sophy with which he is indoctrinated, and which leads him so constantly to trace the changes of matter, as in “Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole, to keep the wind away.” This, perhaps, was the philosophy which Horatio and he had learned at Wittenburg, the fallacy of which the Ghost had seemed at first to prove. Yet it is strange how entirely Hamlet appears at times to have forgotten the Ghost and its revelations. The soliloquy, “To be, or not to be,” is that of a man to whom any future state of existence is a matter of sincere doubt. He appears as one of those who would not be persuaded, “though one rose from the dead.” After the soul-harrowing recital made to him by the per turbed spirit of his father, in which the secrets of the purga torial prison-house are not indeed unfolded, but in which they are so broadly indicated that no man who had seen so much of the “eternal blazon" of the spirit-world, could find
a corner in his soul for the concealment of a sceptical doubt, after this, the soliloquy, “To be, or not to be,” presumes either an entire forgetfulness of the awful revelation which had been made to him, or the existence of a state of mind so
overwhelmed with suicidal melancholy as to be incapable of estimating testimony. Now it is well enough known that the most complete sensational and intellectual proofs go for nothing, when opposed to the stubborn strength of a morbid emotion, and if Hamlet reasons upon the future life, and hunts matter through its transmigrations with a sceptical intent, it must be accepted as the result of mental disease which has perverted the instinct of self-preservation, and made him desire nothing so much as simple unconditional annihilation. In his interview with the much enduring Ophelia which
follows the soliloquy, Hamlet has been accused of unworthy harshness. Two considerations will tend to modify, though not altogether to remove this judgment. The reader is aware
