. From the grammar school of Annan he passed to the University of Edinburgh to prepare for the Scotch ministry, but left it after six years without taking a degree. Averse to entering the clerical profession, he for five years tried schoolmastering at Annan and at Kirkcaldy. But, tired of teaching, he went back to Edinburgh, passed through some years of hard mental struggle there, and tried to enter on a literary career by doing journalistic work and translations. Meanwhile he also studied German philosophy and literature and above all Goethe, whom, in spite of many points of difference, he revered through life as his master. In 1822 he accepted a private tutorship, which first brought him into contact with the literary circles of London. To re-collect his troubled spirit, he retired again to country solitude and spent a happy year (1825) at the farm of Hoddam Hill on the Solway. In 1826 he married Miss Jane Welsh, a lady of great mental gifts, but as strong-minded and petulant as himself, so that their union proved unhappy. After a short year at Edinburgh, he shut himself up for five years on his wife's solitary farm at Craigenputtock, near Dumfries. In 1834 Carlyle came to try his fortune in London, and established himself at 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where he lived, mostly in close retirement, till the end of his life. His books were slow in winning recognition, which first came from America through the devoted offices of his admiring pupil and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. The four courses of lectures, however, which he gave from 1837-40, attracted large audiences, and at once made his name the talk of the town. His popularity with the younger

generation found a striking expression in his election to the rectorship of Edinburgh University (1865). After the sudden death of his wife (1866), he wrote very little besides Reminiscences (posth. 1881). Only in 1870, when German policy was sadly misunderstood by the English, Carlyle once more stood forth and wrote a spirited letter to the "Times', after which public opinion in England completely veered round. He quietly passed away in his eighty-sixth year, and was buried in the village churchyard of Ecclefechan.

Carlyle holds a foremost place among the masters of English prose, but less as a literary critic than as a powerful and earnest thinker and as a brilliant historian. To his early period of literary criticism we owe a sympathetic Life of Friedrich Schiller (1823-4), a masterly translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (1824), and a series of fine essays, mostly on German literature, of which latter those on Goethe's Faust show a wonderful insight into his master's masterpiece. His philosophical period begins with Sartor Resartus: the Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh (in 'Fraser's Magazine' for 1833-4), which is his most original, if not his greatest work. It is an autobiographical and philosophical novel, which puts forward a 'Philosophy of Clothes', mainly based on Novalis, and written in a queer style imitated from Paul Richter. His favourite doctrine that history is made by great men, was the theme of his last course of lectures, which he printed under the title: On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841). The social problems of the time and the rules of the classical school of political economy, which he had already attacked in Sartor Resartus and his first political pamphlet on Chartism (1839), were fully, but passionately, discussed in

So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life can be in65 creased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening your Denominator. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give In70 finity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time write: 'It is only with Renunciation (Entsagen) that Life, 76 properly speaking, can be said to begin.'

I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lament80 ing and self-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a word: is it not because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU (Sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft85 bedded, and lovingly cared-for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What 90 if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after some95 what to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.

have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he 110 Strength and Freedom? Which Godinspired Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become con- 115 trite, and learn it! O, thank thy Destiny for these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever- 120 paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into the 125 azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him. .....

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To me, in this our life, which is an internecine warfare with the Timespirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy brother, I advise 135 thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this: 'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the world, 140 something from my share: which, by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay, I will fight thee rather.' Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, truly a 'feast 145 of shells,' for the substance has been spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the collective human species clutching at them! Can we not, in all such cases, rather 150 say: "Take it, thou too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest;