If familiarity and fellow-feeling compel us at one time to regard Hamlet as a reality, reflection and curious admiration compel us at others to wonder at it, as a work of man's creative
power; and it has ever been to us a question of intense interest to speculate upon the manner it was worked out. There appears this great distinction between Hamlet and all other characters of Shakespeare, in which real or feigned insanity is represented, that, while they are evidently all drawn from the life, it could scarcely have bean drawn from observation. Ophe lia, for instance, is the very type of a class of cases by no means uncommon. Every mental physician of moderately extensive experience must have seen many Ophelias. It is a copy from nature, after the fashion of the pre-Raphaelite school, in which the veins of the leaves are painted. Hamlet however is not pre-Raphaelite, but Raphaelite ; like the Transfiguration, it is a glorious reflex from the mind of the author, but not a copy of aught which may be seen by other eyes. It is drawn, in deed, in accordance with the truth of nature, just as Raphael made use of anatomical knowledge in painting the Trans figuration ; but there is something beyond and above that which any external observation can supply. From whence did this come 7 Without doubt, from within. Shakespeare has
here described a broad phase of his own mind; has reflected the madir of his own great soul; has set up a glass in which the ages will read the inmost part of him ; how he thought of death and suicide; how he doubted of the future, and
felt of the present, “That this huge state presenteth nought but shows ;" how he looked inwards until fair nature became dark, and spun “A veil of thought, to hide him from the sun.” Hallam, the most learned and just of English critics, has recognised this inner reflection of the soul in this and some others of the great bard's sombre characters.
