A. Strange, that when from it one can look abroad into the Ocean, its barrenness should be so depressing. But man seems to need some shelter, both from wind and rain.
L. Could he not have found this in the love of Ophelia?
A. Probably not, since that love had so little power to disenchant the gloom of this period. She was to him a flower to wear in his bosom, a child to play the lute at his feet. We see the charm of her innocence, her soft credulity, as she answers her brother,
“No more, but so?”
The exquisite grace of her whole being in the two lines
“And I of ladies most deject and wretched
That sucked the honey of his music vows.”
She cannot be made to misunderstand him; his rude wildness crushes, but cannot deceive her heart. She has no answer to his outbreaks but
“O help him, you sweet Heavens!”
But, lovely as she was, and loved by him, this love could have been only the ornament, not, in any wise, the food of his life. The moment he is left alone, his thoughts revert to universal topics; it was the constitution of his mind, no personal relation could have availed it, except in the way of suggestion. He could not have been absorbed in the present moment. Still it would have been
“Heaven and earth!
Must I remember?”
L. Have you been reading the play of late?
A. Yes; hearing Macready, one or two points struck me that have not before, and I was inclined to try for my thousandth harvest from a new study of it.
Macready gave its just emphasis to the climax—
