custom of exercise,” and longs to commit suicide, but dares not.
Yet, like the melancholiacs described by Burton, he is “ of profound judgment in some things, excellent apprehensions, judicious, wise, and witty; for melancholy advanceth men's conceits more than any humour whatever.” He is in a state which thousands pass through without becoming truly insane, but which in hundreds does pass into actual madness. It is the state of incubation of disease, “in which his melancholy
sits on brood,” and which, according to the turn of events, or the constitution of the brain, may hatch insanity, or terminate in restored health.
There is an apparent inconsistency between the sombre melancholy of Hamlet's solitary thoughts and the jesting levity of his conversation, even when he seeks least to put on the guise of antic behaviour; an inconsistency apparent only, for in truth this gloomy reverie, which in solitude “runs dark
ling down the stream of fate,” is thoroughly coherent in nature with the careless mocking spirit playing in derisive contempt with the foibles of others. The weeping and the mocking philosopher are not usually divided as of old, but are united in one, whose laugh is bestowed on the vanity of human wishes as observed in the world around, while the earnest
tear is reserved for the more deeply felt miseries of his own destiny. The historian of melancholy himself was a double philosopher of this complexion. Deeply imbued with melancholy when his mental gaze was introverted, when employed upon others it was more mocking than serious, more minute than profound. Thence came the charming and learned gossip of the Amatomy; thence also the curious habit recorded of him, that for days together he would sit on a post by the river side, listening and laughing at the oaths and jeers of the boatmen, and thus finding a strange solace from his own profound melancholy. Here is his own evidence :
