great lyric of the nation, even as Shakespeare is for aye its great dramatist : “I trust I have not wasted breath :
I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death : Not only cunning casts in clay : Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men—
At least, to me? I would not stay.” “And he, shall he Who loved, who suffered countless ills, Who battled for the true and just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or sealed within the iron hills 2’
Indeed, the manifold points of resemblance between Hamlet and In Memoriam are remarkable. In each the great questions of eternal interest are debated by a mind to whom profound grief makes this world a sterile promontory. The unknowable future absorbs all interest. The lyric bard, however, fights his way to more light than the dramatist attains. The fear of annihilation oppresses, but does not conquer him. He rebukes Lazarus for holding his peace on that which afflicts the doubting soul, but for himself he fights his way to faith. “He fought his doubts, and gathered strength ; He would not make his judgment blind; He faced the spectres of the mind, And laid them.”
It is not easy to estimate the amount of emotional disturbance for which Love is answerable in Hamlet's mind. Probably, if other matters had gone well with him, Ophelia's forced unkindness would easily have been seen through and over come ; but, with a mind pre-occupied with the dread mission of his father's revenge, it is likely that he would not question the earnestness of Ophelia's rejection, and that “to the pangs of despised love,” he might well attribute one of the most
